“Aw, haw! Them’s the boys as knows how to live. I wouldn’ like nothin’ better on a day like this than to set out there in one o’ them easy chairs an’ do up about a pound o’ tobacco. Come now, wouldn’t that be the ideal life for your Uncle Dudley?” “It truly would,” I replied sadly but with an inherent desire to tease, “only I don’t think my Uncle Dudley is doing so very badly under the circumstances. I notice he isn’t losing any flesh.” “Well, I dunno. I’m a little stout, I’ll admit. Still, them conditions would be more congenial-like. I ain’t as active as I used to be. A nice yacht an’ some good old fifty-cent cigars an’ a cool breeze ’d just about do for me.” “You’re too modest, John. You want too little. You ought to ask for something more suited to your Lucullian instincts. What do you say to a house in Fifth Avenue, a country place at Newport, and the friendship of a few dukes and earls?” “Well, I’m not backward,” he replied. “If them things was to come my way I guess I could live up to ’em. Aw, haw!” “Truly, truly, John, you’re quite right, but you might throw in a few shovelfuls of shavings just to show that there are no hard feelings between you and the company while you’re waiting for all this. I notice your steam is getting low, eh? What?” “Hang the steam! If the road was decent they’d give a man coal to burn. It takes a hundred tons of shavin’s a day to keep this blinged old cormorant goin’. Think of me havin’ to stand here all day an’ shovelin’ in shavin’s! Seems to me all I do here is shovel. I’m an engineer, not a fireman. They ought to gimme a man for that, by rights.” “Quite so! Quite so! We’ll see about that later--only, for the present, the shavings for yours. Back to the shovel, John!” The tone was heavily bantering. “Well, the steam was gettin’ a little low,” John would cheerfully acknowledge, once he was able to resume his position in the doorway. It was these painful interruptions which piqued him so. Out of such chaffering and bickering as this it was that the spirit of the _Idlewild_ finally took its rise. It came up from the sea of thought, I presume. “What’s the matter with us having a boat of our own, John?” I said to him one day. “Here we are, out here on the bounding main, or mighty near it. This is as good as any craft, this old shop. Ease the thing around and hoist the Jolly Roger, and I’ll sail you up to White Plains. What’s the matter with calling her the _Idlewild_? The men will furnish the idle, and the bosses will furnish the wild, eh? How’s that for an appropriate title?” “Haw! Haw!” exclaimed stout John. “Bully! We’ll fix ’er up to-day. You be the captain an’ I’ll be the mate an’----”