Baxter looked him over with his soft yet penetrating eyes, his gaze travelling slowly from the coarse boots covered with red clay to the boyish smile on the dark, weather-beaten face.
"You did not tell me what kind of work you were looking for," he observed at last. "Do you want to sweep out the warehouse or to keep the books?"
Ordway laughed. "I prefer to keep the books, but I can sweep out the warehouse," he replied.
"You can—can you?" said Baxter. His pipe, which was never out of his hand except when it was in his mouth, began to turn gray, and putting it between his teeth, he sucked hard at the stem for a minute.
"You're an educated man, then?"
"I've been to college—do you mean that?"
"You're fit for a clerk's position?"
"I am sure of it."
"Where did you work last?"
Ordway's hesitation was barely perceptible.
"I've been in business," he answered.
"On your own hook?" inquired Baxter.
"Yes, on my own hook."
"But you couldn't make a living at it?"
"No; I gave it up for several reasons."
"Well, I don't know your reasons, my man," observed Baxter, drily, "but I like your face."
"Thank you," said Ordway, and he laughed again with the sparkling gaiety which leaped first to his blue eyes.
"And so you expect me to take you without knowing a darn thing about you?" demanded Baxter.
Ordway nodded gravely.
"Yes, I hope that is what you will do," he answered.
"I may ask your name, I reckon, mayn't I?—if you have no particular objection."
"I don't mind telling you it's Smith," said Ordway, with his gaze on a huge pamphlet entitled "Smith's Almanac" lying on Baxter's desk. "Daniel Smith."
"Smith," repeated Baxter. "Well, it ain't hard to remember. If I warn't a blamed fool, I'd let you go," he added thoughtfully, "but there ain't much doubt, I reckon, about my being a blamed fool."
He rose from his chair with difficulty, and steadying his huge body, moved to the door, which he flung open with a jerk.
"If you've made up your mind dead sure to butt in, you might as well begin with the next sale," he said.
CHAPTER IV
The Dream Of Daniel Smith
HE had been recommended for lodging to a certain Mrs. Twine, and at five o'clock, when the day's work at Baxter's was over, he started up the street in a bewildered search for her house, which he had been told was situated immediately beyond the first turn on the brow of the hill. When he reached the corner there was no one in sight except a small boy who sat, crying loudly, astride a little whitewashed wooden gate. Beyond the boy there was a narrow yard filled with partly dried garments hung on clothes lines, which stretched from a young locust tree near the sidewalk to the front porch, where a man with a red nose was reading the local newspaper. As the man with the red nose paid no attention to the loud lamentations of the child, Ordway stopped by the gate and inquired sympathetically if he could be of help.
"Oh, he ain't hurt," remarked the man, throwing a side glance over his paper, "he al'ays yells like that when his Ma's done scrubbed him."
"She's washed me so clean that I feel naked," howled the boy.
"Well, you'll get over that in a year's time," observed Ordway cheerfully, "so suppose you leave off a minute now and show me the way to Mrs. Twine's."
At his request the boy stopped crying instantly, and stared up at him while the dirty tearmarks dried slowly on his cheeks.
"Thar ain't no way," he replied solemnly, "'cause she's my ma."
"Then jump down quickly and run indoors and tell her I'd like to see her."
"'T ain't no use. She won't come."
"Well, go and ask her. I was told to come here to look for board and lodging."
He glanced inquiringly at the man on the porch, who, engrossed in the local paper, was apparently oblivious of the conversation at the gate.
"She won't come 'cause she's washin' the rest of us," returned the boy, as he swung himself to the ground, "thar're six of us an' she ain't done but two. That's Lemmy she's got hold of now. Can't you hear him holler?"
He planted his feet squarely on the board walk, looked back at Ordway over his shoulder, and departed reluctantly with the message for his mother. At the end of a quarter of an hour, when Ordway had entered the gate and sat down in the cold wind on the front steps, the door behind him opened with a jar, and a large, crimson, untidy woman, splashed with soapsuds, appeared like an embodied tempest upon the threshold.
"Canty says you've come to look at the dead gentleman's room, suh," she began in a high voice, approaching her point with a directness which lost none of its force because of the panting vehemence with which she spoke.
"Baxter told me I might find board with you," explained Ordway in her first breathless pause.
"To be sure he may have the dead gentleman's room, Mag," put in the man on the porch, folding his newspaper, with a shiver, as he rose to his feet.
"I warn't thinkin' about lettin' that room agin'," said Mrs. Twine, crushing her husband's budding interference by the completeness with which she ignored his presence. "But it's jest as well, I reckon, for a defenceless married woman to have a stranger in the house. Though for the matter of that," she concluded in a burst of domestic confidence, "the woman that ain't a match for her own husband without outside help ain't deservin' of the pleasure an' the blessin' of one." Then as the man with the red nose slunk shamefacedly into the passage, she added in an undertone to Ordway, "and now if you'll jest step inside, I'll show you the spare room that I've got to let."
She led the way indoors, scolding shrilly as she passed through the hall, and up the little staircase, where several half-dressed children were riding, with shrieks of delight, down the balustrade. "You needn't think you've missed a scrubbing because company's come," she remarked angrily, as she stooped to box the ears of a small girl lying flat on her stomach upon the landing. "Such is my taste for cleanness," she explained to Ordway, "that when my hands once tech the soap it's as much as I can do to keep 'em back from rubbin' the skin off. Thar 're times even when the taste is so ragin' in my breast that I can hardly wait for Saturday night to come around. Yet I ain't no friend to license whether it be in whiskey or in soap an' water. Temperance is my passion and that's why, I suppose, I came to marry a drunkard."
With this tragic confession, uttered in a matter of fact manner, she produced a key from the pocket of her blue gingham apron, and ushered Ordway into a small, poorly furnished room, which overlooked the front street and the two bared locust trees in the yard.
"I kin let you have this at three dollars a week," she said, "provided you're content to do yo' own reachin' at the table. Thar ain't any servant now except a twelve year old darkey."
"Yes, I'll take it," returned Ordway, almost cheerfully; and when he had agreed definitely as to the amount of service he was to receive, he closed the creaking door behind her, and looked about the crudely furnished apartment with a sense of ownership such as he had not felt since the afternoon upon which he had stood in his wife's sitting-room awaiting his arrest. He thought of the Florentine gilding, the rich curtains, the long mirrors, the famous bronze Mercury and the Corot landscape with the sunlight upon it—and then of the terrible oppression