Part 11 (1/2)
”Speaking of you! No. But my father says that he often feels irritated by him.”
”Ah!” said the artist, reflectively. ”He never shows them to me when we have a pipe together at night. He is a very interesting character, Will. Of course, as somebody said, 'manners makyth man--'”
”Oh,” said Will, ”I thought Manners made pictures.”
”No wonder you lost that fish,” said the artist, dryly, ”if you waste your time making bad jokes.”
CHAPTER NINE.
A QUEER CHARACTER.
”Old Boil O's in a regular rage,” said Josh, laughing.
”Well, but he hasn't been talking to you about it, has he?” replied Will.
”Yes; said your father must be getting off his head to go and buy up such a miserable ramshackle piece of rubbish. It was only fit to knock to pieces and sell for old copper.”
”Old Drinkwater had better keep his tongue quiet,” said Will, shortly, ”or he'll make my father so much off his head that he will give him what he calls the sack.”
”Nonsense! Your father would not turn away such an old servant as that.”
”He wouldn't like to, of course,” said Will, loftily; ”but Boil O has grown so precious b.u.mptious, and he doesn't care to do this, and he doesn't care to do that. I believe he thinks he's master of the whole place.”
”Well, he always was so ever since I can remember; but--tchah!--your father would not turn him away. My father says he is the most useful man he ever knew. Why, he's just like what we say when we count the rye-gra.s.s: soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor--you know.”
”Oh, yes, I know,” said Will, ”and he isn't soldier nor thief; but he can do pretty well everything, from making a box, plastering and painting, to mending a lock or shoeing a horse. But such impudence! My father mad, indeed! I think it was a very wise thing for him to do, to buy that engine so cheaply. The old mill's nearly all wood. Suppose it were to catch fire?”
”Bother!” said Josh. ”Why hasn't it caught fire all these two hundred years since it was built?”
”Because everybody's been so careful,” said Will. ”But it might catch fire any day.”
”Pigs might fly,” said Josh. ”Well, suppose it did. Haven't you got plenty of water to put it out?”
”Yes, but how are you going to throw it up to the top? Why, with that engine hose and branch, now old Boil O's put the pump suckers right, you could throw the water all over the place a hundred feet, I daresay, in a regular shower. Ha, ha, ha! I say, Josh, what a game!”
”What's a game?”
”Shouldn't I like to have the old thing out, backed up to the dam, with some of the men ready to pump--a shower, you know.”
”Well, I suppose you mean something, but I don't understand.”
”A shower--umbrella.”
”Well, everybody puts up an umbrella in a shower.”
”Yah! What an old thick-head you are!--old Manners sitting under his umbrella, and we made it rain.”
Josh's face expanded very gradually into the broadest of grins, wrinkling up so much that it was at the expense of his eyes, which gradually closed until they were quite tightly shut.
”Oh, no,” he said at last. ”It would be a game, but,”--he began to rub himself gently with both hands--”the very thought of it makes me feel as if my ribs were sore. He was such a weight.”