Harvey.”
There was not. The boy had made a treaty on his own account. Railroads, he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber, real estate, or mining. What his soul yearned after was control of his father’s newly purchased sailing-ship. If that could be promised him within what he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his part, guaranteed diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. In vacation he was to be allowed full access to all details connected with the line—he had not asked more than two thousand questions about it—from his father’s most private papers in the safe to the tug in San Francisco harbour.
“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