Jason Squiff was a cistern cleaner. He had greenish yellowish hair. If you looked down into a cistern when he was lifting buckets of slush and mud you could tell where he was, you could pick him out down in the dark cistern, by the lights of his greenish yellowish hair.
Sometimes the buckets of slush and mud tipped over and ran down on the top of his head. This covered his greenish yellowish hair. And then it was hard to tell where he was and it was not easy to pick him out down in the dark where he was cleaning the cistern.
One day Jason Squiff came to the Bimber house and knocked on the door.
“Did I understand,” he said, speaking to Mrs. Bimber, Blixie Bimber’s mother, “do I understand you sent for me to clean the cistern in your back yard?”
“You understand exactly such,” said Mrs. Bimber, “and you are welcome as the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la-la.”
“Then I will go to work and clean the cistern, tra-la-la,” he answered, speaking to Mrs. Bimber. “I’m the guy, tra-la-la,” he said further, running his excellent fingers through his greenish yellowish hair which was shining brightly.
He began cleaning the cistern. Blixie Bimber came out in the back yard. She looked down in the cistern. It was all dark. It looked like nothing but all dark down there. By and by she saw something greenish yellowish. She watched it. Soon she saw it was Jason Squiff’s head and hair. And then she knew the cistern was being cleaned and Jason Squiff was on the job. So she sang tra-la-la and went back into the house and told her mother Jason Squiff was on the job.
The last bucketful of slush and mud came at last for Jason Squiff. He squinted at the bottom. Something was shining. He reached his fingers down through the slush and mud and took out what was shining.
It was the gold buckskin whincher Blixie Bimber lost from the gold chain around her neck the week before when she was looking down into the cistern to see what she could see. It was exactly the same gold buckskin whincher shining and glittering like a sign of happiness.
“It’s luck,” said Jason Squiff, wiping his fingers on his greenish yellowish hair. Then he put the gold buckskin whincher in his vest pocket and spoke to himself again, “It’s luck.”