“Can you give me an estimate on a house—the House of the Five Pines?”
He looked from me to Mr. Turtle. “Why, I don’t do no painting,” he replied.
“What’s that?” I pointed to the evidence he had forgotten he was carrying.
“Well, hardly any,” he corrected; “just a little now and then to oblige a friend, when I ain’t busy.”
Ruth had warned me of this. The independent son of the Puritan Fathers on Cape Cod will only work as a favor, and out of kindness charges you more than if he were drawing union wages.
“What do you do when you are busy?”
“Oh,—boats.”
“Wouldn’t you have time in the fall?”
“In the fall I won’t be here,” he answered, with a relieved sigh.
Mr. Turtle gave a guffaw, but when I looked at him sharply he was methodically cutting a piece of cheese. “Will you have a sample?” he asked me, holding a sliver out to me on the end of a knife.