I felt a little better about that two hours later, when I’d hunted up Ollie at his club, shoved a thousand dollar check at him, and got his name on a charter agreement.

“I say, you know,” says Ollie, “awfully good of you to do this.”

“I’m like that all the time,” says I, pocketin’ my fifty commission.  “I’ll rent the Agnes out for you any old day, so long as I don’t have to go battin’ around on her myself.”

Course, if it was just a case of sailin’ down to Coney and back, or maybe runnin’ up the Hudson as far as Yonkers, I’d take a chance.  But this pikin’ right out past Sandy Hook, and then goin’ on for days and days, leavin’ Broadway further behind every turn of the shaft—­that’s different.  You’re liable to get so far away.

Then, there’s that wabbly feeling that comes over you.  Say, I had it once, when I was out in an old lobster boat off the coast of Maine, the time I used my summer vacation chasin’ up where Vee was visitin’.  I had it good and plenty, too, and didn’t have to go more’n a couple of miles to get it, either.  But think of bein’ that way for a couple of weeks, and out where you couldn’t get ashore if you wanted to.  Excuse me!

Besides, I never did have the travel bug very hard.  I’ll admit I ain’t seen much of the country outside of New York; but say, what I have looked over struck me as bein’ kind of crude.  I expect fields and woods and the seaside stuff is all right for them that likes ’em.  Make good pictures, and all that.  But them places always seem to me such lonesome spots.  Fine and dandy, so far as the view goes, but nobody to it.  I like my scenery sort of inhabited, and fixed so it can be lit up at night.  So I do most of my travelin’ between the Bronx and the Battery, and let it go at that.

Now Vee has been brought up different.  She’s chased round with Auntie all over the map, ever since she can remember.  They don’t mind startin’ off with a maid and seven trunks and not seein’ Fifth Avenue for months at a time.  She and Auntie think nothing at all of driftin’ into places like Nagasaki or Honolulu or Algiers, hirin’ a furnished flat or a house, and campin’ down just as if they belonged there; places where they speak all kinds of crazy languages, where ice-cream sodas don’t grow at all, and where you don’t even know what you’re eatin’ half the time.  Think of that!  But Auntie’s an original old girl, take it from me.

“She ain’t countin’ on draggin’ you off on this batty gold-diggin’ excursion, is she?” I asks the other evenin’, as I was up makin’ my reg’lar Wednesday night call.

Vee shrugs her shoulders.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” says she.  “You see, although she knows perfectly well I’ve heard all about it, Auntie makes a deep mystery of everything connected with this cruise.  It’s that absurd Captain Killam who puts her up to it, I believe.”

“Romantic Rupert?” says I.  “Oh, he’s a soft-shell on that subject.  Accordin’ to his idea, anybody who overhears any details of this pirate treasure tale of his is liable to grab a dirt shovel and rush right off down there to begin diggin’ Florida up by the roots.  He loses sleep worryin’ as to whether someone else won’t get there first.  It would be tough if Auntie should take you along, though.  I’d hate that.”