Now, out there was a blue shading, made by a magic pencil; land, his land, where he was going to become the beloved comrade of all the friends whose likenesses he saw in the white-caps flashing before him.
Humming, he paraded down to the buffet, where small beer and smaller tobacco were sold, to buy another pound of striped candy for the offspring of the Russian Jews.
The children knew he was coming. "Fat rascals," he chuckled, touching their dark cheeks, pretending to be frightened as they pounded soft fists against the iron side of the ship or rolled unregarded in the scuppers. Their shawled mothers knew him, too, and as he shyly handed about the candy the chattering stately line of Jewish elders nodded their beards like the forest primeval in a breeze, saying words of blessing in a strange tongue.
He smiled back and made gestures, and shouted "Land! Land!" with several variations in key, to make it sound foreign.
But he withdrew for the sacred moment of seeing the Land of Promise he was newly discovering--the Long Island shore; the grass-clad redouts at Fort Wadsworth; the vast pile of New York sky-scrapers, standing in a mist like an enormous burned forest.
"Singer Tower.... Butterick Building," he murmured, as they proceeded toward their dock. "That's something like.... Let's see; yes, sir, by golly, right up there between the Met. Tower and the Times--good old Souvenir Company office. Jiminy! `One Dollar to Albany'--something like a sign, that is--good old dollar! To thunder with their darn shillings. Home!... Gee! there's where I used to moon on a wharf!... Gosh! the old town looks good."
And all this was his to conquer, for friendship's sake.
He went to a hotel. While he had to go back to the Zapps', of course, he did not wish, by meeting those old friends, to spoil his first day. No, it was cheerfuler to stand at a window of his cheap hotel on Seventh Avenue, watching the "good old American crowd"--Germans, Irishmen, Italians, and Jews. He went to the Nickelorion and grasped the hand of the ticket-taker, the Brass-button Man, ejaculating: "How are you? Well, how's things going with the old show?... I been away couple of months."
"Fine and dandy! Been away, uh? Well, it's good to get back to the old town, heh? Summer hotel?"
"Unk?"
"Why, you're the waiter at Pat Maloney's, ain't you?"
Next morning Mr. Wrenn made himself go to the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. He wanted to get the teasing, due him for staying away so short a time, over as soon as possible. The office girl, addressing circulars, seemed surprised when he stepped from the elevator, and blushed her usual shy gratitude to the men of the office for allowing her to exist and take away six dollars weekly.