“Thunderation!” he cried, sharply. “You’re a Christian. Step outside, and we’ll liquor up.”
The invitation was uttered so fiercely that it sounded like a command, especially as the Titan stamped three times with his foot—only his way of signalling to his subordinate, Matt found. In the nearest bar, which happened to be an illicit one, approached through a porch at the back of a temperance hotel for the convenience of avowed teetotalers, the man-mountain imparted to Matt the information that it was the Frenchman’s amorous advances that had imbittered his daughter. “For my part,” he said, “so far from wantin’ to keep him in there in clover, I’d like to lift him out on the point of my toe, and I’d make him vamoose from the town that smart you couldn’t see his heels for the dust. I’ll mention it to Rosina that you’ve been putting in a good word for the skunk, but I don’t think she’ll listen, that’s a fact.”
“Oh, but I’m sure she will,” said Matt. “She looks a kindhearted young lady.”
“You haven’t seen her!” exclaimed Mr. Coble, fiercely.
“Yes; I saw her this afternoon,” said Matt.
“Then you’ve seen the purtiest gal you’ll see this year. Set ’em up again. This old rye’s whopping good. Always rely on a temperance hotel for good whiskey. And as my gal has a goodish bit of money,” pursued the old man, smacking his lips and growing communicative without losing any of the sternness of his accent, “you can understand what made the wretched little froggy roll his eyes and twist his mustache at her. How he found it out will be a mystery to my dyin’ day, for I’m careful never to breathe a whisper of it to a single soul, but he ferreted out somehow or t’other that when she’s twenty-one my Rosie will step into an income of eight hundred dollars.”
He shouted the statement so loudly that the whole bar pricked up its ears. Matt quite believed that Coble was incapable of whispering anything to anybody. He had a vague envy of the fortunate girl.
“Not to mention three thousand dollars I’ve put aside myself to hand her on her wedding-day,” continued Coble. “Young folks are lucky nowadays. When I married I had to lend my father-in-law ten dollars to rig himself up respectable for church.”
Before they parted the mountain of flesh had consented thunderously to Matt’s supplying another picture of the dangers of sponge-fishing, but would not bind himself, although in his third glass, to do more in return than lay the matter before his daughter. Once alone in the streets again, Matt felt he had made a bad bargain. The two and a half dollars the jailer had given him were all his funds, and even the few nickels that would have to be expended on common water-colors and the double-royal card-board were a consideration. But he loyally executed the work in the bedroom he had ventured to take, finding rather a relief in this further postponement of the problem of his future. By the following afternoon he was back at Coble’s with a brilliant sketch far more arrestive than the Frenchman’s. The shark was more formidable, the nude diver more graceful, his netted bag more accurate, and the ocean-bed was a veritable fairy-land of sea-lichens and polyps. Coble glared long at the sketch as Matt held it up, but he said nothing.
“What do you think of it?” asked Matt, apprehensively, at last.