The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet,
orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In
these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to
move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even the disorder
of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight.
"The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that,"
Ingolby answered. "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems
as if 'all's right with the world.'"
The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a
coon-song of the day.
"Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell. "He's
in keeping with this surface peace."
"Old Berry never misses anything. What we're thinking, he's thinking. I
go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a
philosopher and a friend."
"You don't make friends as other people do."
"I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, but I've always had a
kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues."
"As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!"
Ingolby laughed. "You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It's the
highly respectable members of the community I've always had to watch.
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