“I am not exactly a fisherman,” he said. “I can run a boat all right, so you needn’t worry, but in the winter I clerk in a shoe store in Bangor, Maine. But there is no career in the shoe business, especially on a commission basis. In New England the real money goes to the half-sole-and-heel people.”
“I suppose that’s so,” said Tish. “I never thought of it.”
“Then,” he went on, “you take automobiles. Did you ever think how they’ve hurt the sale of shoes? Nobody walks. Folks that used to buy a pair of shoes every year have dropped clean off my list. The tailors are getting my business.”
“Tailors?” Tish asked.
“Putting new seats in trousers,” he said gloomily, and stalked away.
The boat, he told us later, belonged to his uncle, who was a tailor. But he was not tailoring at present. As a matter of fact, he was at the moment in the state penitentiary, and that was how Christopher had the Swallow.
“He took to bootlegging on the side,” he explained.
“It was a sort of natural evolution, as you may say. He noticed the wear and tear on hip pockets from carrying flasks, and it seized on his imagination.” He mopped discouragedly at the boat, in which we were about to go on our first fishing trip, and sighed. “Many a case of good hard liquor has run the revenue blockade in this,” he said.
“Well, there will be no liquor run in it while I’m renting it,” said Tish firmly.