Brother Bart and his boys were up betimes for their Sunday journey.
Breakfast was soon dispatched, and four sunburned youngsters were ready
for their trip to town. Dud and Jim, who had been lounging around
Killykinick in sweaters and middies, were spruced up into young gentlemen
again. Freddy's rosy cheeks were set off by a natty little sailor suit and
cap; while Dan scarcely recognized himself in one of the rigs presented by
Brother Francis, that bore the stamp of a stylish tailor, and that had
been sponged and pressed and mended by the kind old wardrobian until it
was quite as good as new.
The day was bright and beautiful, sky and sea seemed smiling on each other
most amicably. The "Sary Ann" was in the best of spirits, and the wind in
the friendliest of moods.
"Sit steady, boys, and don't be philandering!" warned Brother Bart,
anxiously. "It looks fair and aisy enough, but you can drown in sun as
well as storm. Keep still there, laddie, or ye'll be over the edge of the
boat. Sure it's an awful thing to think that there's only a board between
ye and the judgment-seat of God."
And Brother Bart shook his head, and relapsed into meditation befitting
the peril of his way; while the "Sary Ann" swept on, past rock and reef
and shoal, out into the wide blue open, where the sunlit waves were
swelling in joyous freedom, until the rocks and spires of Beech Cliff rose
dimly on the horizon; white-winged sails began to flutter into sight;
wharves and boat-houses came into view, and the travellers were back in
the busy world of men again.
"It feels good to be on God's own earth again," said Brother Bart, as he
set foot on the solid pier, gay just now with a holiday crowd; for the
morning boat was in, and the "Cliff Dwellers," as the residents of the old
town were called at livelier seaside resorts, were out in force to welcome
the new arrivals.
"This is something fine!" said Dud to Jim, as they made their way through
the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the
beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were
disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like
this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I
say, Jim, let's look up the Fosters after Mass, and see if we can't get a
bid to their house for a day or two. We'll have some fun there."
"I don't know," answered easy Jim. "Killykinick is good enough for me. You
have to do so much fussing and fixing when you are with girls. Still, now
we are here, we might as well look around us."
So when Mass in the pretty little church was over, and Brother Bart, glad
to be back under his well-loved altar light, lingered at his prayers, the
boys, who had learned from Captain Jeb that they had a couple of hours
still on their hands, proceeded to explore the quaint old town, with its
steep, narrow streets, where no traffic policemen were needed; for neither
street cars nor automobiles were allowed to intrude.
In the far long ago, Beach Cliff had been a busy and prosperous seaport
town. The great sailing vessels of those days, after long and perilous
voyage, made harbor there; the old shipmasters built solid homes on the
island shores; its merchants grew rich on the whaling vessels, that went
forth to hunt for these monsters of the great deep, and came back laden
with oil and blubber and whalebone and ambergris. But all this was changed
now. Steam had come to supplant the white wings that had borne the old
ships on their wide ocean ways. As Captain Jeb said, "the airth had taken
to spouting up ile," and made the long whale hunts needless and
unprofitable. But, though it had died to the busy world of commerce and
trade, the quaint old island town had kept a charm all its own, that drew
summer guests from far and near.
Dud and Jim made for the resident streets, where old Colonial mansions
stood amid velvety lawns, and queer little low-roofed houses were buried
in vines and flowers. But Dan and Freddy kept to the shore and the cliff,
where the old fishermen had their homes, and things were rough and
interesting. They stopped at an old weather-beaten house that had in its
low windows all sorts of curious things--models of ships and boats, odd
bits of pottery, rude carvings, old brasses and mirrors,--the flotsam and
jetsam from broken homes and broken lives that had drifted into this
little eddy.
The proprietor, a bent and grizzled old man, who stood smoking at the
door, noticed the young strangers.
"Don't do business on Sundays; but you can step in, young gentlemen, and
look about you. 'Twon't cost you a cent: and I've things you won't see
any-whar else on this Atlantic coast,--brass, pottery, old silver, old
books, old papers, prints of rare value and interest. A Harvard professor
spent two hours the other day looking over my collection."
"Is it a museum?" asked Freddy politely, as he and Dan peered doubtful
over the dusky threshold.
"Wal, no, not exactly; though it's equal to that, sonny. Folks call this
here Jonah's junk-shop,--Jonah being my Christian name. (I ain't never had
much use for any other.) I've been here forty years, and my father was
here before me,--buying and selling whatever comes to us. And things do
come to us sure, from copper kettles that would serve a mess of sixty men,
down to babies' bonnets."
"Babies' bonnets!" laughed Dan, who, with Freddy close behind him, had
pushed curiously but cautiously into the low, dark room, from which opened
another and another, crowded with strangely assorted merchandise.
"You may laugh," said the proprietor, "but we've had more than a dozen
trunks and boxes filled with such like folderols. Some of 'em been here
twenty years or more,--shawls and bonnets and ball dresses, all frills and
laces and ribbons; baby bonnets, too, all held for duty and storage or
wreckage and land knows what. Flung the whole lot out for auction last
year, and the women swarmed like bees from the big hotels and the
cottages. Got bits of yellow lace, they said, for ten cents that was worth
many dollars. The men folks tried to 'kick' about fever and small-pox in
the old stuff, but not a woman would listen. Look at that now!" And the
speaker paused under a chandelier that, even in the dusky dimness,
glittered with crystal pendants. "Set that ablaze with the fifty candles
it was made to hold, and I bet a hundred dollars wouldn't have touched it
forty years ago. Ye can buy it to-morrow for three and a quarter. That's
the way things go in Jonah's junk-shop."
"And do you ever really sell anything?" asked Dan, whose keen business
eye, being trained by early bargaining for the sharp needs of life, could
see nothing in Jonah's collection worth a hard-earned dollar. Mirrors with
dingy and broken frames loomed ghost-like up in the dusky corners;
tarnished epaulets and sword hilts told pathetically of forgotten honors;
there were clocks, tall and stately, without works or pendulum.
"Sell?" echoed the proprietor. "Of course, sonny, we sell considerable,
specially this time of year when the rich folks come around,--folks that
ain't looking for stuff that's whole or shiny. And they do bite curious,
sure. Why, there was some sort of a big man come up here in his yacht a
couple of years ago that gave me twenty-five dollars for a furrin
medal,--twenty-five dollars cash down. And it wasn't gold or silver
neither. Said he knew what it was worth, and I didn't."
"Twenty-five dollars!" exclaimed the astonished Freddy,--"twenty-five
dollars for a medal! O Dan, then maybe yours is worth something, too."
"Pooh, no!" said Dan, "what would poor old Nutty be doing with a
twenty-five dollar medal?"
The dull eyes of the old junk dealer kindled with quick interest.
"Hev you got a medal?" he asked. "Where did you get it?"
"From a batty old sailor man who thought I had done him some good turns,"
answered Dan. "Where he got it he didn't say. I don't think he could
remember."
And Dan, whose only safe deposit for boyish treasures was his jacket
pocket, pulled out the gift that Freddy had refused, and showed it to this
new acquaintance, who, holding it off in his horny hand, blinked at it
with practised eye.
"Portugee or Spanish, I don't know which it says on that thar rim. Thar
ain't much of it silver. I'd have to rub it up to be sure of the rest.
Date, well as I can make out, it's 1850."
"It is," said Dan. "I made that much out myself."
Old Jonah shook his head.
"Ain't far enough back. Takes a good hundred years to make an antique.
Still, you can't tell. The ways of these great folks are queer. Last week
I sold for five dollars a bureau that I was thinking of splitting up into
firewood; and the woman was as tickled as if she had found a purse of
money. Said it was Louey Kans. Who or what she was I don't know; mebbe
some kin of hers. I showed her the break plain, for I ain't no robber; but
she said that didn't count a mite,--that she could have a new glass put in
for ten dollars. Ten dollars! Wal, thar ain't no telling about rich folks'
freaks and foolishness; so I can't say nothing about that thar medal. It
ain't the kind of thing I'd want to gamble on. But if you'd like to leave
it here on show. I'll take care of it, I promise you; and mebbe some one
may come along and take a notion to it."
"Oh, what's the good?" said Dan, hesitating.
"Dan, do--do!" pleaded Freddy, who saw a chance for the vacation pocket
money his chum so sorely lacked. "You might get twenty-five dollars for
it, Dan."
"He might," said old Jonah; "and then again he mightn't, sonny. I ain't
promising any more big deals like them I told you about. But you can't
ever tell in this here junk business whar or when luck will strike you. It
goes hard agin my old woman to hev all this here dust and cobwebs. She has
got as tidy a house as you'd ask to see just around the corner,--flower
garden in front, and everything shiny. But if I'd let her in here with a
bucket and broom she'd ruin my business forever. It's the dust and the
rust and the cobwebs that runs Jonah's junk-shop. But it's fair and
square. I put down in writing all folks give me to sell, and sign my name
to it. If you don't gain nothing, you don't lose nothing."
Dan was thinking fast. Twenty-five dollars,--twenty-five dollars! There
was only a chance, it is true; and a very slim chance at that. But what
would twenty-five dollars mean to him, to Aunt Winnie? For surely and
steadily, in the long, pleasant summer days, in the starlit watches of the
night, his resolution was growing: he must live and work for Aunt Winnie;
he could not leave her gentle heart to break in its loneliness, while he
climbed to heights beyond her reach; he could not let her die, while he
dreamed of a future she would never see. Being only a boy, Dan did not put
the case in just such words. He only felt with a fierce determination
that, in spite of the dull pain in his heart at the thought, he must give
up St. Andrew's when this brief seaside holiday was past, and work for
Aunt Winnie. And a little ready cash to make a new start in Mulligan's
upper rooms would help matters immensely. Just now he had not money enough
for a fire in the rusty little stove, or to move Aunt Winnie and her old
horsehair trunk from the Little Sisters.
"All right!" he said, with sudden resolve. "Take the medal and try it."
And old Jonah, who was not half so dull as, for commercial purposes, he
looked, turned to an old mahogany desk propped up on three legs, and gave
the young owner a duly signed receipt for one silver-rimmed bronze medal,
date 1850, and the business was concluded.
"Suppose you really get twenty-five dollars, Dan," said Freddy, as they
bade old Jonah good-bye and kept on their way. "What will you do with
it?"
"I'm not saying," replied Dan, mindful of his promise to Father Mack. "But
I'll start something, you can bet, Freddy!"
And then they went on down to the wharf, where the "Sary Ann" lay at her
moorings, and Brother Bart was seated on a bench in pleasant converse with
the Irish sexton of the little church, who had been showing the friendly
old Brother some of the sights of the town.
"Here come my boys now. This is Dan Dolan, and this is my own laddie that
I've been telling ye about, Mr. McNally. And where--where are the others?"
questioned Brother Bart, anxiously.
"I don't know," answered Dan, after he had reciprocated Mr. McNally's
hearty hand-shake. "Dud said something about going to the Fosters."
"Sure and that isn't hard to find," said Mr. McNally. "It's one of the
biggest places on Main Street, with hydrangeas growing like posies all
around the door. Any one will show ye."
"Go back for them, Danny lad. Ye can leave laddie here with me while ye
bring the others back; for the day is passing, and we must be sailing
home."