"If you feed a pig regular it don't ask to be petted," said Booge, "and that's the way with me, but you ought to give me some credit for the way I pitched in and labored in this here driftwood vineyard when you said to. I bet the prodigal son hated to get down to work after his pa's party, and yet he got to be quite a respected feller in his neighborhood. You oughtn't to think a man can't work because he don't. There's lots of fellers never seen the sea that has eat salt codfish."
"I guess you read that in a book," said Peter.
"I guess not," said Booge. "I never read but one book in my life. I read the Bible, unexpurgated edition, when I was a kid, and it sort of cured me of book readin'. There ain't hardly a comfortable word in it for an easy-goin' man. If the Bible had been published to-day it would have got some mighty severe criticism."
"Booge," said Peter suddenly, "how'd you ever happen to become a tramp?"
"How'd you ever happen to become a shanty-boatman?" asked Booge, grinning, but Peter was serious.
"I guess you 're right about that," he said. "I hadn't ought to object to what you are, when I'm what I am. I just let myself slide, was how. I had bad lungs was what was the matter with me, when I was a kid, so my pa bought me a farm and put a man on it to run it for me, and I just fooled around and tried to get husky and stout and by the time I was old enough to run the farm Father busted, and then a--certain circumstances took the farm from me, and I took to the river. It seemed like me and the river was old friends from ever so far back. So I stuck to it and it stuck to me, and--that's the story."
"Just run down hill," commented Booge cheerfully. "It's funny, ain't it, that water's about the only thing that don't get blamed for runnin' down hill? You and the river sort of run down together. What started me was something just about as common as lungs--it was wives. Yes sir, just plain wives!"
"Don't mean to say you had two of 'em?" asked Peter.
"Almost," said Booge. "I had one-half of that many. I'm a naturally happy man, and I've had all sorts of ups and downs, and as near as I can make out, a man can be happy in most any circumstances except where he don't give his wife the clothes she wants. My notion of hell is a place where a man has fifty wives and no money to buy clothes for 'em. My wife got to goin' through my pockets every night for money to buy clothes, so I skipped out."