om _The
Flashlight_ or _The Evening Bat_. "What was the gentleman like?" I
asked.

"Like mos' any gent, missy, 'cept that he was powerful tall, an' I
reckon if he keeps right on like he's doin' now, he'll get mos' as
brown as me some day."

Then I knew that I was safe in taking the present; so I did, and gave
the comical black image two or three little round white metal things
I'd got from the purser when I changed some English money. I didn't
know how much they were, and they looked ridiculously small, but he
seemed pleased.

When he had run off, I turned my attention to the peaches. They were so
big that there was room only for four in the basket, and they seemed
dreadfully pathetic considering from whom they had come.

That poor fellow must be almost penniless or he wouldn't have been in
the steerage; yet he had bought peaches for me, and given a
"quarter"--whatever that was--to his quaint black doll of a messenger.
I could have cried; nevertheless, I ate two of the peaches, and
reluctantly presented the other two, which I couldn't possibly eat, to
a gloomy "B" child, sitting on a shawl-strap.

As if for a reward of virtue, just as I had disposed of my leavings,
and stuck the roses into my belt, the last of the luggage arrived.
There were two Custom House men near to choose from, and as I've heard,
in choosing between two evils it's better to choose the less, I smiled
beseechingly at the smaller man who had just crammed a pile of lace
blouses into the box of a lady with nervous prostration.

Whether he was sated with cruelty, or whether he was naturally of an
angelic disposition, I shall probably never know now; but the fact
remains that, instead of turning out the Fiend I'd been led to expect,
he was one of the most considerate men I've ever met. He wouldn't even
let me unlock my own boxes, but took the keys and opened them for me
himself. (Didn't an executioner braid the hair of some queen whose head
he was going to chop off? I must look the incident up, when I have
time.) Anyway, I thought of it when the Custom House man was being so
polite; but the analogy didn't go any farther, for my head never came
off at all, and two of the boxes remained unopened.

"You're English, aren't you?" he asked, and when I said yes, and that I
was only on a short visit, he treated my belongings as if they were
sacred. If he disturbed anything, he laid it back nicely, keeping up a
running conversation as he went on. I told h