"Be ye? Oh, you're the new assistant from Boston. You'll do. All I want to do is unload him--Job, I mean--and leave a couple bundles of fly paper Seth ordered. Here!" lowering the tailboard and climbing into the wagon, you catch aholt of t'other end of the box, and I'll shove on this one. Hush up, Job! Nobody's goin' to eat ye--'less it's the moskeeters. Now, then, mister, here he comes."
He began pushing the box toward the open end of the wagon. The dog's whines and screams and scratchings furnished an accompaniment almost deafening.
"Wait! Stop! For heaven's sake, wait!" shouted Brown. "What are you putting that brute off here for? I don't want him."
"Yes, you do. Seth does, anyhow. Henry G. made him a present of Job last time Seth was over to the store. Didn't he tell ye?"
Then the substitute assistant remembered. This was the "half-grown pup" Atkins had said was to be brought over by the grocery boy.
This was the creature they were to accept "on trial."
"Well, by George!" he exclaimed in disgust.
"Didn't Seth tell ye?" asked the boy again.
"Yes. . . . Yes, I believe he did. But--"
"Then stand by while I unload him. Here he comes now. H'ist him down easy as you can."
That was not too easy, for the end of the box slid from the tail- board to the ground with a thump that shook the breath from the prisoner within. But the breath came back again and furnished motive power for more and worse howls and whines. Joshua pricked up his ears and trotted to the further end of his halter.
"There!" said Henry G.'s boy, jumping to the ground beside the box, "that's off my hands, thank the mercy! Here's your fly paper. Five dozen sheets. You must have pretty nigh as many flies down here as you have moskeeters. Well, so long. I got to be goin'."
"Wait a minute," pleaded Brown. "What shall I do with this--er-- blessed dog? Is he savage? Why did you bring him in a crate--like a piano?"
"'Cause 'twas the easiest way. You couldn't tie him up, not in a cart no bigger'n this. Might's well tie up an elephant. Besides, he won't stay tied up nowheres. Busted more clotheslines than I've got fingers and toes, that pup has. He needs a chain cable to keep him to his moorin's. Don't ye, Job, you old earthquake? Hey?"
He pounded on the box, and the earthquake obliged with a renewed series of shocks and shakings.
The lightkeeper's assistant smiled in spite of himself.
"Who named him Job?" he asked.
"Henry G.'s cousin from Boston. He said he seemed to be always sufferin' and fillin' the land with roarin's, like Job in the Bible.
So, bein' as he hadn't no name except cuss words, that one stuck. I cal'late Henry G.'s glad enough to get rid of him. Ho! ho!"
"Did Mr. Atkins see his--this--did he see his present before he accepted it?"
"No. That's the best part of the joke. Well," clambering to his seat and picking up the reins, "I've got five mile of sand and moskeeters to navigate, so I've got to be joggin'. Oh, say! goin' to leave him in the box there, be ye?"
"I guess so, for the present."
"Well, I wouldn't leave him too long. He's stronger'n Samson and the Philippines rolled together, and he's humped up his back so much on the way acrost that he's started most of the nails in them slats over top of him. I tell ye what you do: Give him a bone or a chunk of tough meat to chaw on. Then he'll rest easy for a spell.
Goodbye. I wish I could stay and see Seth when he looks at his present, but I can't. Gid-dap, January."
The grocery wagon rolled out of the yard. The forsaken Job sent a roar of regret after him. Also, he "humped us his back," and the nails holding the slats in place started and gave alarmingly. John Brown hastened to the house in quest of a bone.