“He’s a cosset and allus will be and you warmed his milk for him,” snorted Hiram. “That’s all right! You ain’t done anything wrong. Any other kind of feedin’ would give him an attack of love-colic that would tie him up into knots so that he’d never get untangled.”
He smoked in silence for a little while.
“Ain’t there any ding-blasted thing in this world that the critter knows how to do?” he demanded. “There’s no young and pretty girl that’s goin’ to stay very hard in love with a swipe in a liv’ry stable, no matter how she tries. I pity the poor little gaffer, Phin. We had a talk together on the road—me and her and Sime here. I ain’t all bristles, Phin. I’d do somethin’ for the feller if I could—anything short of charity, and I’ll be cussed if I’ll give money to an able-bodied man that’s able to earn it. She’d hate him then, if there’s anything to her, and if she didn’t I’d hate her—and there you have it. Gad! I don’t understand how a chap can grow to be over twenty-one and not know how to do some one thing.”
“If his folks had taught him to play a fiddle instead of a cornet,” said the Squire, “he might have been able to fiddle for dances and earn an oyster supper and a dollar-fifty once in a while, as old Eb Lancaster does.”
“Does the Mayo boy know how to play the cornet?” asked Hiram, with reviving interest.
“His folks paid that bandmaster, that has his summer cottage down on Prout’s Point, two hundred dollars and over for lessons to Wat.”
“But can he play?” persisted Hiram.
“How should I know?” snapped the Squire impatiently. “All I know is he near drove me crazy with his practising—and nigh every one else in the village.” But after a moment he went on with gentler tone:
“Yes, Hiram, some of the men around here who understand such things say that Wat Mayo plays wonderfully well. I remember that the bandmaster used to brag about him, but what with folks jawing about the noise he made, and his natural laziness, he hasn’t done anything with it. And a bulldog might as well try to chew with a set of store teeth as a man start out to earn a living in Palermo with a cornet.”
“Well, he’ll earn one from now on,” said Hiram.