"But I haven't any money to pay you," he said. "I only get my pay once a month."
"We'll git tick at William's, and you can settle 'th us when you git your pay."
"Well," said he, unable to refuse, "I'll take 'em, if you say so."
Before the season was over, he had still another customer, and could have had three or four more, if he had had ice enough. He was strongly inclined that fall to build a larger ice-house, and although he was a little afraid of bringing ridicule upon himself in case no fish should be brought to him the next summer, he decided to do so, on the assurance of three or four men that they would deal with him. Nobody else had such a chance, he thought--a pond right by the shore.
One evening there was a knock at the door of Eliphalet Wood, the owner of the burned barn. Eliphalet went to the door, but turned pale at seeing Eph there.
"Oh, come in, come in!" he panted. "Glad to see you. Walk in. Have a chair. Take a seat. Sit down."
But he thought his hour had come: he was alone in the house, and there was no neighbor within call.
Eph took out a roll of bills, counted out eighty dollars, laid the money on the table, and said, quietly:
"Give me a receipt on account."
When it was written he walked out, leaving Eliphalet stupefied.
Joshua Carr was at work, one June afternoon, by the road-side, in front of his low cottage, by an enormous pile of poles, which he was shaving down for barrel-hoops, when Eph appeared.
"Hard at it, Joshua!" he said.
"Yes, yes!" said Joshua, looking up through his steel-bowed spectacles.
"Hev to work hard to make a livin'--though I don't know's I ought to call it hard, neither; and yet it is rather hard, too; but then, on t'other hand, 'taint so hard as a good many other things--though there is a good many jobs that's easier. That's so! That's so!
"'Must we be kerried to the skies On feathery beds of ease?'
Though I don' know's I oughter quote a hymn on such a matter; but then--I don' know's there's any partic'lar harm in't, neither."
Eph sat down on a pile of shavings and chewed a sliver; and the old man kept on at his work.
"Hoop-poles goin' up and hoops goin' down," he continued. "Cur'us, ain't it? But then, I don' know as 'tis; woods all bein' cut off--poles gittin' scurcer; hoops bein' shoved in from Down East. That don' seem just right, now, does it--but then, other folks must make a livin', too.
Still, I should think they might take up suthin' else; and yet, they might say that about me. Understand, I don' mean to say that they actually do say so; I don' want to run down any man unless I know--"
"I can't stand this," said Eph to himself; "I don't wonder that they always used to put Joshua off at the first port, when he tried to go coasting. They said he talked them crazy with nothing.
"I'll go into the house and see Aunt Lyddy," he said, aloud. "I'm loafing this afternoon."
"All right! all right!" said Joshua. "Lyddy'll be glad to see ye--that is, as glad as she would be to see anybody," he added, reaching out for a pole. "Now, I don' s'pose that sounds very well; but still, you know how she is--she allus likes to hev folks to talk, and then she's allus sayin' talkin' wears on her; but I ought not to say that to you, because she allus likes to see you--that is, as much as she likes to see anybody--in fact, I think, on the whole--"
"Well, I'll take my chances," said Eph, laughing, and he opened the gate and went in.
Joshua's wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lyddy, was oscillating in a rocking-chair in the kitchen, and knitting. It was currently reported that Joshua's habit of endlessly retracting and qualifying every idea and modification of an idea which he advanced, so as to commit himself to nothing, was the effect of Aunt Lyddy's careful revision.
"I s'pose she thought 'twas fun to be talked deef when they was courtin'," Captain Seth had once sagely remarked. "Prob'ly it sounded then like a putty piece on a seraphine; but I allers cal'lated she'd git her fill of it, sooner or later. You most gin'lly git your fill o' one tune."
"How are you this afternoon, Aunt Lyddy?" asked Eph, walking in without knocking, and sitting down near her.
"So as to be able to keep about," she replied. "It is a great mercy I ain't afflicted with falling out of my chair, like Hepsy Jones, ain't it?"
"I've brought you some oysters," he said. "I set the basket down on the door-step. I just took them out of the water myself from the bed I planted to the west of the water-fence."
"I always heard you was a great fisherman," said Aunt Lyddy, "but I had no idea you would ever come here and boast of being able to catch oysters. Poor things! How could they have got away? But why don't you bring them in? They won't be afraid of me, will they?"
He stepped to the door and brought in a peck basket full of large, black, twisted shells, and with a heavy clasp-knife proceeded to open one, and took out a great oyster, which he held up on the point of the blade.
"Try it," he said; and then Aunt Lyddy, after she had swallowed it, laughed to think what a tableau they had made--a man who had been in the State-prison standing over her with a great knife! And then she laughed again.
"What are you laughing at?" he said.
"It popped into my head, supposing Susan should have looked in at the south window and Joshua into the door, when you was feeding out that oyster to me, what they would have thought!"
Eph laughed, too, and, surely enough, just then a stout, light-haired, rather plain-looking young woman came up to the south window and leaned in. She had on a sun-bonnet, which had not prevented her from securing a few choice freckles. She had been working with a trowel in her flower-garden.
"What's the matter?" she said, nodding easily to Eph. "What do you two always find to laugh about?"
"Ephraim was feeding me with spoon-meat," said Aunt Lyddy, pointing to the basket, which looked like a basket of anthracite coal.
"It looks like spoon-meat," said Susan, and then she laughed too. "I'll roast some of them for supper," she added, "a new way that I know."
Eph was not invited to stay to supper, but he stayed, none the less: that was always understood.
"Well! Well! Well!" said Joshua, coming to the door-step, and washing his hands and arms just outside, in a tin basin. "I thought I see you set down a parcel of oysters--but there was seaweed over 'em, and I don'
know's I could hev said they was oysters; but then, if the square question hed been put to me, 'Mr. Carr, be them oysters or not?' I s'pose I should hev said they was; still, if they'd asked me how I knew--"
"Come, come, father!" said Aunt Lyddy, "do give poor Ephraim a little peace. Why don't you just say you thought they were oysters, and done with it?"
"Say I _thought_ they was?" he replied, innocently. "I knew well enough they was--that is--knew? No, I didn't know, but--"
Aunt Lyddy, with an air of mock resignation, gave up, while Joshua endeavored to fix, to a hair, the exact extent of his knowledge.
Eph smiled; but he remembered what would have made him pardon, a thousand times over, the old man's garrulousness. He remembered who alone had never failed, once a year, to visit a certain prisoner, at the cost of a long and tiresome journey, and who had written to that homesick prisoner kind and cheering letters, and had sent him baskets of simple dainties for holidays.
Susan bustled about, and made a fire of crackling sticks, and began to roast the oysters in a way that made a most savory smell. She set the table, and then sat down at the melodeon, while she was waiting, and sang a hymn--for she was of a musical turn, and was one of the choir.
Then she jumped up, and took out the steaming oysters, and they all sat down.
"Well, well, well!" said her father; "these be good! I didn't s'pose you had any very good oysters in your bed, Ephraim. But there, now--I don'
s'pose I ought to have said that; that wasn't very polite; but what I meant was--I didn't s'pose you had any that was _real_ good--though I don' know but that I've said about the same thing, now. Well, anyway, these be splendid; they're full as good as those cohogs we had t'other night."
"Quahaugs!" said Susan. "The idea of comparing these oysters with quahaugs!"
"Well, well! that's so!" said the father. "I didn't say right, did I, when I said that? Of course, they ain't no comparison--that is--_no_ comparison--why, of course, they _is_ a comparison between everything, but then, cohogs don' really compare with oysters! That's true!"
And then he paused to eat a few.
He was silent so long at this occupation that they all laughed.
"Well, well!" said he, laying down his fork, and smiling innocently; "what be you all laughin' at? Not but what I allers like to hev folks laugh--but then--I didn't see nothin' to laugh at. Still perhaps, they was suthin' to laugh at that I didn't see; sometimes one man'll be lookin' down into his plate, all taken up with his vittles, and others that's lookin' around the room, may see the kittens frolickin', or some such thing. 'Tain't the fust time I've known all hands to laugh all to onct, when I didn't see nothin'."