I liked to have him. Any company's welcome
when you're off with cattle all the time.'
`But wasn't he always glum?' I asked. `People said he never talked at
all.'
`Sure he talked, in Norwegian. He'd been a sailor on an English boat and
had seen lots of queer places. He had wonderful tattoos. We used to sit
and look at them for hours; there wasn't much to look at out there. He was
like a picture book. He had a ship and a strawberry girl on one arm, and
on the other a girl standing before a little house, with a fence and gate
and all, waiting for her sweetheart. Farther up his arm, her sailor had
come back and was kissing her. "The Sailor's Return," he called it.'
I admitted it was no wonder Ole liked to look at a pretty girl once in a
while, with such a fright at home.
`You know,' Lena said confidentially, `he married Mary because he thought
she was strong-minded and would keep him straight. He never could keep
straight on shore. The last time he landed in Liverpool he'd been out on a
two years' voyage. He was paid off one morning, and by the next he hadn't
a cent left, and his watch and compass were gone. He'd got with some
women, and they'd taken everything. He worked his way to this country on a
little passenger boat. Mary was a stewardess, and she tried to convert him
on the way over.
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