Mr. William Brice PeverleyBilly Peverley, “of New York and Boston,” as he liked to call himself—stood on the station platform at Lake Umsit and watched the tail-lights of the train winking redly at him as they dwindled rapidly in the gloom. When they had shrunk quite away ’round a curve, he sauntered into the tiny station, looking for the baggagemaster. Master there was none; only a very bony young man with red hands and a singularly fuzzy lip. Him he hailed:
“Boy! Oh, boy! I say, do you know where I can get any one to row me over to Camp Umsit, my sister’s—that is, Mrs. Norton’s camp, you know? I'll pay half a dollar!”
“Wa’al, mista, I dunno; p’r’aps I kin carry you over if you don’t mind a leak.” Fuzzy-lip carefully set a glass lamp on the telegraph table and removed the chimney with deliberation. “But, I vum, mista,” he continued, “whatever possesses you to wanta git thar, anyhow? Why, it ain’t be’n used fer three year—that is, by them is owns it, an’ now—”
“You said you had a boat?” interrupted Billy, with some asperity. “When can you row me over?”
“Right off, right square off, mista!” answered the unperturbed one, lighting his lamp and replacing the chimney. “Right plum’ off! D’ you mind settin’ outside the deepo’? I’ve gotta lock up fer the night. I'll put the lamp in the winder; they’s a truck to set on, right outside.”
Billy grumbled a little to himself, but said nothing; Fuzzy very deliberately locked up and melted away into the surrounding gloom.
“I’ll be back right off!” he called to Billy. “Set right thar an’ make yourself to home!”
A hasty word rose to Billy’s lips, but he choked it back and, taking his pipe and tobacco, seated himself on the truck and made ready to smoke. Fumbling for matches in his pocket, his hand touched a paper. He drew it forth.
“The deuce!” he exclaimed. “Sister’s letter! You’re at the bottom of all this, you good-for-nothing sheet! Here I am, buried in the Maine wilderness, thousands, millions of miles from Beacon street and the Loungers’, all on account of you! Oh, I'll get even yet; I’ll roll you up to make pipe-lights, that’s what!”
He cast a troubled eye over the page. By the light of Fuzzy’s oil-lamp the writing looked big and scratchy. The paper bore the seal of the Ponce de Leon, and it said:
Billy read it all through, from beginning to end. He groaned softly to himself. “‘What a lark!’” he quoted. “M-m-mm, yes, uber nicht! She wishes she were a man! So do I, about a thousand times more than she does! And Aline’s right back of her in everything, too; that’s the deuce of it, for Aline’s certainly a little thoroughbred if there ever was one. Woe, woe! How much longer is that fool boy going to keep me waiting, I'd like to know? Say, I’d like to have him by the neck—perhaps I wouldn’t teach him the quickstep, eh?”
He struck a match and moodily lighted his pipe. It was growing really late; stars began to wink and glimmer; several millions of little new frogs in a near-by cove shrilled insistently; mist glimmered white through a cedar swamp where a whippoor-will was calling its insistent command. Once in a while Billy heard a drum-drum-drumming, very far away, which began slowly and ended in a muffled roulade. No one was at hand to tell him about Mr. Partridge’s wooing, so he only listened, smoked, and marvelled greatly.
“By Jove!” he told himself, “this may not be so bad, after all!”
After he had burned two pipefuls of fine-cut, he saw Fuzzy come suddenly back out of the night, bearing a lantern, keys, and a long-handled dipper.
“All right, mista,” the youth remarked, in a perfectly toneless voice, “we'll cut across the medder to th’ cove.”
Billy, a bit chastened, picked up his suit-case and followed his guide, who led him down a path over a stile, and finally to a rotting wharf where a boat lay half-submerged, with a pail floating ’round inside.
“We gotta bail some,” said Fuzzy. “Dipper or pail fer you?”
Billy’s eyebrows wrinkled to a frown, which a whimsical smile chased instantly away.
“The pail, please, if you really don’t care,” he answered, with exaggerated solicitude. “You’d better use the dipper, so as not to splatter your hands!”
“All right, mista; but I don’t mind water. Shucks, no! I’m used to it. Lived ’round the lake all my life.” His shoes and a certain ill-defined halo of fishiness bore witness to his veracity.
Billy carefully spread his handkerchief on the wharf and knelt down. Fuzzy grinned silently and mounted a seat. Both set to work.