II.
Within a week every resident of Muscatel had heard the sound of Jerry Sullivan's voice. It arose above the ring of his hammer as he worked at the pine skeleton of his shanty, and the sage-laden breeze from the mountains seemed a strange enough vehicle for the questionable sentiments of his song. New and startling variations of street songs, and other unfamiliar melodies came to Enoch's ears as he distributed the mail, or held the quart measure under the molasses barrel, and occasionally the singer himself dropped in to make a purchase and chat a few moments with the postmaster concerning the progress of his house.
"The architect has rather slopped over on the plans," he said, when the frame was up, "so I'm putting up a Queen Anne wood-shed for the present, while he knocks a few bay windows out of the conservatory. 'A penny saved 's a penny earned,' you know. That's the way I came to be a millionaire—stopped drinking in my infancy and learned to chew, saved a rattleful of nickels before I could walk—got any eighteen-carat nails, uncle? I want to do a little finishing-work in the bath-room."
Enoch met his new friend's trifling, always with the same gentle gravity; but something, perhaps that lurking liberality about the corners of his mouth, seemed to inspire the young fellow with implicit confidence in the old man's sympathy.
After the frame of Jerry's domicile was inclosed, a prodigious sawing and hammering went on inside the redwood walls, and the bursts of music were spasmodic, indicating a closer attention on the part of the workman to nicety of detail in his work. He called to Enoch as he was passing one day, and drew him inside the door mysteriously.
"Take a divan, uncle," he said airily, pushing a three-legged stool toward his guest. "I've got something to show you,—something that's been handed up to me from posterity. How does that strike you for a starter in the domestic business?"
He drew forward an empty soap-box, fashioned into an old-time cradle, and fitted with rude rockers at the ends.
"Happy thought—eh?" he rattled on, gleefully pointing to the stenciled end, where everything but "Pride of the Family" had been carefully erased. "How's this for a proud prospective paternal?"
He balanced himself on one foot and rocked the little craft, with all its cargo of pathetic emptiness, gently to and fro.
Enoch's face quivered as if he had been stabbed.