She did not go directly across, but in a slanting, southerly course, out of which she was quickly compelled to veer, yet more to starboard, that is, to her right, by a vast blaze of glitter and puff and a warning hoot of a steam whistle which came swiftly up from the southward. The glittering ranges of windows and the two huge, black pipes that towered above them, belonged to one of the largest “Sound Steamers.” She was so large, indeed, that when the tug had passed her and steered into her wake, the swell it was rocked in called out an exclamation of:
“O!—Well!—I declare!” from one of two gentlemen who were sitting in the little cabin.
The next words he uttered, as he once more squared himself in the seat he had been so suddenly pitched out of, were:
“What a swell!—But what I was saying about Jim is this:—He isn’t so bad a boy——”
“Not bad at all, I think,” said the other.
“But then I can’t get at him. I’ve tried again and again——”
“So have I. He’s a complete puzzle.”
“And he isn’t sullen, either, and he isn’t exactly rebellious, but you can’t make any impression on him.”
“He says he was unjustly convicted and it works on him worse and worse, all the time. We can’t help it, though——”
“Of course we can’t, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt him, all his life——”