"Sometimes," he said, "I can see you don't believe that half the things
I tell you have happened to me, really have happened. Now, isn't that
so?"
To find the answer that would not hurt his feelings I hesitated, but he
did not wait for my answer. He seldom does.
"Well, on this trip," he went on, "you will see Kinney on the job. You
won't have to take my word for it. You will see adventures walk up and
eat out of my hand."
Our vacation came on the first of September, but we began to plan for it
in April, and up to the night before we left New York we never ceased
planning. Our difficulty was that having been brought up at Fairport,
which is on the Sound, north of New London, I was homesick for a smell
of salt marshes and for the sight of water and ships. Though they were
only schooners carrying cement, I wanted to sit in the sun on the
string-piece of a wharf and watch them. I wanted to beat about the
harbor in a catboat, and feel the tug and pull of the tiller. Kinney
protested that that was no way to spend a vacation or to invite
adventure. His face was set against Fairport. The conversation of
clam-diggers, he said, did not appeal to him; and he complained that at
Fairport our only chance of adventure would be my capsizing the catboat
or robbing a lobster-pot.
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