This time the Markis made no effort to hide the tears that washed roadways down his grimy cheeks.
“But there is no need of this,” father replied, as, clearing his throat and wiping his nose, he tried to look severe and judicial, (dear Dad! how well I know this particularly impossible and fleeting expression of yours)—“I got you the promise of work at Mrs. Pippin’s only last week, to do a few light errands and keep her in split kindlings for three square meals a day, and pay in money by the hour for tinkering and carpentering, and you only stayed one morning! Man alive! you are intelligent! why can’t you work? The day is over when hereabout men can live like wild-fowl!”
“Doctor Russell,” said the Markis, speaking slowly and raising a lean forefinger solemnly, “did you ever try to keep Mis’s Pippin in kettlewood for three square meals a day, likewise her opinion o’ you thrown in for pepper, and talk o’ waiting hell fire for mustard, with only one door to the woodshed and her a-standin’ in it? Not but the meals was square enough, that was jest it,—they was too square, they wouldn’t swaller! Give me a man’s job and I’ll take a brace and try it for the Major here, but who takes one of us takes both, savvy? Beside, when Mis’s Pippin was Luella Green she liked to dance ter my fiddlin’, and now she don’t like ter think o’t and seein’ me reminds her!”
Here father broke down and laughed, he confesses, and with the change of mood came the remembrance that the son of the rich Van Camps of the Bluffs, whose sporting possessions dot the country from Canada to Florida, needed a man to tend his boat house that lay further round the bay, and to take him occasionally to the ducking grounds at the crucial moment of wind and weather. Thus far, though several landsmen had attempted it, no one had kept the job long owing to its loneliness, and the fact that they lacked the outdoor knack, for the pay was liberal.
In a few words father told of the requirements. Shaking the sand from his garments the Markis stood up, new light in his eyes,—“What! that yaller boat house round the bend, with all the contraptions and the tankboat painted about ’leven colours that Jason built? I’d better get to work smart in the mornin’ and weather her up a bit, it ’ud scare even a twice-shot old squaw the way it is! The weather is softenin’; come to-morrow there’ll be plenty o’ birds comin’ in and we’ll soon learn him how to fetch home a show of ’em, which is what most o’ them city chaps wants more’n the eatin’,—won’t we, Maje? Yes, Doc, I’ll take the ockerpation straight and honourable and won’t go back on you! Go home with you for supper and the night? That’s kindly, we air some used up, that’s so! And something in advance of pay to-morrow? and he’ll let me raise a shingle and pick up what I can takin’ other folks fishin’ and shootin’ when he don’t need me? and he’ll most likely supply me clothes,—a uniform like a yacht sailor’s, you say? Well, I suppose these old duds are shabby, but me and they’s kept company this long time and wild-fowl’s particular shy o’ new things, and the smell of them I reckon! Weathered things is mostly best to my thinkin’, likewise friends, Doc!”
When young Van Camp, arriving at the shore one day at dawn for his first expedition, saw his new employee and his aged dog, he shuddered visibly and for a moment inwardly questioned father’s sanity; but having been about with half-breed guides too much to judge the outdoor man by mere externals, he laughed good-naturedly and abandoned himself to the tender mercies of the Markis and the Major, saying lightly as he glanced at the faded sweater and soft hat, “It’s cold down here; I’m sending you a reefer and some better togs to-morrow.”
So the three went out across the still-water to the ducking grounds and brought back such a bunch before the fog closed in the afternoon that Van Camp clapped the Markis on the back and declared the Major must be a Mascot, and that he deserved the finest sort of collar!
“A Mascot! that’s what he is, in addition to being the wisest smell-dog on the shore!” affirmed the Markis solemnly, the eyelid on the off side drooping drolly. “All he has to do is to smell the tide when it turns flood, and he knows jest where the ducks’ll bed next night!” All of which Van Camp, Junior, believed, because it seemed suitable that the dog he hired with the man should be superlatively something; and next day there arrived, together with the reefer, a yacht captain’s cap, a set of oil-skins, and a great tin of tobacco,—a broad brass-studded collar, such as bull-dogs wear, but an ornament unknown to self-respecting “smell-dogs” even if, like the Major, they were bar sinister.
The morrow was New Year’s day, and the day after, just at evening, the Markis, clad in a trim sailor suit from cap to trousers, was seen sauntering down the village street toward the cross-roads at the Centre, where his tangled trails to and from the two saloons had before-times often puzzled the Major’s acute sense of smell. Behind the Markis loped the Major with drooping tail and the heavy collar, too large for his lean neck, hanging about his ears. But had not his master fastened the hateful thing upon him? That was reason enough for wearing it, at least for the time being!
Slowly the Markis passed the two saloons and nonchalantly entered the market, where he carefully selected a whole bologna and a ham! Crossing to the grocery he bought a month’s provisions to be sent to “Van Camp’s Boat House, for Capt’n Burney!” Then pulling on a fresh corn-cob pipe in leisurely fashion he stopped at the paint shop, from whence he took a sign board, that he carried, letters toward him; next he repassed the saloons and gradually gained the wooded lane that skirts the marsh meadows.