Page:The house without a key, by Earl Derr Biggins (1925).djvu/29

 young person of feminine gender who came and sat at his side. Away from the slip and out into the harbor the ferry carried John Quincy, and he suddenly sat up and took notice, for he was never blind to beauty, no mat- ter where he encountered it.

And he was encountering beauty now. The morning air was keen and dry and bright. Spread out before him was that harbor which is like a tired navigator's dream come true. They passed Goat Island, and he heard the faint echo of a bugle, he saw Tamalpias lifting its proud head toward the sparkling sky, he turned, and there was San Francisco scattered blithely over its many hills.

The ferry plowed on, and John Quincy sat very still. A forest of masts and steam funnels — here was the water front that had supplied the atmosphere for those roman- tic tales that held him spellbound when he was a boy at school — a quiet young Winterslip whom the gypsy strain had missed. Now he could distinguish a bark from Ant- werp, a great liner from the Orient, a five-masted schooner that was reminiscent of those supposedly for- gotten stories. Ships from the Treaty Ports, ships from cocoanut islands in southern seas. A picture as in- triguing and colorful as a back drop in a theater — but far more real.

Suddenly John Quincy stood up. A puzzled look had come into his calm gray eyes. "I — I don't understand," he murmured.

He was startled by the sound of his own voice. He hadn't intended to speak aloud. In order not to appear too utterly silly, he looked around for some one to whom he might pretend he had addressed that remark. There was no one about — except the young person who was