Humorous stories; Washington (State) -- Fiction; Western stories
"Well, we had another cheerful evening, with Ellabelle sending word to
old Angus that she wanted me to have the necklace of brilliants with the
sapphire pendant, and the two faithful maids was to get suitable
keepsakes out of the rest of her jewels, and would her son always wear
the seal ring with her hair in it that she had given him when he was
twenty? And the old devil started in to tell how much he could have
saved by taking charge of the work in his own house, and how a union man
nowadays would do just enough to keep within the law, and so on; but he
got to yawning his head off and retired at nine, complaining that his
valet that morning had cleaned and pressed his overalls. Young Angus
looked very shrewd at me and again says: 'The old liar! He has some
other reason than money. He can't fool me.'
"I kind of gathered from both of them the truth of what happened the
next day. Young Angus himself showed up at the job about nine A.M., with
a bundle under his arm. 'Where's the old man?' his father heard him
demand of the carpenter, he usually speaking of old Angus as the
governor.
"'Here,' says he from the top of a stepladder in the entry which looked
as if a glacier had passed through it.
"'Could you put me to work?' says the boy.
"'Don't get me to shaking with laughter up here,' says the old brute.
'Can't you see I'd be in peril of falling off?'
"Young Angus undoes his bundle and reveals overalls and a jumper which
he gets into quickly. 'What do I do first?' says he.
"His father went on kalsomining and took never a look at him more. 'The
time has largely passed here,' says he, 'for men that haven't learned to
do something, but you might take some of the burnt umber there and work
it well into a big gob of that putty till it's brown enough to match the
woodwork. Should you display the least talent for that we may see later
if you've any knack with a putty knife.'
"The new hand had brought no lunch with him, but his father spared him a
few scraps from his own, and they all swigged beer from a pail of it
they sent out for. So the scandal was now complete in all its details.
The palatial dining-room that night, being a copy of a good church or
something from ancient Italy, smelled like a paint shop indeed--and
sounded like one through dinner. 'That woodwork will be fit to
second-coat first thing in the morning,' says old Angus. 'I'll have it
sandpapered in no time,' says the boy. 'Your sandpapering ain't bad,'
says the other, 'though you have next to no skill with a brush.' 'I
thought I was pretty good with that flat one though.' 'Oh, fair; just
fair! First-coating needs little finesse. There! I forgot to order more
rubbing varnish. Maybe the men will think of it.' And so on till they
both yawned themselves off to their Scotch Renaysence apartments.
Ellabelle had not yet learned the worst. It seemed to be felt that she
had a right to perish without suffering the added ignominy of knowing
her son was acting like a common wage slave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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