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Page 75
"Oh, that's it, is it," said Cheyne. "I'm only a poor summer boarder,
and you're--"
"A Banker--full-blooded Banker," Harvey called back as he boarded
a trolley, and Cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for the
future.
Disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made
for charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be
lost, so far as he was concerned, if the 'We're Heres' absented
themselves. Then Disko made conditions. He had heard--it was
astonishing how all the world knew all the world's business along
the water-front--he had heard that a "Philadelphia actress-woman"
was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she
would deliver "Skipper Ireson's Ride." Personally, he had as little
use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice,
and though he himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped up on
a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. So Harvey came back
to East Gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused
actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of
the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice,
even as Disko had said.
Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything
of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man's
soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning,
full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced
straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles
outside the post office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting
one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air;
and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk.
"Mother," he said suddenly, "don't you remember--after Seattle was
burned out--and they got her going again?"
Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street.
Like her husband, she understood these gatherings, all the West
over, and compared them one against another. The fishermen
began to mingle with the crowd about the town-hall doors--blue-
jowled Portuguese, their women bare-headed or shawled for the
most part; clear-eyed Nova Scotians, and men of the Maritime
Provinces; French, Italians, Swedes, and Danes, with outside crews
of coasting schooners; and everywhere women in black, who
saluted one another with gloomy pride, for this was their day of
great days. And there were ministers of many creeds,--pastors of
great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with
shepherds of the regular work,--from the priests of the Church on
the Hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow with the
men of a score of boats. There were owners of lines of schooners,
large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft
pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance
agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers,
salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of
the water-front.
They drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of
the summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and
perspired till he shone all over with pure civic pride. Cheyne had
met him for five minutes a few days before, and between the two
there was entire understanding.
"Well, Mr. Cheyne, and what d'you think of our city? --Yes,
madam, you can sit anywhere you please.--You have this kind of
thing out West, I presume?"
"Yes, but we aren't as old as you."
"That's so, of course. You ought to have been at the exercises when
we celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I tell you, Mr.
Cheyne, the old city did herself credit."
"So I heard. It pays, too. What's the matter with the town that it
don't have a first-class hotel, though?"
"--Right over there to the left, Pedro. Heaps o' room for you and
your crowd.--Why, that's what I tell 'em all the time, Mr. Cheyne.
There's big money in it, but I presume that don't affect you any.
What we want is--"
A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed
skipper of a Portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round.
"What in thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the
town when all decent men are at sea this way? Heh? Town's dry as
a bone, an' smells a sight worse sence I quit. 'Might ha' left us one
saloon for soft drinks, anyway."
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