The Happy Isles

by Basil King

To this he had no objection. It only seemed odd that while it was his business to be courteous to others it was nobody's business to be courteous to him. Some people were. They used toward him those little formalities of "Please" and "Thank you" which were a matter of course toward one another. They didn't command; they requested. Others, on the contrary, never requested. If their nerves or their digestions were not in good order, they felt at liberty to call him a damn fool, or if they were ladies, to find fault foolishly. Whatever the injustice, it was his part to keep himself schooled to the apologetic attitude, ready to be held in the wrong when he knew he was in the right. Though he had never heard of the English principle that you may be rude if you choose to your equals, but never rude to those in a position lower than your own, he felt its force instinctively. His humble place in the world's economy entitled him to a courtesy which few people thought it worth their while to show.

Apart from this he had nothing to complain of. He made good money, as the phrase went, his wages augmented by his tips. He took his tips without shame, since he did much to please his clients beyond what he was paid for. His relation with them being personal, he could see well enough that only in tips could they make him any recognition. With the staff in the house he got on very well, especially with the waitresses, all six of them girls working their way through Radcliffe, Wellesley, or Vassar. They chaffed him in an easy-going way, one of them calling him her Hercules, another her Charlemagne because of his height, while to a third he was her Siegfried. When he had no work in the evenings, and their dining-room duties were over, he took them for drives among the mountains. Writing to Honey, he said that what with the air, the food, the fun, and the outdoor life, he was never before in such splendid shape.

Honey was his one anxiety, though an anxiety which troubled him only now and then.

"Go to it, lad," had been his response when Tom had told him of Mr. Ansley's proposition. "With eighty dollars a month for all summer, and yer keep throwed in, yer ought to save two hundred."

"You're sure you won't be lonesome, Honey?"

Honey made a scornful exclamation. "Lord love yer, Kid, if I was ever goin' to be lonesome I'd 'a begun before now. Lonesome! Me! That's a good 'un!"

And yet on the Sunday of his departure Tom noticed a forced strain in Honey's gayety. It was a Sunday because Tom was to drive the car up to New Hampshire in the afternoon to begin his first week on the Monday. Honey was in clamorous spirits, right up to an hour before the boy left.

Then he seemed to go flat. Pump up his humor as he would, it had no zest in it. When it came to the last handshake he grinned feebly, but couldn't, or didn't, speak. Tom drove away with a question in his mind as to whether or not, in Honey's professions of a steeled heart, there was not some bravado.

In driving through Nashua he saw Maisie. It had been agreed that she should meet him by the roadside, at the end of the town toward Lowell, and go on with him till he struck the country again. They not only did this, but got out at a druggist's to spend a half hour over ice-cream sodas.