That was the beginning of a fine friendship. Toby and Arnold became well-nigh inseparable. They spent hours and hours together in the Frolic or the Turnover, swam, fished, canoed occasionally, explored by land and sea, and spent much time curled up in a favorite corner of the boat-yard building glorious plans for the future. Sometimes Phebe was their companion, and sometimes, though less frequently, Frank Lamson. Toby put up with Frank for Arnold’s sake, but never got to like him. For his part, Frank failed to see why Arnold wanted to associate with a fellow whose father worked “like a common laborer” and who “slopped around in clothes you wouldn’t give to the ashman!”
But Frank’s disapproval didn’t influence Arnold to any great extent, and Frank soon learned to keep it to himself. He viewed Phebe more tolerantly because she was pretty and presentable, even if her dresses would have failed to pass muster over at the Head. But what Frank thought of her bothered Phebe little, since she liked him no better than Toby did, although she was a trifle more careful to disguise the fact.
Once and only once Toby went home with Arnold to luncheon. It happened that a trip down the bay in the Turnover had taken more time than they had foreseen, and when the launch floated up to the Deerings’ pier to let Arnold off it was long after Toby’s dinner hour. Toby had resisted a while against Arnold’s pleading, but he was horribly hungry and Arnold assured him that what he had on wouldn’t matter a bit, and finally he had yielded. What had happened was not at all terrifying, for Arnold’s aunt, who, since the death of the lad’s mother many years before, had presided over the Deering establishment, was very gracious indeed to the guest; while Mr. Deering was in New York. And the wonderful things that were placed before Toby tasted finely and surely filled an aching void. But for all that he wasn’t comfortable. He had never seen so many dishes and glasses and forks and knives and spoons, nor so many servants. Nor had he ever had his table manners put to so severe a test. Afterwards, although Arnold for a while frequently extended invitations to luncheon, Toby always found some excuse for declining. He never gave the real reason, however, although possibly Arnold guessed it. Eventually Arnold gave it up as a bad job, but that didn’t keep him from partaking of the Tucker hospitality, and he was a frequent guest at the dinner table in the little cottage above Harbor Street. Every one liked Arnold, even Mr. Murphy; and Mr. Murphy was constitutionally suspicious of strangers.
Mr. Murphy sat on a perch in the corner of the dining-room, by the window that looked along the winding street, an uncannily wise-appearing old parrot with a draggled tail and a much-battered beak. Phebe explained that he used to have a perfectly gorgeous tail, but that he would insist on pulling the feathers out no matter how she scolded him. Like most parrots, Mr. Murphy had his periods of inviolate silence and his periods of invincible loquacity. During the former all enticements failed to summon even a squawk from him, and during the latter only banishment to a certain dark closet under the hall stairs would stop the flow of his eloquence. It wasn’t so much that the parrot’s repertoire was extensive as that he made the most of it. Unlike Shakespeare, he repeated! Having spent several years of an eventful life before the mast, he had learned a number of remarks that brought embarrassed apologies from Phebe. On the whole, though, and in view of his early environment, his conversation was remarkably polite.
His usual welcome was “Hello, dearie!” followed by “Won’t you take off your bonnet?” After that he usually laughed jeeringly, sidled across his perch, lowered himself and gravely hung by his beak. “All hands, stand by!” was generally delivered in a peremptory shriek that, at first, had had a devastating effect on Mrs. Tucker’s nerves. As though realizing the fact, Mr. Murphy thereupon chuckled wickedly and murmured softly and crooningly: “Well, well, well! Did you ever?” Phebe had taught him to say, “Come to breakfast,” and he had grown very partial to the remark, making use of it at all times of the day with cheerful disregard for appropriateness. For a while he had made the cat’s life a burden to her by calling “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! Come, pretty Kitty!” and then going into peals of raucous laughter the minute the poor cat’s head appeared around the door. Arnold won Mr. Murphy’s undying affection by feeding him pop-corn surreptitiously, pop-corn being an article of diet strictly forbidden by Phebe. He also spent much time during the summer trying to induce the bird to say “Arnold,” but it wasn’t until late in August that Toby, passing the dining-room door one afternoon, heard Mr. Murphy croaking experimentally in a low voice: “Say Arnold, you chump!”
Toby still performed odd jobs and picked up an occasional quarter or half-dollar, but it must be acknowledged that he was far less earnest in his endeavors to find employment than he had been before Arnold’s advent on the scene. But he was only fourteen—“going on fifteen,” as he would have put it—and so it isn’t to be greatly wondered at that he found his new friend’s companionship more enjoyable than running errands or delivering groceries in out-of-the-way places for Perkins & Howe. Mr. Tucker at first viewed Toby’s frivolity with displeasure, but Mrs. Tucker declared that it would do him more good to play and have a good time with a nice boy like Arnold Deering than to loiter about Main Street on the lookout for a job. I think that struck Toby’s father as being good sense, for he never after that taxed the boy with idleness. Sometimes Toby had qualms of conscience and for a day or two resisted all Arnold’s blandishments and gave himself up sternly to commerce. Frequently at such times Arnold likewise eschewed the life of pleasure and threw in his lot with that of Toby, and together they sat in the back room of the grocery store awaiting orders; or canvassed the other places of business on the chance of finding service. It was at such a time, seated on boxes by Perkins & Howe’s back entrance, with a strong odor of spices and coffee and cucumbers enveloping them—it happened that Arnold was seated on the crate of cucumbers—that the plan of the baseball series between the town boys and the summer visitors was evolved. The sight of two youngsters passing a ball on the side street that ran down to the fish wharf put the idea into Arnold’s head.
“Do you play baseball, Toby?” he asked. Toby nodded. “Well, then, let’s have a game some time.”
“You and me?” asked Toby, with a grin.
“No, silly! We’ll get up a couple of teams, of course. There are plenty of fellows on the Head and around there to make up one, and you could find enough here in town for the other, couldn’t you?”
Toby nodded again. “Most of the fellows on the school team would play, I guess. What would we do, draw lots?”