“It would have taken two weeks to get clear in the ordinary way,” he added. “My decision came the day of the squabble with Mr. Prentidd in the office. I had to leave right then--was off for Savannah that very night----” “And you found the ship there?” Davy asked eagerly. “I beat her there a day and a half. Then we sailed for South America. I want to tell you the whole story. This is not the place. Could you come up in my room after supper to-night?” “I think my mother will let me come----” “Tell me about your mother, Davy. Is she well? I remember I meant to meet her some time.” “Yes--just the same. You know she works a little, too----” “Where?” Bellair asked absently. Davy swallowed, and before he spoke, the man saw with a queer thrill that the boy hadn’t yet learned to lie. “Well, she goes out three days a week--to do the laundry work--for people who have had her a long time.” “Oh, I see.” “I’m hoping to get where she won’t have to.” “Of course.” The dinner was brought. Bellair tried to make up for the place--in quantity. Neither spoke for the present. The man was hungry, too. “I’m glad you told me that,” he said after a time, “glad you told me just that way.” Davy applied himself further. Manifestly here was a point that he need not follow. “Davy, you’ll come through. You’re starting in the right hard way--the old-fashioned way. It won’t be so slow as you think----” He was reminded now of what Fleury had said about the little Gleam that first night in the open boat. “Slow but sure at Lot & Company’s--if a fellow does his part and works hard----” Davy was being brought up in the usual way. Bellair said: “I’m coming over to see you at your house some evening soon--if I may.” “Sure.... It isn’t much of a house.” “I’m not so certain about that. Anyway, I want to come. We’ll talk about it again this evening. You ask your mother when she’ll let me----” “You might come to-night---instead of me coming to the hotel----” “No, I want to talk with you alone.” Davy looked relieved.... He was on his way presently, and the town appeared better to Bellair that afternoon. At five he was in the hotel-lobby when a hand plucked his sleeve and he looked down into the whitest, most terrified face, he had ever seen. “I’m fired!” was the intelligence that came up from it, and there was reproach, too. “Come on upstairs, but first take it from me that you’ll be glad of it, in ten minutes----” Bellair had to furnish a swift, heroic antidote for that agony. “You haven’t been home, of course?” the man asked in the elevator. “No.” “Could we send a messenger to your mother--so she wouldn’t worry, and you wouldn’t have to go home until after we talk?” “Yes.” “All right, I’ll see to that at once.” Davy wrote with trembling hands. The messenger was asked to bring an answer from Mrs. Acton. “Now tell me,” said Bellair.