Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/111

 "No doubt he would, Arthur. You mustn't forget that once you were his age."

"Yes, yes, Henrik; but long before his age I was always about with my hammer."

"And, believe me, that little hammer don't seem to be among the missing," said William, mildly. "You've had it out for me ever since we came on board."

The two old fellows looked at him rather blankly. They did not understand; so William went into details, and to these details he added some other interesting items.

"I was a newsboy once. I slept in areaways, fought and scrapped for my pennies. Don't you think it's a pretty good sign that I'm taking this trip around the world? How should I know who this guy Shalmaneser was? I never went to school after I was nine. You look on me as a blamed idiot. Well, maybe I am. But did it ever occur to you that the men who built this old gondola, plate by plate, rivet by rivet, didn't know any more about Shalmaneser than Kelly's goat? My interest is in live things, yours in dead. Yet my work is of more use to human beings than yours is."

"Indeed! And what is your work?" snapped Greenwood, not particularly relishing William's directness.

"I'm a plumber."

"I judged it might be something on that order."

"Is—that—so? Ye-ah; I'm a plumber. I help keep out dirt and disease; I put in bath-