Whatever the Spawer might choose to say of himself for purposes of humor (not, I am afraid, an invariable pole-star to truth), he was no sluggard. By agreement, dated the first night of his arrival, Jeff Dixon was to get a penny a day for bringing up the bath-water and having him into it at seven in the morning. Something short of the hour Jeff would stumble up the little steep staircase, with his tongue out, behind a big bucket of cold water (the last of three drawn to get the full freshness of the pump), and anticipating a few minutes in his statement of the time, make preliminary clamor for the Spawer's acknowledgment before departing to fetch the hot. From which moment forth the Spawer was a marked man, whom no subterfuge or earthly ingenuity could save. Once a drowsy voice begged Jeff to be so good as to call again.
"An' loss my penny!" cried Jeff, with fine commercial scorn at the suggestion. "Nay, we 'll 'ave ye oot o' bed an' all, noo we 've gotten started o' ye."
And tramped diabolically downstairs after the second bucket.
But though a little comedy of this sort, now and again, served to test the validity of the agreement, and show the Spawer that nothing—short of repealing the penny—could save him from the inexorable machinery that his own hand had set in motion, there was little real need of the bond, except to guarantee that the bath-water should be up to time. More often than not Jeff came upon a man alertly drawn up in bed, with a full score spread across his knees, who had been writing and erasing hard since sunrise.
Early in the morning after the girl's visit the sun peeped over the Spawer's sill according to custom, and the Spawer jumped out of bed to let him in. Already Nature's symphony was in full swing—a mighty, crescive, spinning movement of industry, borne up to him on a whirr of indefatigable wings. The sun had cleared the cliff railings and was traveling merrily upward on an unimpeded course, though still the grassland lay grey in the shadow beneath its glistening quilt of dew, and every spider's web hung silver-weighted like a net new-drawn with treasure from the sea. He stayed by the window a space, and then let go the curtain with an amused, reminiscent laugh.
"I wonder who on earth she is?" he said.
He scooped up the bulky armful of music-sheets that constituted his present labors at the concerto, and went back to bed with them. But though he made a determined desk of his knees and spread the papers out with a business-like adjustment of pages, the work prospered but poorly when it came to the pencil. After a short spell of it he sat back in bed, with his hands locked under his neck staring at the window. For the events of last night were a too inviting vintage to be left uncorked and untasted, and out of this glowing wine of remembrance he attempted to win back the girl's face, and did not altogether succeed. He reclaimed certain shifting impressions of red lips exaggeratedly curled; of great round eyes; of multiplied freckles about the brows and nose; of a startling white throat beyond where the sun had dominion; of a shabby blue Tam-o'-Shanter and a perfect midnight of hair—but all of them seen grotesquely, as it might be at the bottom of the cup, with himself blowing on the wine.
"The thing is," he decided, "I was a fool not to stare harder and ask more questions. This comes of trying to act the gentleman."
Duly before seven came Jeff Dixon stumbling up the staircase, and dumped the first bucket down at the Spawer's door with a ringing clash of handle.
"Noo then," he called under the door, when he had summoned the Spawer lustily by name, and hit the panel several resounding flat-handers (as specified in the agreement). "It 's tonned [turned] seven o'clock, an' another gran', fine day for ye an' all. Arny 's gotten ye some mushrooms—some right big uns an' some little conny [tiny] uns, a gret basket full oot o' big field. Will ye 'ev 'em for breakfast?"