A GOOD LISTENER
The prosperity of a joke lieth in the ear of thine friend.
_----Shakespeare._
WHILE John Watson was busy fixing the dilapidated stables, he was
joined by his nearest neighbour, Thomas Perkins, who was of a very
sociable nature, and loved the sound of his own voice.
Thomas Perkins was a man of middle age, a stout man with a florid
countenance and dewy blue eyes; his skin was of that quality that is
easily roughened by the wind. He always spoke rapidly, and without
punctuation.
"How do you do, Mr. Watson, how do you do? Just movin' in, eh? Well,
sir, I'm glad to see you; the little house looked lonely since Bill
and the wife left. Poor Bill, he was a decent chap, too; but he lost
his bet."
"What was the bet about?" Mr. Watson asked, while the other man
stopped to light his pipe.
"Well, you see, Bill bet the Government ten dollars that he could
make a living on this farm, and the Government puts up the farm
against the ten dollars that he can't. That's the way it goes. Nearly
every body wins when they bet with the Government. I made the same
bet twenty years ago, and it would take ten thousand dollars now to
get me off of old seventeen, north half; you see, I won my bet, but
poor Bill lost his. Still, it wasn't a fair race. Bill would have won
it if the Government hadn't put the whiskey in his way. You can be
pretty sure it's whiskey that wins it for the Government nearly every
time when the homesteader loses. You'll win yours, all right, no fear
of that. I made my start when I was nine years old; left home with
the wind in my back--that's all I ever got from home--and I started
right in to make my pile, and I guess I haven't done too bad, eh?
What's that?"
Mr. Watson had not spoken, but the other man nudged him genially and
did not resent his silence at all.
"First money I ever earned was from an old Scotch woman, picking
potatoes at eleven cents a day, and I worked at it twenty-five hours
a day, up an hour before day--there was no night there, you bet, it
was like heaven that way; and then when I got my sixty-six cents,
didn't she take it from me to keep. It was harder to get it back from
her than to earn it--oh, gosh! you know what the Scotch are like. Ye
see, my mother died when I was a little fellow, and the old man
married again, a great big, raw-boned, rangey lady. I says: 'Not for
mine,' when I saw her, and lit out--never got a thing from home and
only had about enough clothes on me to flag a train--and I've
railroaded and worked in lumber shanties. But a farm's the place to
make money. How many of a family have ye?"
"Nine," John Watson said, after some deliberation.
"Well, sir, you'll save a lot of hired help; that's the deuce, payin'
out money to hired help, and feedin' them, too. I lost two of my boys
when they were just little lads, beginnin' to be some good. Terrible
blow on me; they'd a been able to handle a team in a year or two, if
they'd a lived--twins they were, too. After raisin' them for six
years, it was hard--year of the frozen wheat, too--oh, yes, 'tain't
all easy. Now, there's old Bruce Simpson, back there at Pelican Lake.
It would just do you good to be there of a mornin.' He has four boys
and four girls, and just at the clip of five o'clock them lads jump
out of bed--the eight feet hit the floor at the same minute and come
leppin' down the stairs four abreast, each fellow with a lantern,
and get out to the stable and feed up. The four girls are just the
same--fine, smart, turkey-faced girls they are, with an arm like a
stove-pipe. You'll be all right with the help you've got--you'll have
nearly enough to run a threshin' mill. Any girls?"
"Two girls," said John Watson.
"Two! That's not so bad--they'll be needed all right to help the
missus. I have two girls, too; but one of them's no good--too much
like the mother's folks. You know the Grahams are all terrible
high-headed people--one of the old man's brothers is a preacher down
in the States--Professor Graham, they call him--and sir, they can't
get over it. Martha, my oldest girl, she's all right--straight
Perkins, Martha is--no nonsense about her; but Edith, she's all for
gaddin' round and dressin' up. 'Pa,' she says one day to me, 'I want
a piano'--that was the Graham comin' out of her--and I says, says I
'Edie, my dear, run along now and let me hear you play a toon on the
cream separator or the milkin'-stool,' says I; 'there's more money in
it.' But, by George! the wife kept at me, too, about this piano
business, just pesterin' the very life out o' me, until I got sick of
it. But I got them one at last--I was at a sale in Brandon, last
fall, and I got one for eighty dollars. I told them it cost four
hundred--you have to do it, when you're dealin' with wimmin'--they
like things to cost a lot. Well, sir, I got the worth of my money,
let me tell you. It's a big, long, dappled one, all carved with
grapes and lions. Two or three people can play it at once, and it's
big enough to make a bed on it when there's company. But what do you
think of this now? Oh, it has clean disgusted me. They don't like it
because it won't go in the parlour door, and there isn't room for it
in the hall, and if you'll believe me, it's sittin' out there in the
machine-shed--so I've got to take it down to Winnipeg and try to
change it.
"You see, that's what comes o' lettin' young ones go to school. Since
Edie got her education she thinks she knows more than the rest of us.
My boy, young Bob--but we call him Bud--he's been to school a good
deal; but he and Steadman's boy had a row, and I guess Bud was put
out--I don't know. I was glad enough to get him home to draw poles
from the big bush. Old George Steadman is a sly old rooster, and the
other day he comes up to me in Millford, snuffin like a settin'
goose, and I saw there was something on his mind. 'What's wrong,
George?' I said. 'It's about them oats you promised me for seed,' he
said. I had promised him some of my White Banner oats this spring.
'Ye'll let me have them, will ye?' says he. 'I was wonderin' if it
made any difference about the boys quarrelin',' says he. I says: 'No,
George, it don't make no difference; if you have the money you can
have the oats, but don't expect me to take no security on mortgaged
property,' says I."
Mr. Perkins slapped his patient listener on the back and laughed
uproariously.
"You see, that was the worst thing I could say to him, for he's so
eternally proud of his land. He has nineteen hundred acres all paid
for, and him and the missus is always talkin' about it."
"Did he have much when he started?" John Watson asked.
"Well, I should say not. His wife had some money; but, you bet, she
has it yet. She was a Hunter; they're as tight as the bark to the
tree, every one of them--they'd skin a flea for the hide and tallow.
Well, I'll just tell you, she lent him forty dollars to buy a cow
with the first year they were in this country, with the understandin'
he'd pay her back in the fall. Well, the crop didn't turn out well
and he couldn't pay her, so she sold the cow, and the kids had to do
without milk. Well, I must be goin' now to see how things are goin'.
I don't work much--I just kinda loaf around and take care of the
stock. How would you like a yoke of oxen to plough with? I got two
big husky brutes out there in the pasture that know how to plow--I
got them on a horse deal--and they've never done a stroke of work for
me. Come on over with me and I'll fix you up with harness and all. I
got the whole thing."
John Watson looked at him in grateful surprise and thanked him for
such welcome help.
"Oh, don't say a word about it, John," Mr. Perkins said genially,
"I'll be glad to see the beggars having to work. Look out for the
black one--he's a sly old dog, and looks to me like an ox that would
keep friends with a man for ten years to get a good chance to land a
kick on him at last."
When John Watson went over for the oxen, Mrs. Perkins came out
bareheaded to make kind inquiries for his wife and family. From
within came the mellow hum of the cream-separator, as Martha, the
steady member of the family, played a profitable tune thereon.
That night Pearl called all her family to come out and see the
sunset. The western sky was one vast blue lake, dotted with burning
boats that ever changed their form and colour; each shore of the lake
was slashed into innumerable bays, edged with brightest gold; above
this were richest shades' of pale yellow, deepening into orange,
while thick gray mountains of clouds were banked around the horizon,
bearing on their sullen faces here and there splashes of colour like
stray rose-petals.
John Watson watched it silently, and then said, more to himself than
to anyone else: "It is putty, ain't it?"