Those possibilities of tenderness came about his stiff-set lips, and the girl wondered.
"I was thinkin' about my home town." "Where is it ?" He frowned and waved his hand in a sweep which included half the points on the compass.
"Back there." She waited, wrapping up the gauze bandage.
"When I was a kid, I used to go down to the harbor an' watch the ships comin' in an' goin' out," he went on cautiously.
She nodded, and he resumed with more confidence: "I'd sit on the pierhead an' watch the ships.

I knew they was bringing the smell of far lands in their holds." There was a little pause; then his head tilted back and he burst into the soft, thick brogue: "Ah-h, I was afther bein' woild about the schooners blowin' out to sea wid their sails shook out like clouds.

An' then I'd look down to the wather around the pier, an' it was green, deep green, ah-h, the deep sea-green av it! An' I would look into it an' dream.

Whin I seen your eyes--" He stopped, grown cold as a man will when he feels that he has laid his inner self indecently bare to the eye of the world.

But she did not stir; she did not smile.
"I felt like a kid again," said Harrigan, recovering from the brogue.
"Like a kid sittin' on the pierhead an' watchin' the green water.