it. Why, one of my last voyages in the schooner Samuel Emory, I had a educated cook, feller that had graduated from one of them correspondence schools. He had his diploma framed and hung up on the wall of the galley along with tintypes of two or three of his wives, and pictures cut out of the Police News, and the like of that. And cook! Why, say! one of the fo'mast hands ate half a dozen of that cook's saleratus biscuit and fell overboard. If he hadn't been tangled up in his cod line, so we could haul him up by that, he'd have been down yet. He'd never have riz of his own accord, not with them biscuits in him. And as for his pie! the mate ate one of them bakeshop paper plates one time, thinking 'twas under crust; and he kept sayin' how unusual tender 'twas, at that. Now, what good was education to that cook? Why--"
"Cut it out!" says Peter T., disgusted. "Who's talking about cooks? These fellers ain't cooks--they're--"
"I know. They're waiters. Now, there 'tis again. When I give an order and there's any back talk, I want to understand it. You take a passel of college fellers, like you want to hire for waiters. S'pose I tell one of 'em to do something, and he answers back in Greek or Hindoo, or such. _I_ can't tell what he says. I sha'n't know whether to bang him over the head or give him a cigar. What's the matter with the waiters we had last year? They talked Irish, of course, but I understood the most of that, and when I didn't 'twas safe to roll up my sleeves and begin arguing. But--"
"Oh, ring off!" says Peter. "Twenty-three!"
And so they had it, back and forth. I didn't say nothing. I knew how 'twould end. If Peter T. Brown thought 'twas good judgment to hire a mess of college boys for waiters, fellers who could order up the squab in pigeon-English and the ham in hog-Latin, I didn't care, so long as the orders and boarders got filled and the payroll didn't have growing pains. I had considerable faith in Brown's ideas, and he was as set on this one as a Brahma hen on a plaster nest-egg.
"It'll give tone to the shebang," says he, referring to the hotel; "and we want to keep the Old Home House as high-toned as a ten-story organ factory. And as for education, that's a matter of taste. Me, I'd just as soon have a waiter that bashfully admitted 'Wee, my dam,' as I would one that pushed 'Shur-r-e, Moike!' edge-ways out of one corner of his mouth and served the lettuce on top of the lobster, from principle, to keep the green above the red. When it comes to tone and tin, Cap'n, you trust your Uncle Pete; he hasn't been sniffling around the tainted-money bunch all these days with a cold in his head."
So it went his way finally, as I knew it would, and when the Old Home opened up on June first, the college waiters was on hand. And they was as nice a lot of boys as ever handled plates and wiped dishes for their board and four dollars a week. They was poor, of course, and working their passage through what they called the "varsity," but they attended to business and wa'n't a mite set up by their learning.
And they made a hit with the boarders, especially the women folks. Take the crankiest old battle ship that ever cruised into breakfast with diamond headlights showing and a pretty daughter in tow, and she would eat lumpy oatmeal and scorched eggs and never sound a distress signal. How could she, with one of them nice-looking gentlemanly waiters hanging over her starboard beam and purring, "Certainly, madam," and "Two lumps or one, madam?" into her ear? Then, too, she hadn't much time to find fault with the grub, having to keep one eye on the daughter. The amount of complaints that them college boys saved in the first fortnight was worth their season's wages, pretty nigh. Before June was over the Old Home was full up and we had to annex a couple of next-door houses for the left-overs.
I was skipper for one of them houses, and Jonadab run the other. Each of us had a cook and a waiter, a housekeeper and an up-stairs girl. My housekeeper was the boss prize in the package. Her name was Mabel Seabury, and she was young and quiet and as pretty as the first bunch of Mayflowers in the spring. And a lady--whew! The first time I set opposite to her at table I made up my mind I wouldn't drink out of my sasser if I scalded the lining off my throat.
She was city born and brought up, but she wa'n't one of your common "He! he! ain't you turrible!" lunch-counter princesses, with a head like a dandelion gone to seed and a fish-net waist. You bet she wa'n't! Her dad had had money once, afore he tried to beat out Jonah and swallow the stock exchange whale. After that he was skipper of a little society library up to Cambridge, and she kept house for him. Then he died and left her his blessing, and some of Peter Brown's wife's folks, that knew her when she was well off, got her the job of housekeeper here with us.
The only trouble she made was first along, and that wa'n't her fault. I thought at one time we'd have to put up a wire fence to keep them college waiters away from her. They hung around her like a passel of gulls around a herring boat. She was nice to 'em, too, but when you're just so nice to everybody and not nice enough to any special one, the prospect ain't encouraging. So they give it up, but there wa'n't a male on the place, from old Dr. Blatt, mixer of Blatt's Burdock Bitters and Blatt's Balm for Beauty, down to the boy that emptied the ashes, who wouldn't have humped himself on all fours and crawled eight miles if she'd asked him to. And that includes me and Cap'n Jonadab, and we're about as tough a couple of women-proof old hulks as you'll find afloat.
Jonadab took a special interest in her. It pretty nigh broke his heart to think she was running my house instead of his. He thought she'd ought to be married and have a home of her own.
"Well," says I, "why don't she get married then? She could drag out and tie up any single critter of the right sex in this neighborhood with both hands behind her back."
"Humph!" says he. "I s'pose you'd have her marry one of these soup-toting college chaps, wouldn't you? Then they could live on Greek for breakfast and Latin for dinner and warm over the leavings for supper. No, sir! a girl hasn't no right to get married unless she gets a man with money. There's a deck-load of millionaires comes here every summer, and I'm goin' to help her land one of 'em. It's my duty as a Christian," says he.
One evening, along the second week in July 'twas, I got up from the supper-table and walked over toward the hotel, smoking, and thinking what I'd missed in not having a girl like that set opposite me all these years. And, in the shadder of the big bunch of lilacs by the gate, I see a feller standing, a feller with a leather bag in his hand, a stranger.
"Good evening," says I. "Looking for the hotel, was you?"
He swung round, kind of lazy-like, and looked at me. Then I noticed how big he was. Seemed to me he was all of seven foot high and broad according. And rigged up--my soul! He had on a wide, felt hat, with a whirligig top onto it, and a light checked suit, and gloves, and slung more style than a barber on Sunday. If I'D wore them kind of duds they'd have had me down to Danvers, clanking chains and picking straws, but on this young chap they looked fine.
"Good evening," says the seven-footer, looking down and speaking to me cheerful. "Is this the Old Ladies' Home--the Old Home House, I should say?"
"Yes, sir," says I, looking up reverent at that hat.
"Right," he says. "Will you be good enough to tell me where I can find the proprietor?"
"Well," says I, "I'm him; that is, I'm one of him. But I'm afraid we can't accommodate you, mister, not now. We ain't got a room nowheres that ain't full."
He knocked the ashes off his cigarette. "I'm not looking for a room," says he, "except as a side issue. I'm looking for a job."
"A job!" I sings out. "A JOB?"
"Yes. I understand you employ college men as waiters. I'm from Harvard, and--"
"A waiter?" I says, so astonished that I could hardly swaller. "Be you a waiter?"
"_I_ don't know. I've been told so. Our coach used to say I was the best waiter on the team. At any rate I'll try the experiment."
Soon's ever I could gather myself together I reached across and took hold of his arm.
"Son," says I, "you come with me and turn in. You'll feel better in the morning. I don't know where I'll put you, unless it's the bowling alley, but I guess that's your size. You oughtn't to get this