The following morning, at nine o'clock, Issy McKay sat upon the heap of rusty chain cable outside the blacksmith's shop at Denboro, reading, as usual, a love story. Issy was taking a "day off." He had begged permission of Captain Sol Berry, the permission had been granted, and Issy had come over to Denboro, the village eight miles above East Harniss, in his "power dory," or gasoline boat, the Lady May. The Lady May was a relic of the time before Issy was assistant depot master, when he gained a precarious living by quahauging, separating the reluctant bivalve from its muddy house on the bay bottom with an iron rake, the handle of which was forty feet long. Issy had been seized with a desire to try quahauging once more, hence his holiday. The rake was broken and he had put in at Denboro to have it fixed. While the blacksmith was busy, Issy laboriously spelled out the harrowing chapters of "Vivian, the Shop Girl; or Lord Lyndhurst's Lowly Love."
A grinning, freckled face peered cautiously around the corner of the blacksmith's front fence. Then an overripe potato whizzed through the air and burst against the shop wall a few inches from the reader's head. Issy jumped.
"You--you everlastin' young ones, you!" he shouted fiercely. "If I git my hands onto you, you'll wish you'd--I see you hidin' behind that fence."
Two barefooted little figures danced provokingly in the roadway and two shrill voices chanted in derision:
"Is McKay--Is McKay--Makes the Injuns run away!
Scalped anybody lately, Issy?
Alas for the indiscretions of youth! The tale of Issy's early expedition in search of scalps and glory was known from one end of Ostable County to the other. It had made him famous, in a way.
"If I git a-holt of you kids, I'll bet there'll be some scalpin' done," retorted the persecuted one, rising from the heap of cable.
A second potato burst like a bombshell on the shingles behind him.
McKay was a good general, in that he knew when it was wisest to retreat. Shoving the paper novel into his overalls pocket, he entered the shop.
"What's the matter, Is?" inquired the grinning blacksmith. Most people grinned when they spoke to Issy. "Gittin' too hot outside there, was it? Why don't you tomahawk 'em and have 'em for supper?"
"Humph!" grunted the offended quahauger. "Don't git gay now, Jake Larkin. You hurry up with that rake."
"Oh, all right, Is. Don't sculp ME; I ain't done nothin'. What's the news over to East Harniss?"
"Oh, I don't know. Not much. Sam Bartlett, he started for Boston this mornin'."
"Who? Sam Bartlett? I want to know! Thought he was down for six weeks. You sure about that, Is?"
"Course I'm sure. I was up to the depot and see him buy his ticket and git on the cars."
"Did, hey? Humph! So Sam's gone. Gertie Higgins still over to her Aunt Hannah's at Trumet?"
Issy looked at his questioner. "Why, yes," he said suspiciously.
"I s'pose she's there. Fact, I know she is. Pat Starkey's doin' the telegraphin' while she's away. What made you ask that?"
The blacksmith chuckled. "Oh, nothin'," he said. "How's her dad's dyspepsy? Had any more of them sudden attacks of his? I cal'late they'll take the old man off some of these days, won't they? I hear the doctor thinks there's more heart than stomach in them attacks."
But the skipper of the Lady May was not to be put off thus. "What you drivin' at, Jake?" he demanded. "What's Sam Bartlett's goin' away got to do with Gertie Higgins?"
In his eagerness he stepped to Mr. Larkin's side. The blacksmith caught sight of the novel in his customer's pocket. He snatched it forth.
"What you readin' now, Is?" he demanded. "More blood and brimstone? 'Vivy Ann, the Shop Girl!' Gee! Wow!"
"You gimme that book, Jake Larkin! Gimme it now!"
Fending the frantic quahauger off with one mighty arm, the blacksmith proceeded to read aloud:
"'Darlin',' cried Lord Lyndhurst, strainin' the beautiful and blushin' maid to his manly bosom, 'you are mine at last. Mine!
No--' Jerushy! a love story! Why, Issy! I didn't know you was in love. Who's the lucky girl? Send me an invite to your weddin', won't you?"
Issy's face was a fiery red. He tore the precious volume from its desecrator's hand, losing the pictured cover in the struggle.
"You--you pesky fool!" he shouted. "You mind your own business."
The blacksmith roared in glee. "Oh, ho!" he cried. "Issy's in love and I never guessed it. Aw, say, Is, don't be mean! Who is she? Have you strained her to your manly bosom yit? What's her name?"
"Shut up!" shrieked Issy, and strode out of the shop. His tormentor begged him not to "go off mad," and shouted sarcastic sympathy after him. But Mr. McKay heeded not. He stalked angrily along the sidewalk. Then espying just ahead of him the boys who had thrown the potatoes, he paused, turned, and walking down the carriageway at the side of the blacksmith's place of business, sat down upon a sawhorse under one of its rear windows. He could, at least, be alone here and think; and he wanted to think.
For Issy--although he didn't look it--was deeply interested in another love story as well as that in his pocket. This one was printed upon his heart's pages, and in it he was the hero, while the heroine--the unsuspecting heroine--was Gertie Higgins, daughter of Beriah Higgins, once a fisherman, now the crotchety and dyspeptic proprietor of the "general store" and postmaster at East Harniss.
This story began when Issy first acquired the Lady May. The Higgins home stood on the slope close to the boat landing, and when Issy came in from quahauging, Gertie was likely to be in the back yard, hanging out the clothes or watering the flower garden.
