She seemed to enjoy those
arguments, and I judged Stevey Todd would fetch port maybe in course
of time. Meanwhile I sat smoking peaceful at my cabin window, and
watched the shore slipping by, that I knew so well of old. By-and-by
I saw Telford Point, and then the Musquoit River mouth by Adrian.
Stevey Todd sat under the window putting fine edges on his arguments.
And I says:
"Stevey," I says, "I was born and bred on this coast," but Stevey
Todd was that taken up with his points of argument to Madame Bill
that he didn't have any interest in my beginnings, and I went off to
find Flannagan.
"Flannagan," I says, "I got a sentiment."
"Sintimint, is it!" he says. "Come off! Ye salted codfish! If I
ain't got tin to your one, I'm another," he says.
It made me mad to hear him talk that way, and I set him down on the
starboard anchor and I argued it. I told him of the little town of
Greenough, and then I told him of Madge Pemberton, that afterwards
was Madge McCulloch, and how the old shore village lay, its street
and white houses and its church with the gilded cupola, till
Flannagan got interested. And there we talked a long time.
"Why, ye are salted, Tom," he says, "but I'm not just sayin' ye're
canned.
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