the grades as an excuse for laying his hand on the boy’s square shoulder. It was then that Harvey noticed and admired what had never struck him before—his father’s curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as learned from men in the street.
“How d’you make ’em tell you everything without opening your head?” demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger’s loft.
“I’ve dealt with quite a few men in my time, Harve, and one sizes ’em up somehow, I guess. I know something about myself, too.”
Then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge:
“Men can ’most always tell when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as one of themselves.”
“Same as they treat me down at Wouverman’s wharf.