"I'd been a 'prentice. But I tired of the monotony. So I quarreled with my trade, and fought my last at Lundy's Lane, as I tell people," said Job, with twinkling eyes.
"You got the worst of it?"
"All things considered I did. This fighting is bad business; and, you see, I decidedly put my foot in it."
Job touched his wooden leg significantly, to illustrate the joke.
"You seem merry over your misfortune," observed Father Brighthopes.
"Better be merry than sad, you know. There's no use o' complainin' of Providence, when my own folly tripped me up. My understanding is not so lame as that."
It was amusing to see with what a relish the poor fellow cracked these little jokes of his over his infirmity. To get hold of someone who had never heard them before, and could laugh at them as well as if they were quite fresh and new, seemed a great happiness to him; and the clergyman did not fail to appreciate and encourage his humor.
"On the whole," said the latter, "you made a bad bargain when you traded your hammer and awl for a musket and cartridge-box?"
Job's eyes glistened. He rubbed his hands together with delight. The old man had given him a capital opportunity to get in another of his jokes, just like an impromptu.
"I might have made a worse bargain," he said. "As long as I had one leg left,"—he touched his solitary knee,-"I ought to call it a good bargain. You see, I did not come off altogether without something to boot."