“Oh, putty nigh,” Jake made assurance; “only a matter o’ three mile on the lake. We’ll git thar in a jiffy, in the Shirtso.”
“The what?” Saxe questioned.
“That’s the ornery name old man Abernethey give a perfec’ly good boat,” Jake replied, complainingly. “He said as how it meant kind o’ lively.”
“The name must be Scherzo,” Saxe explained to the unmusical and bewildered Billy Walker; “the motor-boat, you know.”
But Billy was not appeased. He kept at Jake’s side, as the party moved toward the landing, a furlong to the east from the station, and expressed his sentiments vehemently, though not lucidly, so far as the boatman was concerned.
“I’m given to understand,” he said severely to the puzzled Jake, “that your craft is not merely a plain, slow-going, safe-and-sane-Fourth launch, but, on the contrary, one of those cantankerous, speed-maniacal contraptions that scoots in diabolical and parabolical curves, and squirts water all over the passengers. If so, I think I’ll walk—though I’m not fond of walking.”
Jake seized eagerly on the one intelligible phrase in Billy Walker’s bombast.
“Nary squirt!” he declared, with emphasis. “Old man Abernethey, he was ailin’ jest like you be, and I learned to nuss the Shirtso keerful—mighty keerful, yes, siree!”
The others, who had overheard, laughed impudently at this naïve reference to the invalidism of their friend, whose physical inertia was equal to his mental energy.
At sight of the motor-boat, Roy Morton gave critical attention, scanning it with the supercilious manner of one versed in the mysteries, as, indeed, he was. Unbidden, he ensconced himself at the engines, in the seat with Jake. Soon, however, his coldly inquiring expression softened to radiant satisfaction, as he noted the smoothness of the start, the delicate adjustment from speed to speed, the rhythm of the perfectly tuned cylinders. Of a sudden, as he turned to stare at the wizened face of the old man at his side, Roy’s eyes grew gently luminous; a smile that was tender curved the lips above the belligerent chin. He knew that Jake loved his engines, knew perfectly that the old man fairly doted on them, cherished them even as a lover his mistress. Because of the sympathy that he, too, had with such things, Roy respected the boatman mightily, began then and there to grow fond of the brown and shriveled face.