Chapter XXVIII

ALAS! Man proposes, but God disposes. Cappy had smoked his post- prandial cigar next day and was in the midst of his mid-afternoon siesta, when the buzzer on his desk waked him with its insistent buzzing. He reached for the telephone.

"My dear," he reproved his private exchange operator, "how often have I told you not to disturb me between two and three o'clock?"

"I knew you wouldn't mind being disturbed this afternoon, Mr. Ricks. Your old friend Mr. Gurney, of New York, is calling."

"Old Joe Gurney? By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet! Show him in." Cappy was at the door to meet his visitor when the latter entered. Mr Joseph Gurney, senior partner of the firm of Gurney & Harlan, was, like Cappy Ricks, a shiping man and a Down-Easter. He and Cappy Ricks had been a boyhood friends in Thomaston, Main, and Gurney & Harlan were the agents and controlling owners of the Red Funnel line plying between New York and ports on the West Coast.

"Well, Joe, you doddering old pirate?" cried Cappy Ricks affectionately. "Come in and rest your hands and feet. I'm tremendously glad to see you. When did you drift into down?"

He shook hands with Gurney and steered him toward a chair.

"Ten minutes ago, Alden, my boy. Delighted to see you again, and particularly pleased to see how carelessly you carry your years. I'm three months younger than you--and I feel like the last rose of summer."

"You look it, Joe. Take a leaf out of my book and let the young fellows 'tend to business for you. Don't let worry ride over you in the shank of your old age, my boy. I never do. Haven't paid a bit of attention to business in the last ten years, and that's why at my age I'm looking so fit."

"You'll live to be a hundred, Alden."

Cappy smiled.

"Well," he declared, "I'm going to live while I have the time. I never expect to be a walking corpse just stalling round in an effort to defer settlement with the undertaker, and I won't be a dead one until the neighbors hear a quartet singing Lead Kindly Light out at my house--Joe you look worried. Anything gone wrong with you, old friend? Need some money? Have you married a young wife?"

"It's Joey," Gurney confessed miserably.

"What? My godson, little Joey Gurney?"

"He's big Joey Gurney now."

"Yes, and a fine boy, Joe--no thanks to you. His mother's influence was strong enough to counteract any impulses for crime he might have inherited from his father."

Gurney smiled sadly at Cappy Ricks' badinage.

"He is a fine boy, Alden, but--he's only a boy, and I'm afraid he's going to make hash of his young life before it's fairly started."

"Booze?"

"No."

"Well,