"It's a deal," said Cheyne at the last. "You'll alter your mind twenty times before you leave college, o' course; but if you take hold of it in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twenty-three, I'll make the thing over to you. How's that, Harve?"
"Nope; never pays to split up a going concern There's too much competition in the world anyway, and Disko says 'blood-kin hev to stick together.' His crowd never go back on him. That's one reason, he says, why they make such big fares. Say, the "We're Here" goes off to the Georges on Monday. They don't stay long ashore, do they?"
"Well, we ought to be going, too, I guess. I've left my business hung up at loose ends between two oceans, and it's time to connect again. I just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for twenty years."
"We can't go without seeing Disko off," said Harvey; "and Monday's Memorial Day. Let's stay over that, anyway."
"What is this memorial business? They were talking about it at the boarding-house," said Cheyne, weakly. He, too, was not anxious to spoil the golden days.
"Well, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. Disko don't think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the widows and orphans. Disko's independent. Haven't you noticed that?"
"Well—yes. A little. In spots. Is it a town show, then?"
"The summer convention is. They read out the names of the fellows drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the secretaries of the Aid Societies go into the back yard and fight over the catch. The real show, he says, is in the spring. The ministers all take a hand then, and there aren't any summer boarders around."
"I see," said Cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of one born into and bred up to city pride. "We'll stay over for Memorial Day, and get off in the afternoon."
"Guess I'll go down to Disko's and make him bring his crowd up before they sail. I'll have to stand with them, of course."
"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 waterfront—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 a 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's a bone, an' smells a sight worse sence I quit. 'Might ha' left us one saloon for soft drinks, anyway."
"Don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, Carsen. I'll go into the politics of it later. Sit down by the door and think over your arguments till I come back."
"What good's arguments to me? In Miquelon champagne's eighteen dollars a case, and—" The skipper lurched into his seat as an organ-prelude silenced him.
"Our new organ," said the official proudly to Cheyne. "Cost us four thousand dollars, too. We'll have to get back to high-licence next year to pay for it. I wasn't going to let the ministers have all the religion at their convention. Those are some of our orphans standing up to sing. My wife taught 'em. See you again later, Mr. Cheyne. I'm wanted on the platform."
High, clear, and true, children's voices bore down the last noise of those settling into their places.
"O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!"
The women throughout the hall leaned forward to look as the reiterated cadences filled the air. Mrs. Cheyne, with some others, began to breathe short; she had hardly imagined there were so many widows in the world; and instinctively searched for Harvey. He had found the "We're Heres" at the back of the audience, and was standing, as by right, between Dan and Disko. Uncle Salters, returned the night before with Penn, from Pamlico Sound, received him suspiciously.
"Hain't your folk gone yet?" he grunted. "What are you doin' here, young feller?"
"O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!"
"Hain't he good right?" said