"But how do you manage, Mrs.—ah—Scud?" I asked. I am afraid there was a slight choke in my throat as I spoke. The mother cast a quick look at my face, and shoving her children into the house, one by one, said:
"Now go, Kittie; finish the dishes. You, Mamie, put the baby kearfully in the box. What did you hit Jim for, Sammy? Let me ketch you a-hitten your little brother agin an' I'll spank you. Now get in the house, all of ye. You see, miss," turning to me, "we manage somehow. If it wa'n't fur her, we'd give up. There's that boy Jim, he took to swearing this spring. I declare it was jess awful to hear him go on. I spanked him, and Scud he switched him, but it wa'n't to no use. That boy talked jess scand'lous, till your cousin here, miss, she heerd him one mornin', an' took a white powder an' put a little on his tongue. It made Jim powerful sick. And, says she, 'If I hear you swearin' agin I'll pizen ye; an' you'll die in a minute an' never see God,' and I declare to goodness he was so skeared that I hain't heerd him swear since. There's Scud. Where's Salt, pa? Come here an' speak to the ladies. She's brought ye some ties."
"Salt's makin' the boat fast," began Scud, nodding with inimitable ease to his visitors. "I'm afraid ther's goin' to be—"
Scud stopped short in open-mouthed pleasure when he saw a couple of brilliant red and blue ties dangling from Betty's hand. He had come up the rocky path, whistling like a boy, with every line and pucker in his face on a broad smile. If Lavater had seen this fisherman's physiognomy he would have pronounced it indicative of incomparable good nature. Indeed, Scud's good nature went so far at times as to be incomparably inadequate to the demands of existence. If he happened to go for weeks without catching so much as a sculpin in his net, and the starvation of his youngsters stared him in the face, he showed none of the common symptoms of discouragement, such as swearing, drinking, beating his wife, or cursing his luck. He only whistled the blither, ran up bills at the butcher's and grocer's with irresistible faith, borrowed his "chaws" of his luckier mates, and laughed as if poverty were an excellent joke that Providence was cracking at him. Why shouldn't he appreciate it, even if it were at his own expense.
Scud was born "easy." Who could blame him? He gave up his lobster-pots because it took too much time to dry them and keep them in repair, and it was too cold and dangerous hauling them in stormy weather off the rocks. Scud found it too troublesome to underrun his trap more than twice a-day—once at six o'clock in the morning, then at six o'clock at night. Even when the mackerel or the herring struck, and every man who had a trap hovered over it night and day to keep the catch from mysteriously immaterializing, as well as to gather it in, Scud was satisfied with his diurnal visits. He "wa'n't a-goin' to keep a-runnin' to see the fish swim in. If they were fool 'nough to go in the trap, they could stay there till he underrun an' bailed 'em out." His methods of gaining a livelihood were unique on the coast; yet it was Scud who "stocked" eight hundred and fifty dollars that summer clean, two hundred dollars above any one else in the harbor. It was the saying among some of the jealous fishermen in the cove, who were not blessed with two pairs of twins, that "nobody 'arned so easy a livin' as Scud without doin' no work." But these indistinct murmurs never stimulated Scud nor impaired his good nature. Indeed, Scud was the happiest man that ever lived. What a dancing, laughing eye! What a catalogue of joys therein! What contagious, hopeful humor! What irrepressible buoyancy of spirits! Who could help loving Scud, as one loves a huge, long-coated St. Bernard dog? Scud was the laughing, joyous, piping Pan of the ocean. He smoked not, neither did he drink. He had no vices that debased him. Chewing is not a vice for a fisherman. But he did have a curious taste for candy. No present pleased him so much as a half a pound of caramels or of sugar-coated nuts. It was the sweet animal nature instinctively laying hold of sweets.
Scud's "easiness" was unmitigated—at times it was exasperating; but this made him all the fatter, the jollier, the more companionable; and as it succeeded so well, why not? Summer boarders were appreciative of Scud. He lived upon them. Twins?—they did it. It was a dime show, and the money was paid.
Two sets of authentic twins! It was enough to drain a woman's heart of sympathy, a woman's pocket of money; and the summer boarders were mostly women—married women, with husbands sweating in the city to support them; single women, school-teachers and that sort.
But Scud stood looking at the ties. He seldom bought clothes, any more than he purchased firewood or paid for his fish. They came to him. Here was a pair of trousers that was once a bishop's. That coat and vest were the velveteen relics of a posing artist. The cap was a yachtsman's gift, and the neckties came as a matter of course. Yet Scud never begged. And once when he caught one of his four-year-old boys insinuating to a summer boarder, with outstretched palm, that he would like a penny, Scud thrashed him within a centimeter of his life. New England fishermen will take a gift as a sort of neighborly accommodation to you; but he'll starve before he will ask you for it.
"Are them fur me?" (Scud was always surprised at such a crisis.) "Thank ye, ma'am. Ain't them showy? I guess they'll skeer the mac'rel off the coast."
"I wanted you to take me out sailing this morning, Mr. Scud," I began, after a formal introduction. Scud looked somewhat gratified with the prefix to his name, and regarded me with interest. To take boarders out sailing at the rate of seventy-five cents an hour was the kind of work he would do.