“We can’t go without seeing Disko off,” said Harvey; “and Monday’s Memorial Day.  Let’s stay over that, anyway.”

“What is this memorial business?  They were talking about it at the boarding-house,” said Cheyne weakly.  He, too, was not anxious to spoil the golden days.

“Well, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders.  Disko don’t think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the widows and orphans.  Disko’s independent.  Haven’t you noticed that?”

“Well—­yes.  A little.  In spots.  Is it a town show, then?”

“The summer convention is.  They read out the names of the fellows drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and recite, and all.  Then, Disko says, the secretaries of the Aid Societies go into the back yard and fight over the catch.  The real show, he says, is in the spring.  The ministers all take a hand then, and there aren’t any summer boarders around.”

“I see,” said Cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of one born into and bred up to city pride.  “We’ll stay over for Memorial Day, and get off in the afternoon.”

“Guess I’ll go down to Disko’s and make him bring his crowd up before they sail.  I’ll have to stand with them, of course.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it,” said Cheyne.  “I’m only a poor summer boarder, and you’re—­”

“A Banker—­full-blooded Banker,” Harvey called back as he boarded a trolley, and Cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for the future.

Disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made for charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be lost, so far as he was concerned, if the ‘We’re Heres’ absented themselves.  Then Disko made conditions.  He had heard—­it was astonishing how all the world knew all the world’s business along the water-front—­he had heard that a “Philadelphia actress-woman” was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver “Skipper Ireson’s Ride.”  Personally, he had as little use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped up on a matter of judgment, this thing must not be.  So Harvey came back to East Gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice, even as Disko had said.

Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man’s soul.  He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk.