“I make enough in summer to lay hup in winter,” he explained. “It’s an ’ealthy and hinvigorating life, and I like it. I’ve traveled over nearly all the States between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, ’ave ’ad my hups and downs, and I wouldn’t change places with a king.”
I rather doubted whether the doctor knew very much about kings, that he could afford to speak so positively, but I felt that it would be neither polite nor prudent to disagree with him.
“I dare say I shall like the life very well,” I said, quietly. “But—what am I expected to do?”
“You’ll be my assistant,” said the doctor, in a lofty voice, as if he was announcing my appointment to a cabinet position.
Then he went into details, and explained that I was to assist him in concocting and selling the wonderful remedies of which he was the inventor.
This duty included filling bottles, pasting on labels, carrying his baggage, making his fires, and several other minor matters which he could not recall just then.
“Ve’ll camp out like this most of the time,” he added. “Hotels is hexpensive, and I never stops at ’em, unless it’s raining or I’m going to sell in the town. You von’t mind that, vill you?”
I was more than delighted at the prospect, and I said so.
“This man,” I told myself, “is evidently a great traveler, and he is going West. If I stick to him my fortune is made.”
It did not take the doctor long to pack up his traps, and, dividing them between us, we journeyed along very agreeably.