Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/288

262 butter, and he had come to the surface again as one of the Tarpon Inlet crew.

Brainard saw his thoughtless blunder and quickly added:

"I didn't mean that, old man. You know how much I wish I could help you get on your feet again. Forgive me, won't you? I haven't any real troubles. Only a frost-bitten pineapple patch that was going to make my fortune. But it will be bearing again in two years, and then I'll be on velvet. Those gay visitors made me a bit restless, that's all, just as you walk the beach for hours after a Morgan liner passes close in shore."

Bearded Fritz Wagenhals, the station-keeper, broke in with a sardonic chuckle:

"It is the same way when we haf canned sausage for dinner. I think myself back in Heidelberg already, where I haf taken my university degree twenty years ago. What is the matter mit you, Boy? Was it the homesickness?"

"No-o, not exactly," confessed Brainard with a slightly embarrassed smile, "but I seem to be the only one of the three of us who can lift the curtain and get a