s still with
Norman was current gossip in the fleet.

Because he had lately heard that I had been free-spoken in my comment on
that exploit was why Captain Oliver now--his forefinger tapping the bar
and he eying me from under his hat-brim--added to his "good reason" the
word that, no matter what my firm or any other firm thought of this or
that, which warn't none o' their business anyway, he wanted 'em all to
understand that he was as capable of getting a quick passage out of a
vessel as any Norman Sickles that ever walked; which gave me a fine
chance to say: "Well, the place to prove that is at sea, and not in a
barroom ashore."

Not very delicate--no; but it sent him almost on the run down aboard his
vessel, to clear his decks for loading, which was mostly what I was
after.

And I let it leak out--the answer of the two cousins about being in
Boston before Christmas. A little rivalry of that kind doesn't do any
harm; and I wanted to walk into the office on Christmas Eve and say,
"The last of that Newport News coal is lying out there in the stream
waiting to dock," and then go home, even as many of the crews would want
to go home, with an easy conscience for a Christmas holiday.

II

People in my line used to say that I was pretty young for my job, and
some of them to warn me about allowing the underlings to get familiar
with me. Well, perhaps I was too young for my job, or for any other job
of any account; but as to the other charge I never noticed anybody
getting over-familiar with me. Friendly, yes; but even the head of the
firm himself couldn't get over-familiar unless I let him.

Part of my job, as I figured it, was to know freights and ships and the
masters of ships; and where it hurt the firm's interests if I knew the
crews as well, I couldn't see. Some would tell me that the further away
I kept from them the more highly they would respect me, and the more
highly they respected me the more they would do for me, which would have
listened well if their vessels were getting in and out of loading ports
any faster than mine did; but nobody noticed that they were.

And beyond that: I could never see where a little friendliness to
anybody did any harm. I may have been too young for my job, but I wasn't
too young to know that the world is alive with unassuming little fellows
who are full to the hatches with knowledge of one kind or another that
they will cheerfully unload to anybody who has time for them. Not t