To-day, as we drove on, I looked back on the summer. As a rule, our months at the shore are compact of slow and tranquil days, but this season had fled past like a demented moving-picture film. Buster had arrived at 9 A. M. the 8th of June. By noon he had made his presence felt. During the next five days he took the gas-range apart, to see how it worked, and put it together again, but inaccurately, so that it blew up and all but annihilated a perfectly good cook. I had to raise Louisiana’s wages three dollars a week. He drained all the water out of the fountain pool, to see how long it would take to refill it; then, at sight of a wayfaring organ-grinder he rushed away, to bribe the man to open up his instrument and let him see how its harmonious innards worked. Thus, he left nine fat, venerable goldfish to flop themselves to a miserable end. To be sure, he sniffled audibly at dinner that night and almost declined dessert; which didn’t bring back aunt’s beloved Chinese carp, alas! He tried to teach Gulliver, the Leonards’ Great Dane, to do German police-dog stunts. Gulliver, who is young, obedient, and muddle-headed, took his training seriously to heart and made breath-taking leaps at the Leonards’ gardener’s throat, to the up-blown pride of both Buster and the gardener. Unhappily, he saw fit to show off his new accomplishment on an irascible New York banker, to whom Commodore Leonard was trying his best to sell his early Pullman place at Beverly Farms. As Buster hotly declared, if the banker hadn’t squealed and acted such a sissy, Gulliver would have stopped with a mere snap at his lapel. But his cries so excited the poor pup that by the time the horrified commodore came to his aid most of the banker’s raiment was in tatters, to say nothing of his dignity. Commodore Leonard lost his one chance of the year to unload that white elephant of a house. At that, he congratulated himself because the banker didn’t sue him for damages.
Subdued and chastened, Buster took himself off to the harbor to seek diversion among the ancient mariners who had already found in him a stimulating audience. He spent, I judge, a pleasant afternoon. He rode back on the Magnolia ’bus just at dinner-time. He did not return alone. Proudly he strode up the steps, one eye cocked over his shoulder at the bland and tarry skipper who swaggered, all too jovially, behind. Eagerly he ran to the palsied Aunt Charlotte.
“Aunt Charlotte, this is my friend, Captain Harrigan, of the Lottie Foster. The captain has come to dinner and to spend the evening, and he’s promised to tell us all his adventures and draw the plans for my racing yacht, when I get one, and teach me how to make her torpedo-proof and—and everything! Cap Harrigan, meet Aunt Charlotte!”
Well, as Aunt Charlotte and I agreed later, we were bound and helpless. The child was so brimful of glad hospitality. You couldn’t strike him in the face by rebuffing his friend. But oh, the hours that followed! As Louisiana put it later, the genman wasn’t plumb drunk, but he cert’ny was happy drunk. The instant dinner was ended Aunt Charlotte fled up-stairs, locked her door, and pushed the bureau against it. I stayed on deck, a quaking Casabianca, till 11 P. M. Then, by way of a mild suggestion, I turned down the lights; and Captain Harrigan, now in mellow tears at the reminiscences of his own boyhood, kissed my hands and took a fervent leave.
“But Richard, child! The man was intoxicated! Disgustingly intoxicated!”
“Gosh, was he? Well, he was bully and interesting, anyhow. Look at all those sailors’ knots he’s taught me. And the story he told about crossing the equator the first time, and the one about the admiral who was always three sheets to the wind and wouldn’t tie his shoe-strings—what does three sheets to the wind mean, anyhow? And he’s showed me how to read a compass and all about sextants and transits, too. Gee, I bet I could steer a dreadnought, after what he’s taught me to-night.”
“He certainly was full of information. But don’t invite any more drunken sailors to the house, dear. Bring your friends home whenever you wish, but make sure first that they’re sober.”
“Well, I will. Though I kind o’ hate to ask ’em.”
With that I let the matter drop. You could not blame the child. Back of every calamity that he brought upon us lay his ravenous curiosity, his frantic longing to know how the world was made and ruled. But to-day was different. No hunger for knowledge could warrant a boy of fifteen in seizing the sacrosanct car of the most famous of Boston specialists, and going joy-riding down the Gloucester hills. Buster should be seriously rebuked.
Incidentally, I’d been playing bridge all afternoon with two stern dowagers and one irritable maiden lady, all crack players, while I’m a hopeless amateur. I had on a tea-rose crêpe de chine and the waitress had spilled coffee on it. Further, I was wearing brand-new patent-leather slippers. Yes, Buster would receive his full deserts.