Page:Ralph Paine--The Steam-Shovel Man.djvu/80

 declaimed Harrison, and this seemed to sum up the whole matter.

When Walter returned to his quarters, his first impulse was to write a letter home. This proved more difficult than might seem. To report to his anxious parents and his adoring sister that he was employed on board a dynamite ship would not tend to ease their minds. He could imagine this bit of news landing in the cottage at Wolverton with the effect of a full-sized explosion. Eleanor would probably take her pen in hand to compose a metrical companion piece of "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck."

"I must be tactful," frowningly reflected Walter. "I don't want to make them nervous. Perhaps I had better not go into details. I will simply say that I have a fairly lucrative position. Twenty cents an hour isn't much down here, but it sounds big alongside that four-dollar-a-week job hi the hardware store."

Then he discovered that to discuss the better position which he had not yet secured was to raise hopes that sounded fantastic. Those rival ball-players from Culebra might knock