IV. "BOB"
THE next morning I stayed at home to see about getting the stable builtin a hurry, but before I had finished breakfast Millington came over andsaid it was an ideal day for a little spin up to Port Lafayette in hisautomobile. He said the whole machine was in perfect order and we woulddash out to Port Lafayette, have a bath in the salt water, and comespinning back, and he told Isobel and me to get on our hats, and hewould have the car before the door in a minute.
Isobel and I hastily finished our coffee and put on our hats and wentout to the gate, for, although we were very eager to build the stable,we did not like to offend Millington by refusing his invitation, whenhe had asked us so often to go to Port Lafayette. In half an hour hearrived at the gate, and we climbed in.
Our usual custom, on these trips to Port Lafayette, was for Millingtonand me to sit in front, while Isobel and Mrs. Millington sat in therear. There was a nice little gate in the rear by which they couldenter.
You see, Millington's automobile was just a little old. I should not goso far as to say it was the first automobile ever made. It was probablythe thirteenth, and Millington was probably the thirteenth owner. I knowit had four cylinders, because Millington was constantly remarking thatonly three were working. Sometimes only one worked, and sometimes thatone did not.
When we were all comfortably arranged in our seats, and all snuglytucked in, Millington cranked the machine for half an hour, and thenremarked regretfully that this was one of the days none of the cylinderswas working, and we got out again.
Mr. Rolfs had come out to see us start, and he helped Millington andme push the automobile back to the Millington garage; and as I walkedhomeward he said he had heard I was going to buy a horse, and he wantedto give me a little advice.
"Probably you have not given much attention to the subject ofdeforestation," he said, "but I have, and it is the great crime of ourage."
I told him I did not see what that had to do with my purchasing a horse,but he said it had everything to do with it.
"When you buy a horse, you have to erect a stable," he said, "and whenyou erect a stable, you have to buy lumber, and when you have tobuy lumber, you suffer in your purse because the forests have beenruthlessly destroyed. As a friend and neighbour I would not have you goand purchase poor lumber, and with it build a stable that will rot topieces in a few years. You must buy the best lumber, and that is tooexpensive to use recklessly. I want to warn you particularly about wirenails. Do not let your builder use them. They loosen in a short timeand allow the boards to warp and crack. Personally, if I were buildinga stable I should have the ends of the boards dovetailed, and instead ofnails I should use ash pegs, but I understand you do not wish to go togreat expense, so screws will do. Let it be part of your contract thatnot a nail shall be used in your stable--nothing but screws, and if youcan afford brass screws, so much the better. But remember, no nails!"
I thanked Rolfs, and when Millington came over to invite me to take alittle run up to Port Lafayette the next morning I told him what Mr.Rolfs had said.
"Now that is just like Rolfs," he said, "impractical as the day is long.Screws would not do at all. The carpenters would drive the screws witha hammer, and the screws would crack the wood. Take my advice and let itbe part of your contract that not a screw is to be used in your stable;nothing but wire nails. _But_ stipulate long wire nails; wire nails solong that they will go clear through and clinch on the other side, andthen see that each and every nail is clinched. If you do this you willhave no trouble with split lumber and not a board will work loose."
When I spoke to the builder about the probable cost of the stable, I wassorry I had been so lenient with Isobel, and that I had not put my footdown on the weather vane at once. A weather vane does not add to thecomfort of a family horse, and the longer I spoke with the builder thesurer I became that what I needed was not a lot of gimcracks, but aplain, simple, story-and-a-half affair, with the chaste architecturallines of a dry-goods box. I mentioned, casually, the hints Mr. Rolfsand Mr. Millington had given me, but the builder did not seem veryenthusiastic about them. He snorted in a peculiar way and then said thatif I was going in for that sort of thing I could get better results byhaving no nails or screws at all. He said I could have holes boredin the boards with a gimlet, and have the stable laced together withrawhide thongs, but that when I got ready to talk business in a sensibleway, I could let him know. He said this was his busy day, and that hisoffice was not a lunatic asylum.
I managed to calm him in less than half an hour, and he remained quitedocile until I mentioned Isobel and said she hoped he would have thestable ready for the horse within a week. It took me much longer to calmhim that time. For a few moments I feared for his reason. But he quieteddown.
Then I showed him a plan I had drawn, showing the working of the manuredump, and this had quite a different effect on him. It pleased himimmensely, as I could see by his face. I explained how it operated; howthrowing a catch allowed one end of the stall floor to drop, while theother end of the stall floor was held in place by hinges, and he said itwas certainly a new idea. He asked me whether it was Mr. Rolfs's ideaor Mr. Millington's, and when I told him I had worked out the planmyself, he said he had rather thought so.
"It is just such a plan as I should expect a man of your intelligence towork out," he said.
Then he asked to see my bank-book, and when I had shown him just howmuch money I had, he said the best way to build the stable was by theday. If it was built by the job, he explained, a builder naturally hadto hurry the job, and things were not done as carefully as I wishedthem done; but if it was done by the day, every hammer stroke would becarefully made, and I could pay every evening for the work done thatday.
About the third week of the building operations those careful hammerstrokes began to get on my nerves. I never knew hammer strokes socarefully considered and so cautiously delivered. The carpenters weremost careful about them, and several times I spoke to the builder andsuggested that if shorter nails were used perhaps it would not takeso many strokes of the hammer to drive them in. I told him, if he waswilling, I was willing to have the rest of the stable done by the job,but he said it had gone too far for that.
There were two men working on my stable--"two souls with but a singlethought," Isobel called them--and they were hard thinkers. The two ofthem would take hold of a board, one at either end, and hold it intheir hands, and look at it, and think. I do not know what they thoughtabout--deforestation, probably--but they would think for ten minutesand then put the board gently to one side and think about another board.They did their thinking, as they did their work, by the day.
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We had plenty of time in which to select our horse while our stable wasbuilding. My advertisement in the local paper brought a horse to my doorthe morning after it appeared, and no horse could have suited me quiteso well as that one, but I was resolute and firm. I told the man--he wasnot a dealer nor yet a commuter, and my conversation with him showed methat he knew just enough, and not too much, about horses--that I likedhis horse very well indeed, but that I could not purchase it.. Atthis he seemed downcast, and I did not blame him. He seemed to take myrefusal as some sort of personal insult, for the horse was young, large,strong, gentle, and speedy, and the price was right; but every timeI began to weaken Isobel said, "John, remember number eleven!" and Irefrained from purchasing that horse. I finally sent the man away withwarm expressions of my esteem for him as a man, but that did not seem tocheer him much.
An hour later another man brought another horse, and I sent him awayalso, as was my duty, for he was only number two; but he was hardly gonewhen horse number one appeared again. I saw at once that I was goingto have trouble with that man. He was so sure he had the horse I wantedthat he would not go away and stay away. He kept coming back, and eachtime he went away sadder than before. He was a sad-looking man, anyway,and he would sit in his buggy and talk to me until another horse wasdriven up, and then he would sigh and drive down to th
e corner, and sitand look at me reproachfully until the other man drove away again. Thenhe would drive back and reproach me, with tears in his eyes, for notbuying his horse. By lunch time I was almost worn out, and I told Isobelas much when I looked out of the window and saw that handsome horse andhis sad driver waiting patiently at my gate. I told her I was tempted totake that horse, Mrs. Rolfs or no Mrs. Rolfs.
"Take that horse?" said Isobel, as if my words surprised her. "Why, ofcourse we are going to take that horse!"
"But, my dear," I said, "after what you told me about taking theeleventh horse?"
"Certainly," said Isobel. "What is this but the eleventh horse? It camefirst, and then another horse came, and then this one came third, andthen some other horse came, and then this one came fifth, and so on, andnow it is standing there at the gate, the eleventh horse. Certainly wewill buy this horse."
"Isobel," I said, "we might quite as well have bought it the first timeit was driven to our gate as this time."
"Not at all," she said; "that would have been an altogether differentthing. If we had taken the first horse that was offered we would haveregretted it all our lives; but now we can take this horse and feelperfectly safe."
Bob--that was the name of the horse--fitted into our stable pretty well.He had to bend rather sharply in the middle to get out of his stall, buthe was quite limber for a horse of his age and size, so he managedit very well. A stiffer horse might have broken in two or have beenpermanently bent. The stall was so economically built that a large,long horse like Bob stuck out of it like a long ship in a short dock; hestuck out so far that we had to go around through the carriage room toget on the other side of him. Our new Mr. Prawley did not mind this. Hewas willing to spend all the time necessary going from one bit of workto another.
There was one advantage in having the stable and everything about it ona small scale--it lessened the depth of the manure pit. The very firstnight we put Bob in his stall we heard a loud noise in the stable.Isobel suggested that we had overfed Bob, and that he had swelled outand pressed out the sides of the stable, but I thought it more likelythat the weather-boarding had slipped loose. I had seen the thoughtfulcarpenters putting that weather-boarding on the stable. But Isobel and Iwere both wrong. Bob had merely dropped into the manure pit.
I was glad then that I had chosen a strong horse, for he did not seemto mind the drop in the least. He stood there with his front feet in thebasement, as you might say, and with his rear feet upstairs, quite asif that was his usual way of standing. After that he often fell into themanure pit, and he always took it good-naturedly. He got so he expectedit, after awhile, and if his stall floor did not drop once a day, hebecame restless and took no interest in his food. Usually, during theday, Bob and Mr. Prawley dropped into the basement together while Mr.Prawley was currying Bob, but at night, when we heard Bob calling us inthe homesick, whinnying tone, and kicking his heels against the sideof the stable, we knew what he wanted, and to prevent him kicking thestable to ruins, we--Isobel and I--would go out and drop him into thebasement a couple of times. Then he would be satisfied.
There was but one thing we feared: Bob might become so fond of havinghis forefeet in the basement and his rear feet upstairs, that he wouldstand no other way, and in course of time his front legs would have tolengthen enough to let his head reach his manger, or his neck would haveto stretch. Either would give him the general appearance of a giraffe.While this would be neat for show purposes, it would attract almost toomuch attention in a family horse. I have no doubt this is the way thegiraffe acquired its peculiar construction, but we were able to avoidit, for we awoke one night when Bob made an unaided descent into themanure pit, and when we went to aid him we found he had descended atboth ends, on account of the economical hinges used on the drop floorof the stall of our equine palace. Bob showed in every way that he hadenjoyed that drop more than any drop he had ever taken, but I drew theline there. I had other things to do more important than conducting aprivate Coney Island for a horse. If Bob had been a colt I might nothave been so stern about it, but I will not pamper a staid old familyhorse by operating shoot-the-chutes and loop-the-loops for him at twoo'clock in the morning.
"Isobel," I said, "if that horse is to continue in my stable you maytell Mr. Prawley that it is necessary for his health that he sleep inthe stable-loft hereafter. It will be good exercise for him to get up atmidnight and pull Bob out of the manure pit."
"This present Mr. Prawley will not do it," said Isobel. "He has a wifeand family at East Westcote, and he--"
"Very well," I said, "then get another Mr. Prawley!"
Of the new Mr. Prawley it is necessary to speak a few words.