The Postmaster Part 13

into fashion again. What-"

Foster laughed. "There is a little somethin' underneath," he says. "It's been kept pretty close, but the cat'll be out of the bag afore the day's over and, considerin' how much you two helped without meanin' to, I'd just as soon tell you. Ratty told you that his pa was cal'latin' to set him up in business, didn't he? Yes. Well, Rat's had a notion for a long spell about the business he meant to get into. There's a new sign been ordered for this shebang of mine. Here's the copy for it."

He reached under the cigar counter and held up a long piece of pasteboard. 'Twas lettered like this:

PALACE BILLIARD, POOL AND SIPIO PARLORS.

_Philander Foster & Erastus Taylor,_

_Proprietors._

"I cal'late the old man'll disown his son when he knows it," goes on Foster, "but Rat had rather run a pool room than be rich, any day in the week. And say," he adds, "if I was you fellers I'd try to be on hand when Ebenezer fust sees the new sign. I should think you'd get consider'ble satisfaction from watchin' his face. I'm cal'latin' to, myself," says Philander Foster.

CHAPTER VI-I RUN AFOUL OF COUSIN LEMUEL

Well, to be honest, I felt pretty bad about that billiard room business.

I was real sorry for old Ebenezer. Of course Taylor was a skinflint and a thorough-goin' mean man, but Ratty was his son and his pride, and to have a son play a dog's trick like that on the father that had, at least, tried to make somethin' out of him, seemed tough enough. And my conscience plagued me. I felt almost as if I was to blame somehow. I wa'n't, of course, but I felt that way. A feller's conscience is the most unreasonable part of his works; I've noticed it often.

But I needn't have wasted any sympathy on Ebenezer. For the fust little while after his boy went into the pool and sipio business, he was a sore chap. Then, all at once, I noticed that he took to hangin' around the "Parlors" consider'ble and one evenin' I saw him comin' out of there, all smiles. I was standin' on the store platform and as he pa.s.sed me I hailed him. We hadn't spoken for a consider'ble spell, but I hadn't any grudge, for my part.

"h.e.l.lo!" says I, "what are you so tickled about?"

I didn't know as he wouldn't throw somethin' at me for darin' to hail him, but no, he was ready to talk to anybody, even me.

"No use," says he, "that boy of mine's a mighty smart feller. He just beat Tom Baker three games runnin', and spotted him two b.a.l.l.s on the last one. He's a wonder, if I do say it."

I looked at him. This didn't sound much like disinheritin'.

"Three games of what?" says I.

"Why, pool," says he, "of course. And Baker's been countin' himself the best player in the county. 'Rastus was playin' for the house. Him and Philander cleared over a hundred dollars in the last month. That ain't so bad for a young feller just startin' in, is it? I always knew that boy had the business instinct, if he'd only wake up to it. I've told folks so time and again."

He went along, chucklin' to himself, and I stood still and whistled. And when I heard that the old man had taken to callin' the anti-billiard-room crowd bigoted and narrer it didn't surprise me much.

I judged that Ebenezer's opinions was like those of others of his tribe-dependent on the profit and loss account in the ledger. You can forgive your own kith and kin a lot easier than you can outsiders, especially if your moral scruples are the Taylor kind, to be reckoned in dollars and cents.

The carpenters were ready to begin work on our store addition at last, and we started right in to build on. 'Twas an awful job, enough sight worse than movin', but it had to be got through with some way and we wanted to have it finished when the summer season opened for good. If the store had been cluttered up and crowded afore, it was ten times worse now. The amount of energy and healthy remarks that Jacobs and I wasted in fallin' over and runnin' into things would have kept a steamer's engines goin' from Boston to Liverpool, I cal'late. I expected one of us would break our neck sartin sure, but we didn't and, by the fust of July we thought we could see the end.

"There!" says I, "in another week we'll be clear of sawdust, I do believe. The painters won't be so bad. And we've got on without any accidents, too, which is a miracle."

"You ought to knock wood when you say that, Skipper," says Jim Henry.

"I've knocked enough of it already-with my head," I told him. But I hadn't. At any rate the accident come, and not by reason of the buildin'

on, either. It come right in the way of everyday trade, from where we wa'n't expectin' it. That's the way such things generally happen. A feller runs under a tree, so's to keep from gettin' rained on and catchin' cold, and then the tree's struck by lightnin'.

If I'd remembered what old Sylva.n.u.s Baxter said when they asked him to prove one of his fish statements, I'd have been a wiser man. Sylva.n.u.s was tellin' how many mack'rel him and his brother caught off Setucket P'int with a hand line, back when Methusalum was a child, or about then.

Forty-eight barrels they caught, and it nigh filled the dory. One of the young city fellers who was listenin' undertook to doubt the yarn. He got a piece of paper and a pencil and proved that a dory wouldn't hold that many fish. Sylva.n.u.s shut him up in a hurry.

"Young man," he says, scornful, "where a human bein' is blessed with a memory same as I've got, proof's too unsartin to compare with it."

If I'd borne in mind what Sylva.n.u.s said and abided by it I might not have dropped the barrel of sugar on my starboard foot. I'd have been satisfied to remember my strength and not try to prove it by liftin' the said barrel off the tailboard of our delivery wagon.

However, I did try, and the result was that the barrel slipped when I'd got it 'most to the ground, and my foot went out of commission with a hurrah, so to speak.

Jim Henry come runnin' and him and the clerk loaded me into the wagon and carted me off to my rooms at the Poquit House. And there I stayed in dry dock for three weeks, while the doctor done his best to patch up my busted trotter and get me off the ways and into active service again.

He done his part all right. I was mendin' so far as the lower end of me was concerned, but my upper works and temper was gettin' more tangled and snarled every day. Too much company was the trouble. I had too many folks runnin' in to ask how I was gettin' on and to talk and talk and talk. Jim Henry he come, of course, to talk about the store; and Mary Blaisdell, to tell me how the post-office was doin'. I could stand them; fact is, Mary was a sort of soothin' sirup, with her pleasant face and calm, cheery voice. But the parson he come, to keep the spiritual part of me ready for whatever might happen; and the undertaker, to be sure he got the other part, if it _did_ happen; and twenty-odd old maids and widows from sewin'-circle to talk about each other and church squabbles and the dreadful sufferin's and agonizin' deaths of their relations, who'd had accidents similar to mine.

They made me so fidgety and mad that the doctor noticed it. "What's troublin' you, Cap'n Snow?" he asked. "No new pains, I hope?"

"Humph!" says I. "Your hope's blasted. I've got the meanest pain I've had yet."

"Where?" says he, anxious.

"All over," I says. "Tabitha Nickerson's responsible for it. She's been here for the last hour and a half, tellin' about how her second cousin, by her uncle's marriage, stuck a nail in his hand and was amputated twice and finally died of lingerin' lockjaw. She never missed a groan.

Consarn her! _She_ gives me a pain just to look at."

He laughed. "That's the trouble with you old bachelors," he says.

"You're too popular with the fair s.e.x."

"Fair!" I sung out. "Doc, if you mean to say Tabby Nickerson's fair, then I'm goin' to switch to the homeopaths. _Your_ judgment ain't dependable."

He laughed again and then he went on. Seems he'd been thinkin' for quite a spell that the Poquit House wasn't the place for me.

"What you need, Cap'n," he says, "is a nice quiet spot where n.o.body can get at you-that is, n.o.body but the disagreeable necessities, like me.

I've found the place for you to board durin' your convalescence. Do you know the Deacon house over at South Ostable on the lower road?"

"If you mean Lot Deacon's, I do-yes," says I.

"That's it," says he. "Lot's all alone there, and he'd be mighty glad of a boarder. The house is as neat as wax, and Lot used to go as cook on a Banks' boat, so you'll be fed well. It's right on the sh.o.r.e, with the woods back of it. There's a splendid view, the air's fine, and-and-"

"Don't strain yourself, Doc," I put in. "You couldn't think of anything else if you thought for a week. Air and view is all there is in that neighborhood. What on earth have I done to be sentenced to serve a term at Lot Deacon's?"

Well, it was quiet, and I needed quiet. It was restful, and I needed rest. It was too far from civilization for the undertaker or the sewin'-circle to get at me. It was-but there! never mind the rest. The upshot was that I agreed to board at Lot's till my foot got well enough to navigate and they carted me down in the delivery wagon, next day.

The Deacon place lived up to specifications all right. Nighest neighbor half a mile off, woods all round on three sides, and the bay on t'other.

Good grub and plenty of it. And no company except the doctor every other day, and Jim Henry the days between, and Lot-oh, land, yes! Lot, always and forever.

He was a meek little critter, Lot was, accommodatin' and willin' to please, as good a cook as ever fried a clam, and a great talker on some subjects. He was a widower, with no relations except an aunt-in-law over to Denboro, and a third cousin up to Boston; and his princ.i.p.al hobby was spirits and mediums and such. He was as sot on Spiritu'lism as anybody ever you see, and hadn't missed a Spirit'list camp-meetin' in Harniss durin' the memory of man.

However, Lot and I got along first-rate and he'd set and talk by the hour about the camp-meetin', which was a couple of weeks off, and how he was goin', and so on. Said I needn't worry about bein' left alone, 'cause his wife's Aunt Lucindy from Denboro was comin' to keep house for me durin' the two days he was away.

"Is your Aunt Lucindy given to spirits, too?" I wanted to know.

No, she wasn't. Seems her particular bug was "mind cure." She was a widow whose husband had died of creepin' paralysis. She'd tried every kind of doctorin' and patent medicines on him and, in spite of it, the last specimen of "Swamp Bitters" or "Thistle Tea" finished him. But, anyhow, Aunt Lucindy had no faith in medicines or doctors after that.

She'd tried 'em all and they'd gone back on her. Now she was a "mind-curer."