In Lemuel's room he was not less appreciative. “Why, mate, it does me good to see how you've got along. I got to write a letter home at once, and tell the folks what friends you've got in Boston. I don't believe they half understand it.” He smiled joyously upon Lemuel, who stood stock still, with such despair in his face that probably the wretch pitied him.
“Look here, mate, don't you be afraid now! I'm on the reform lay with all my might, and I mean business. I ain't a-goin' to do you any harm, you bet your life. These your things?” he asked, taking Lemuel's winter suit from the hooks where they hung, and beginning to pull off his coat. He talked on while he changed his dress. “I was led away, and I got my come-uppings, or the other fellow's comeuppings, for I wa'n't to blame any, and I always said so, and I guess the judge would say so too, if it was to do over again.”
A frightful thought stung Lemuel to life. “The judge? Was it a passenger-ship?”
The other stopped buttoning Lemuel's trousers round him to slap himself on the thigh. “Why, mate! don't you know enough to know what a sea voyage is? Why, I've been down to the Island for the last six months! Hain't you never heard it called a sea voyage? Why, we always come off from a cruise when we git back! You don't mean to say you never been one?”
“Oh, my goodness!” groaned Lemuel. “Have—have you been in prison?”
“Why, of course.”
“Oh, what am I going to do?” whispered the miserable creature to himself.
The other heard him. “Why, you hain't got to do anything! I'm on the reform, and you might leave everything layin' around loose, and I shouldn't touch it. Fact! You ask the ship's chaplain.”
He laughed in the midst of his assertions of good resolutions, but sobered to the full extent, probably, of his face and nature, and tying Lemuel's cravat on at the glass, he said solemnly, “Mate, it's all right. I'm on the reform.”