“I should think sisters would be glad to own a person any way,” Sam said, thinking his sisters would, if he came home a beggar.
“Very likely, if they’d lived together when they were children, and had a mother to look after them. My sisters always lived at boarding-school, and so did I until I was old enough to take the reins into my own hands. I drove a little too fast, and got upset, you see. Won’t you have something else?”
But Sam’s very good appetite was quite satisfied, and that brought him back to business matters. “I don’t believe but I could cook, sir.”
“You! what do you know about it?”
“A great deal; more than most boys I mean. My mother is a first rate cook, and I used to like to be around baking days, and in the galley, on the ship. You know I always cooked on the bar.”
“So you did—did not I teach you how to make slap-jacks one day? I consider that an accomplishment worth having;” and Hadley shut one eye and looked up in the air, as if to catch a smoking, brown, batter-cake, after a scientific toss.
“Well, suppose you try it, till something else turns up.”
Sam was only too glad to accept the proposal. The prospect of immediate employment, at any thing but mining, and with a person he liked very much, seemed almost too good news to be true. He had very little idea of a ranch, except that it was something like a farm, and he should live a kind of free and easy life. A very pleasant prospect, since he could not get home, after the great fatigue and monotony of a miner’s life.
“I don’t promise very high wages”—was about all the agreement they made, and they were on the sloop that was to take them across San Pablo Bay, before Hadley mentioned the matter at all. They were very glad to get away from the discomforts of San Francisco, as soon as the business which had brought him down, was finished. The air was full of ashes and cinders, and every second person they met was a sufferer in some way by the fire. The little sloop had a load of lumber for Hadley’s ranch on board, and an assorted cargo of flour, rice, molasses, sugar, and groceries of all kinds for the same place. These were to be given to Sam’s charge forthwith.
The sail was perfectly delightful. The air was so fresh and exhilarating, as the little vessel bounded across the broad bay, the spray and mist dashing up before her, and the white sails filled with a favorable wind. The hills, usually so bare and desolate, were covered with a vivid mantle of green to the very summits, by the heavy rains, and the few days of warm sunshine. Hadley seemed to enjoy Sam’s delight, but told him to keep his ecstasies for the ranch, for there was no place in California, nor the whole world to compare with it! A very small world, probably, Sam thought.