Chapter 4

WALTER MAKES HIS BOW TO HIS EMPLOYER

The last day of June dawned dismal and foggy. A grim gray veil enshrouded Lovell's Harbor, rendering it cold and dreary. Had one been visiting it for the first time he would probably have turned his back on its forlornity and never have come again. The sea was wrapped in a mist so dense that its vast reach of waves was as complete a secret as if they had been actually curtained off from the land. On every leaf trembled beads of moisture and from the eaves of the sodden houses the water dripped with a melancholy trickle.

It was wretched weather for the Crowninshields to be coming to Surfside and yet that they were already on the way the jangling telephone attested.

"I wouldn't have had 'em put in an appearance a day like this for the world!" fretted Jerry Taylor, who for some unaccountable reason seemed to hold himself responsible for the general dampness and discomfort. "Fog ain't nothin' to us folks who are used to it. We've lived by the ocean long enough to love it no matter how it behaves. But for it to go actin' up this way for strangers is a pity. It gives 'em a bad impression same's a ill-behaved child does."

"But you can't help it," ventured Walter, who had just come into sight.

"N-o. Still, somehow, I'm always that anxious for the place to look it's prettiest that I feel to blame when it doesn't."

The boy nodded sympathetically. Deep down within him lay an inarticulate affection for the hamlet in which he had been born and the great throbbing sea that lapped its shores. He therefore understood Jerry's attitude and shared in it far more than he would, perhaps, have been willing to admit. Nevertheless he merely knocked the drops from his rubber hat, muttered that it was a rotten day, and loitered awkwardly about, wondering just what to do.

At last school was at an end. He had squeaked through the examinations with safety if not with glory, and having wheeled his small trunk up to Surfside on a wheelbarrow and deposited it in his room he speculated as to what to do next. There was plenty he might have done. There was no question about that. He might at the very moment have been unpacking his possessions, hanging his clothes in the closet, and stowing away his undergarments in the chest of drawers provided for the purpose. Moreover, there were books to tuck into place on his bookshelves and other minor duties relative to the settling of his new quarters.

Oh, there were a score of things he might have done. His Highness, however, was in much too agitated a frame of mind to turn his attention to such humdrum tasks. Furthermore, since he had pledged himself to bear a hand wherever it was needed, he felt he should be on the spot and within call. And if beneath this worthy motive lurked a certain desire to see whatever there was to be seen, who can say his curiosity was not pardonable? One does not set forth every day to make his fortune. The adventure was very alluring to him who had never tried it.

Possibly Jerry Taylor had enough of the boy in him to understand this. However that might be, he did not hurry the lad indoors to unpack even though he sensed full well that precious time was being wasted; instead, as he started across the lawn he called back over his shoulder:

"If you've nothing better to do, sonny, than to stand shivering in the barn, come along up to the house with me and help bring up some wood; I'm going to start fires burning in the rooms to cheer the folks up and dry 'em off when they get here. To my mind there ain't nothin' like an open fire to right you if you're out of sorts. And likely they will be out of sorts. Mr. Crowninshield will, that's sure. Now I myself don't mind a gray day off and on. It's sorter restful and calming. But these city people can't see it that way. My eye, no! They begin to groan so you can hear 'em a mile away the minute the sun is clouded over; and by the second day of a good northeaster they are done for. You'd think to listen to 'em that the end of the world had come. No motoring! No golf! No tennis! Why, they might as well be dead. They begin to wonder why they ever came here anyway and talk of nothing but how nice it is in New York. Why, you would split your sides laughing to hear Mr. Crowninshield moan for Wall Street and Fifth Avenue. Three days of fog is his limit. After that ropes couldn't tie him here. He tumbles his traps into a suitcase and off he goes to the city."

"Great Scott!" Walter ejaculated.

"Oh, 'tain't a bad thing to have him go, take it by and large. He ain't much addition here when he's fidgeting round, poking into everything and suggesting it better be done some other way. He's much better off somewhere else--he's happier and so are we. By and by he comes back again cheerful as if nothing had happened. Mebbe it's as well you should be told what's in store for you in foggy weather," concluded Jerry, with a touch of humor, "for you'll come in for your share together with the rest of us. Everybody gets it. Most likely you'll hear that an egg-beater is a much better thing to smooth down a dog's hair with than a brush; that all the world knows that and only an idiot uses anything else. Don't smile or venture a yip in reply. Just say you'll be glad to use the egg-beater if he prefers it. Remark that, in fact, you quite hanker to try the egg-beater. To agree with him always takes the wind out of his sails quicker'n anything else. He'll calm down soon as he sees you aren't ruffled and go off and hunt up somebody else to reform. And when the fog blows out to sea his temper will go with it and he will forget he ever suggested an egg-beater. Oh, we understand the boss. He's all right! If you only know how to take him you'll never have a mite of trouble with him."

By this time they had reached the house and having removed rubbers and dripping coats they entered the basement door and proceeded to the cellar. It was not the sort of cellar with which His Highness was familiar although his mother's cellar was clean, as cellars go. This one was immaculate. Indeed it seemed, on glancing about, that one might have done far worse than live in the Crowninshields' cellar. Every inch of the interior was light, dry, and spotless with whitewash, paint, and tiling. Even the coal that filled the bins had taken on a borrowed glory and shone as if polished.

"This is my kingdom!" announced Jerry proudly. "You could eat off the floor were you so minded."

"I should say you could!"

"When once you've set out it's no more work to keep things shipshape than to let 'em go helter-skelter. Now here's a basket. Load into it as many of those birch logs as you can carry and bring 'em upstairs. I've kindlings there already."

While Walter was obeying these instructions Jerry himself was piling up on his lank arm a pyramid of wood, and together the two ascended the stairway and tiptoed through the kitchen. As they went the boy caught a glimpse of gleaming porcelain walls; ebon-hued stoves resplendent with nickel trimmings; a blue and white tiled floor; and smart little window hangings that matched it.

"They don't cook here!" he gasped.

"Everything in the house is electric," explained Jerry, as if he were conducting a sight-seeing party through the Louvre. "All the baking, washing, ironing, bread-making, and cleaning is done by electricity. There's even an electric sewing-machine to sew with, and an electric breeze to keep you cool while you're doing it. If I hadn't seen the thing with my own eyes I'd never have believed it."

He paused to watch the effect of his words.

"'Tain't much like the way you and me are used to," he grinned.

"No."

"I suppose in time you get so nothing knocks the breath out of you. I'm just coming to looking round here without feeling all of a flutter. The place did used to turn me endwise at first, it was so white and awesome. I actually hated to set foot within its walls. Seems 's if my fingers was always all thumbs every time I come inside the room. Still, I had to come in though; there were things I had to do here. So I schooled myself to forget the whiteness, and the blueness, and all the silvery glisten and call it just a kitchen. Besides, I found that grand as it is, it ain't a patch on some of the other things in the house. My eye! It's like the Arabian Nights!"

The Cape Codder stopped quite speechless from retailing these marvels.

"Yes," he went on presently, "they've got almost everything the electric market has to offer. Last year, though, Mr. Dick got a hankerin' for a wireless set. It appears that you can buy an outfit that will make you hear concerts, sermons, speeches, and about everything that's going on; at least that's what Mr. Crowninshield undertook to tell me, though whether he was fooling or not I couldn't quite make out. Still, it may be true. After what I've seen in this house I'm ready to believe about anything. Was he to say you could put your eye to a hole in the wall and see the Chinese eating rice in Hongkong it wouldn't astonish me."

Walter laughed.

"You _can_ hear music and such things. My brother, who is a wireless operator, told me so. They broadcast all sorts of entertainments--songs, band-playing, sermons, and stories so that those who have amateur apparatus can listen in."

"Broadcast? Listen in?" repeated Jerry vaguely.

"Broadcasting means sending out stuff of a specified wave length from a central station so that amateurs with a range of from two hundred to three hundred meters can pick it up."

Jerry halted midway in the passage.

"Do you mean to say," inquired he, "that a person can sling a song off the top of a wire into the air and tell it to stop when it's gone two hundred meters?"

"Something like that," chuckled Walter, amused.

"I don't believe it!" declared Jerry bluntly.

"But it can be done; really it can."

"No doubt you think you are speaking the truth, youngster," returned the skeptic mildly. "Somebody's stuffed you, though. Such a thing couldn't be, any way in the world."

As if that were the end of the matter Jerry opened a door confronting him and stepped into the great hall, the splendor of which instantly blotted every other thought from Walter King's mind.

Not only was the interior spacious and imposing but it was bewilderingly beautiful and contained marvel after marvel that the lad longed to examine. The large tiger-skin rugs that covered the floor piqued his interest, so did the chiming clock, and a fountain that welled up and splashed into a marble pool filled with goldfish. Why, he could have entertained himself for an hour with this latter wonder alone!

There was, however, no leisure for loitering for on hearing the cadence of the chimes Jerry ejaculated in consternation:

"Eleven o'clock already! Land alive! We'll have to get the fires blazing lively. Why, the folks may be here any minute now. Here, hand me one of those long sticks you've got, sonny; or rather--wait! You know how to lay a fire, don't you?"

"I reckon I've done such a thing once or twice in my lifetime," was the dry response.

"Then go ahead. You build this fire while I go upstairs and start the others," said Jerry. "After you've got this one going you can make one in the library, that red room through those curtains."

"All right."

"Step lively! Don't take all day about it."

With awkward gesture Jerry swooped up some of the logs with his long arm and disappeared into the hall above.

As for Walter, he had built too many fires in his mother's kitchen stove and started too many blazes of driftwood on the beach to be at a loss as to how to proceed. Almost in a twinkling scarlet flames were roaring up the wide-throated chimneys and he had placed fenders before them to keep in captivity any straying sparks. While he looked about for a spot in which to deposit the remaining birch sticks there was a sound of horns, a crunching of gravel, and Jerry's scurrying feet came pattering down the stairs.

"It's the folks!" he announced excitedly. "We warn't a minute too soon. Tuck those logs into the brass box; pick up your cap, laddie, and light out of here quick."

The order, alas, came too late. His Highness had only time enough to hurry the birch wood into the box and bang down the cover before flying footsteps filled the house, maids appeared from every door, and there was a blast of wind, a babel of voices, and the discomfited boy found himself face to face with his employers.

His first impression of Mr. Crowninshield, muffled to the chin in a heavy motor coat, was of a large, red-cheeked man who, although he moved with little apparent stir, nevertheless in an incredibly short interval had shaken hands with most of the servants, directed where each piece of luggage was to be put, commented on a new lock on the front door, and noticed that the clock was two minutes slow. His moving eye had also been caught by the roses on the table and he turned to ask from which garden they came.

"All this he did, Ma," explained Walter to his mother afterward, "before you could say Jack Robinson. And in between he was scolding all the time about the weather and saying how idiotic it was to leave a warm, comfortable city like New York and come to a damp hole like the Cape."

"Is this the best day you could manage to get together, Jerry?" growled he. "Pretty beastly, I call it."

"It certainly is wet, sir."

"Wet! I should say it was! It's infernally wet! How long is it going to keep up like this?"

"I can't say, sir."

"Well, you have the sun out to-morrow or I shall go straight back where I came from. Little old New York is good enough for me when the place looks like this."

At that instant he espied His Highness lurking near a distant window.

"Who are you, young man?" he called.

"Walter King, sir."

"Oh, the young chap who is going to look after the dogs?"

"Yes, sir."

"Humph! Like dogs?"

"I--yes, sir," answered the lad at a warning glance from Jerry.

Ruthlessly the hawklike eyes devoured him.

"So you think you can take care of a lot of prize pups, do you?"

"I am going to try," was the modest reply.

"You can't stop with trying, my son. You've got to do it," announced the man sharply.

"I shall do my best."

"That is all I shall ask."

A sudden smile melted the stern countenance into geniality and the master held out a hand.

"So King is your name."

"Yes, sir."

"It is a royal one and gives you something to live up to."

As the boy did not know what to answer he was silent.

"And you like dogs?" said the inquisitor more kindly.

"I like all animals," returned Walter evasively, "and I am sure I shall like your dogs because you always like anything you take care of."

"So you do! I remember when I was about your age I tamed an old brown weasel. He was a wretch of a creature with scarcely a virtue--cruel, deceitful, cold-blooded; and yet I grew to love that brute as much as if he had had the gentleness of a dove. You know how it is."

Walter nodded. For the moment the two came together on a plane of real contact and sympathy, and the smile the elder gave him bound the lad to his new employer as no spoken words could possibly have done.

But a second later Mr. Crowninshield's mood had changed and he was storming at Mary, the waitress, and demanding whether she meant to freeze them all by leaving the outside door open. Walter could see the girl flush red and as he leaped forward to close the door she flashed him a grateful, tremulous smile. Then Mr. Crowninshield turned toward his wife.

"Mollie," he replied, "this is Walter King who is going to look after your dogs. Come and speak to him."

The mistress of the house came. She was wearing a long blue traveling coat and a jaunty little hat against which the gold of her hair was resplendent as sunshine. Tucked under her arm was a wee dog with soft brown fur and sharp little eyes. Mrs. Crowninshield was very pretty, especially when she spoke. As Walter looked into her face he found it so amazingly youthful that it was difficult for him to believe she was actually the mother of a grown son and daughter.

"So it is you who are to be master of the kennels?" smiled she, showing her even white teeth.

"Yes, Mrs. Crowninshield," faltered His Highness, a trifle overcome by this new title.

From head to foot her glance swept over him.

"Well," said she at length, "if you keep the puppies as tidy as you keep yourself I fancy we shall get on nicely together."

A flood of color mounted to the lad's forehead. He had not anticipated such close inspection and instinctively he began to fumble with the corner of his sweater and look nervously down at his hands. They must be very dirty from making the fires. And he had been actually greeting Mr. and Mrs. Crowninshield with paws like those! The horror of it chilled his blood.

Apparently the woman, with swift intuition, read his thought for she dimpled at him in friendly fashion.

"Do not worry about your hands, my boy," said she. "You have been doing useful things to soil them, things to bid us welcome and make us more comfortable. I can see you started out clean. I have a boy of my own, you know. Richard," she went on, turning to a tall youth who was bending over the luggage, "this is Walter King who is coming to look after the kennels. He must be about your age."

The boys stared at each other awkwardly.

"I am fifteen," announced Walter for the lack of something more brilliant to say.

"I beat you by a year," was the shy retort of the other boy. "I am sixteen."

Then Nancy interrupted them with her breezy comment.

"Fifteen, are you?" she put in. "My, I should not have thought it! You must be pretty crazy about dogs to give up all your summer vacation to them."

"My mother needs the money," was the simple answer.

"Oh!"

He saw her blush as if regretting her thoughtless remark.

"It is nice of you to help your mother," she observed quickly. "I am sure you will not find the place so bad. We shall try to make you happy."

With that she was gone but she left behind her a memory of sweetness and appealing kindliness.

"You might run out to the garage now, sonny," declared Jerry with a desire to help the lad make his escape. "They will be landing the pups there soon, and you may as well be on hand."

Only too glad to beat a retreat His Highness picked up his cap and slipping from the room raced across the lawn in the direction of his own quarters.