And so, more contented than his brooding and troubled parent, Skippy piled up the flapjacks until they resembled the leaning tower of Pisa, and he whistled to the accompaniment of the sputtering coffee pot. All the world seemed delightful and generous with these savory dishes ready to be eaten, and he asked himself if his father wasn’t making much of little. After all, they had the Minnie M. Baxter for a home, didn’t they? And wasn’t living on a barge just the kind of life that he and his pals had often wished for when they had lain about their dusty dooryards on hot summer nights?
The boy ran to the door, his tanned face flushed and expectant. He would tell his father how much better he was going to feel out on the river all summer than back in dusty, hot Riverboro where he had spent all his life. He would fish and swim and take lots of deep, lung-developing breaths. He’d probably never have another bad throat....
He inhaled deeply on the strength of this thought and though his lungs filled with a queerly mixed odor of mud, decayed fish and salt, he noticed it not at all. Moreover, the inlet might have been a clear, wind-swept ocean waste, so far above the Basin had his imagination carried him.
A figure stirred in the shadows forward and then he heard the familiar tread of his father. Suddenly on the damp salt breeze they heard the distant sound of chimes and waited silently while the faint notes struck off the hour of ten.
“Pretty late to eat, huh Pop? Everythin’s ready, so you better come while it’s hot.”
“Yer know where them chimes come from?” Toby asked in a tone of voice that was strange to his son. “They come from River Heights on that swell Town Hall what Ol’ Flint give to the borough. Now I s’pose he’ll give the three hunderd dollars he cheated me outa, fer somethin’ else what’ll give him a big name, hey? That’s what some uv them scoundrels like Ol’ Flint do—give their dirty money ter things what’ll give ’em a fine big name. Well, he won’t git the chanct ter give my three hunderd—not while I live!”
Josiah Flint again! Skippy’s heart lost all its merry hopes in a fleeting second. He turned back into the cabin and his father followed him in gloomy silence. Mechanically, he carried the steaming plate from the oil stove to the rickety little oil-cloth covered table and without a word they pulled up their chairs and sat down.
“I never tole yer before,” said Toby after a few moments, “but if it wasn’t fer Ol’ Flint there wouldn’ never ’a’ been no squatter colony like this in Brown’s Basin. It’s him what’s made it, that’s what. They’re all blackballed men, Sonny; men what’s got in Ol’ Flint’s clutches an’ ain’t never got the chance nor the brains ter git out. Not like me that had a little more brains ter earn bigger money so’s I could save fer the Minnie M. Baxter. Save!” He brought his fist down upon the table with such force that a flapjack bounced from his plate to the floor. “Ha, ha—what for did I save, hey?”
He laughed so sardonically that Skippy hurried for the coffee to hide his concern.
“Aw, please don’t take on so, Pop!” His eyes were directed at Toby’s back. “Gee, that old miser, he ain’t worth you actin’ so queer an’ all. It ain’t so bad here. It’s a nice little house we got in this cabin; chairs an’ the stove an’ a table an’ our trunk.” His glance wandered to the tiny windows opened to the damp salt breeze. “Even I bet I could put up some cretonne stuff as good as a girl an’ then won’t this be one nice-lookin’ little place!”