THE CORNER-STONE THAT ALEC FOUND
Now that Alec and Jim got all the shells from all the shippers, their
pile grew with unbelievable rapidity. Although the number of shells had
increased so greatly, yet big Jim Hawley was almost always able to
handle the entire day's harvest himself. The powerful little motor shot
his boat from point to point with great speed; and the sailor himself
was so strong and powerful that he could shovel the shells out of his
boat while most other men would have been thinking about it. Thus it
happened that Alec seldom had to help his partner, when the _Bertha B_
made fast for the day.
But Alec was not one to waste his time. Whenever Jim did not need him,
Alec hustled up to the shipper's office and helped with the clerical
work. To his delight, Captain Rumford finally procured a typewriter, the
rubber stamps, and some other office equipment suggested by Alec. With
the aid of these and the assistance Alec was able to give him, Captain
Rumford now easily performed the office work that had previously been
such a burden to him. When Sailor Hawley saw the situation, and realised
that Alec had a good chance for promotion if he could be regular with
the office work, he told Alec that the shell collections had fallen off
so much he would not need any help during the remainder of the season.
Perhaps he told the truth.
Alec, at any rate, now felt free to give Captain Rumford his time every
afternoon. Usually the skipper was able to set Alec ashore by half-past
three o'clock. In the two hours that remained before Captain Rumford
drove home, the captain dictated answers to all his letters, Alec taking
the dictation direct on his typewriter. He had to do this, as he had
never studied stenography. Often, now, he wished he had. But he had
never foreseen the need of it. His deficiency taught him a good lesson,
however.
"It just goes to show that you never can tell what will come useful,"
said Alec. "I'll worry along all right without stenography, I suppose,
but you can just bet that in this oyster game I'm going to know
everything I possibly can pick up that has the slightest bearing on the
business. I'm not going to wake up after I'm a shipper and find that
there is something about my business that I don't know."
As the winter wore on, work declined at the oyster piers and men were
laid off. Many beds had long ago been dredged clean of their oysters.
Boat after boat was made fast for the season. The fleet dwindled almost
daily in numbers. Then there came periods of very rough weather, when
all the boats remained at their piers. Those days Alec spent wholly in
the office. So his pay continued without interruption. Better still it
increased. As a deck-hand he had been getting $17.50 a week. The shipper
increased his stipend to $20 a week.
But better even than the increase in pay was the opportunity that came
to visit the captain's home. For often at the week-end Alec was now
asked to accompany the shipper home. Usually he merely spent the evening
there, returning to Bivalve by trolley. But once in a while he was asked
to spend Sunday with the Rumfords. Elsa, of course, hailed his visits
with delight. And it was not long before Mrs. Rumford was almost as glad
to see Alec as her daughter was. About the only welcome Alec ever got
from the head of the house was the statement the latter made, when he
ushered the lad in at the door, "Well, mother, here's this Alec
Cunningham again. He pestered me so to bring him along that I hadn't the
heart to refuse."
Of course, there wasn't a word of truth in it, but just the same it
always embarrassed Alec a little bit, much to the delight of Elsa.
Probably that was why the shipper teased the lad, for Elsa was the apple
of his eye. To please her, he would have done things far more foreign to
his nature than to crack a joke.
Probably the reason Elsa was so fond of Alec was because he treated her
as an absolute equal. There was no hint of condescension on his part
when he talked with her, no suggestion of superiority. He never
intimated that because she was a girl she shouldn't do this or that
thing that he did. Like the majority of American girls of to-day, Elsa
was independent, sensible, thoughtful, and able. So her tastes and
desires were remarkably like those of any other normal person of her age
and training. She liked sailing, tennis, swimming, basket-ball,
motoring, camping, and similar sports, and was quite as intelligent
about them as most boys would have been. With similar likes himself,
Alec understood her feelings exactly and treated her much as he would
have treated a boy chum of his own age. Though he was doubtless a little
more chivalrous toward her than he would have been to one of his boy
friends, he did not carry his chivalry to the point where it interfered
with their friendship. So the two became very good chums, indeed. It was
a matter of delight to them both that Alec was able to help her with
many a knotty point in her studies. In every way the two seemed
fashioned to be the best of friends.
To Alec the privilege of coming to the captain's house meant more than
he could have told. Alec and his father had lived with a very estimable
family. Here at Bivalve he missed greatly that home influence. His
companions on the _Bertha B_ and at the piers he had come to esteem
greatly; yet they were mostly rough workingmen, uncouth in speech and
manner, though pure gold at heart. Alec was at an age and in a situation
when he especially needed the refining influence of a good home. He got
it in Captain Rumford's home.
Just why Captain Rumford chose to take Alec to his home, the
inscrutable oyster shipper never said. But he never did anything without
a reason. Outsiders who knew about the matter attached far more
significance to it than Alec possibly could. Also they understood much
better than Alec did how fortunate a lad he was. With the leading oyster
shipper at Bivalve back of him, Alec's future was already secure if he
chose to become an oyster-planter himself.
Alec, fortunately, never once thought of the matter in that light. He
didn't even know that the shipper was behind him. In his own mind he was
simply an employee whom the shipper, for some reason or other, had come
to like. And he meant to do everything in his power to retain Captain
Rumford's good-will.
It pleased Alec immensely that he had been able to help his benefactor
so much with his office work. The changes that had been made seemed to
lighten the work daily. Yet the changes already made were not all that
Alec hoped to make. He wanted a better system of filing and keeping
records. Every time he looked at the dusty pigeonholes in the old rack
above the captain's desk, each stuffed full of miscellaneous contents,
his fingers itched to tear the whole thing out and install some modern
filing cases. But he knew he must bide his time for that.
Very late in the winter, or very early in the spring, when the oyster
business was getting toward its lowest ebb and the office work was
light, Alec asked permission to clean the office. The shipper looked at
him in amazement.
"What for?" he asked.
"Perhaps we could arrange things in a way that would expedite our work,"
replied Alec, watching his boss out of the corner of his eye.
"Um!" grunted the shipper. "It's likely! Why, I've done business with
this office just as it is for more than thirty years and never found it
necessary yet to change things."
But in the end, he consented. Alec moved their two desks somewhat, so as
to get better light on them and shifted a few other things. But the main
thing he wanted to do was to clear out those dusty old pigeonholes, and
get the contents arranged better. So he began to take the contents from
pigeonhole after pigeonhole, laying the things he took out in orderly
little piles and trying to rearrange and classify them. But when he
reached the second row in the rack, he suddenly lost all interest in his
work. Out of the pigeonhole came a familiar-looking pamphlet, like
dozens of government bulletins Alec had seen at the high school in
Central City. Alec was about to drop it on the desk when the title
caught his eye. It was "Aids to Successful Oyster-Culture." The bulletin
had recently been issued by the New Jersey Experiment station.
"Where did you get this?" cried Alec, all afire with interest.
"What?" said the shipper, glancing up from his work. Then, after seeing
what it was, "Oh! That! Why, that's something the state got out.
Somebody sent me a copy."
"Is it interesting?" asked Alec.
"To tell the truth, I never had time to read it. I stuck it in that
pigeonhole and there it's been ever since."
Alec looked aghast. "Never read it!" he cried. "Would you be willing to
lend it to me? I'll take good care of it and be sure to return it."
"Take it and keep it. I don't want it."
Alec folded the bulletin and placed it in his pocket as though it were
rarest treasure. Into his mind flashed the Master's words: "The stone
which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner."
"Who knows?" he said to himself, "but this may be the very corner-stone
for the structure I intend to build? It may be the very thing I have
been searching for. My entire future may depend upon what I read in this
bulletin."