“It's our house, boss,—not yours,” explained Buck Chizler, whose spare time was largely expended in the development,—you might almost say, the financing,—of a flower-bed on the lawn. It was to be the finest flower-bed of them all, he swore. “This is government property and we, the people, are going to do what we please with it.”
“That's all very fine, Buck, but don't you think you ought to be spending your spare hours with your wife, instead of puttering around here?”
“Do you know who the boss of this job is? My wife. I'm nothing but an ordinary day-laborer, a plain Mick, a sort of a Wop, obeying orders. Good gosh, you don't think I've got brains enough to design this flower-bed, do you? No, sirree! It takes an artist to think up a design like this. When I get all these rocks in place according to plans you'll see what I mean. It'll be a hum-dinger, A. A. This here thing running off this way is the tail. Come over here and look at it from this side,—it's upside down from where you're standin'.”
“Tail? Tail of what?”
“Tail of a horse. This is going to be a horse when it's finished.”
“My God!”
Buck was not above being irritated by the dismay in Percival's voice.
“Minnie's got her heart set on it, A. A.,” he explained. “It's going to be a sorrel horse, you see,—with a blue tail and a red head. Mustard, hollyhocks and geraniums is what she's going to plant here when I get the bed fixed. Socrates,—he was the best horse I ever straddled,—he was a sorrel. I took him down the—”
“As far as you've got, Buck, it looks more like a dachshund than a horse,” observed Percival.
Buck eyed his work deprecatingly. “That's because there ain't space enough. I had to either saw his legs off or else have him layin' down. Minnie had him kneelin' in her first sketch, but gosh, it was the funniest thing you ever saw. It ain't possible for a horse to kneel with his hind legs, but she had him doin' it all right,—kneeling forward, at that, with his tail stickin' straight up so's it wouldn't be in the way of his heels. It's all Jack Wales's fault. He simply would put that blamed sun-dial of his right in the middle of this plot,—and these doggoned gravel-walks running every which way give me the blind-staggers. Why, A. A., you got more gravel walks here than they've got in Central Park. And all these scrubby hedges, stone walls, fountains, flower-beds, cedar freaks,—my God, Perce, I'd hate to come home a little squiffed if I lived in that house of yours, 'specially at night. Look at old Pedro and Philippa over there, setting out that stuff that looks like sparrowgrass. And that prize job of Ed Keller's,—my God, A. A., what good is a dog kennel on this island? There ain't a dog inside a thousand miles. The only one we ever had was that poodle old Mrs. Velasco had, and it died before—”