For half an hour Dennis worked away lustily, and then called his task-master and said, "Will you accept the job?"
Surveying with surprise the large space cleared, and looking in vain for reason to find fault, he said: "I say nothin' agin him. I hope you vill eat your dinner as quick. Now come in to your preakfast."
He pretended to be perfectly aghast at Dennis's onslaught on the buckwheat cakes, and rolled up his eyes despairingly as each new plate was emptied.
Having finished, Dennis gave him a nod, and said, "Wait till dinner-time."
"Ah! dere vill be von famine," said the German, in a tone of anguish, wringing his hands.
Having procured the needful implement, Dennis started out, and, though there was considerable competition, found plenty to do, and shovelled away with little cessation till one o'clock. Then, counting his gains, he found that he had paid for his shovel, secured breakfast and dinner, and had a balance on hand of two dollars and fifty cents, and he had nearly half a day yet before him. He felt rich—nay, more than that, he felt like a man who, sinking in a shoreless ocean, suddenly catches a plank that bears him up until land appears in the distance.
"This is what comes of asking God to help a fellow," said he to himself. "Strange, too, that He should answer my prayer in part before I asked, by causing that queer jumble of good and evil, Bill Cronk, to suggest to me this way of turning an honest penny. I wish Bill was as good a friend to himself as he is to others. I fear that he will go to the dogs. Bless me! the gnawings of hunger are bad enough, but what must be those of conscience? I think I can astonish my German friend to-day as never before;" and, shouldering his shovel, he walked back to dinner, feeling like a prince bearing aloft the insignia of his power.
When he entered the bar and lunch room, he saw that something was wrong. The landlord met him, instead of his jolly, satirical friend.
Now the owner of the place was a wizen-faced, dried-up old anatomy, who seemed utterly exhaling away in tobacco smoke, while his assistant was becoming spherical under the expansive power of lager. It was his custom to sit up and smoke most of the night, and therefore he was down late in the morning. When he appeared his assistant told him of the bargain he had made with Dennis as a good joke. But old Hans hadn't any faculty for jokes. Dollars and cents and his big meerschaum made up the two elements of his life. The thought of losing zwei shillings or zwei cents by Dennis, or any one else, caused him anguish, and instead of laughing, his fun-loving assistant was aghast at seeing him fall into a passion.
"You be von big fule. Vat for we keep mens here who haf no money? You should gleared him off, instead of making pargains for him to eat us out of der house."