"What's left of me, Judah. I feel just this minute as if there wasn't much left."
"Well, creepin' prophets! I couldn't believe it. Thinks I, 'There's fog in my deadlights and I can't see through 'em right.' Well, by Henry! And a little spell ago you was tellin' me you'd never be able to cruise again except under jury rig. Humph! You'll be up to the town hall dancin' 'Hull's Victory' and 'Smash the Windows' fust thing we know."
After supper the captain, using the cane but whistling a sprightly air, strolled out to the front gate, where, leaning over the fence, he looked up and down the curving, tree-shaded road, dozing in the late summer twilight. And up that road came George Kent, also whistling, to swing in at the Fair Harbor gate and stride to the side door.
Before that object lesson of real youth Sears' fictitious imitation seemed cheap and shoddy. He leaned heavily upon his cane as he hobbled back to the kitchen.
The next day something happened. Sears had been busy all the forenoon superintending the carting in and stowing of the Fair Harbor share of oak and pine from the wood-lot. Thirteen cords of it, sawed and split in lengths to suit the Harbor stoves and fireplaces, were to be piled in the sheds adjoining the old Seymour barn at the rear of the premises. Judah had been engaged to do the piling. The captain had hesitated about employing him for several reasons, one being that he was drawing wages—small but regular—as caretaker at the General Minot place; another, that there might be some criticism—or opportunity for criticism—because of the relationship, landlord and lodger, which existed between them. Judah himself scorned the thought.
"Mean to tell me I can't work for you just because you're boardin' along of me, Cap'n Sears?" he protested. "I've cooked for you a good many years and I worked for you then, didn't I?"
"Ye—es, but you had signed up to work for me then. That's what they paid you for."
"Well, it's what you pay me for now, ain't it? And Ogden Minot he pays me to be stevedore aboard his house yonder. And the Fair Harbor's cal'latin' to pay me for pilin' this wood, ain't it? You ain't payin' for that, nor Ogden nuther. Well, then!... Oh, don't let's waste time arguin' about it now, Cap'n Sears. Let's do the way Abe Pepper done when the feller asked him to take a little somethin'. Abe had promised his wife he'd sign the pledge and he was on his way to temp'rance meetin' where he was goin' to meet her and sign it. And on the way he ran acrost this feller—Cornelius Bassett 'twas—and Cornelius says, 'Come have a drink with me, Abe,' he says. Well, time Abe got around to meet his wife the temp'rance meetin' hall was all dark and Abe was all—er—lighted up, as you might say. 'Why didn't you tell that Bassett man you was in a hurry and couldn't stop?' his wife wanted to know. 'Didn't have time to tell him nothin',' explains Abe. 'I knew I was late for meetin' as 'twas.' 'Then why didn't you come right on to meetin'?' she wanted to know. 'If I'd done that I'd lost the drink,' says he."
The captain laughed, but looked doubtful.
"I don't quite see where that yarn fits in this case, Judah," he observed.