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"If it is Waddington he'll know me at once, of course," thought the contractor, "and there may be a row. Well, I can't help it. The success of my brother and myself depends on finishing that tunnel, and we can't have Waddington, and those whose tool he is, interfering. Here goes!" He tapped on the door, and a faint voice called: "Come in!"
He had at first treated with the contractor in the name of the vestry; then, when he was at a loss how to pay, he treated in his own name. His life was bound up in the enterprise, he wore himself out in the heroic efforts which he made.
Dilling the surgeon, Charles McKelvey the contractor, and, most dismaying of all, the white-bearded Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times. In their whelming presence Babbitt felt small and insignificant. "Well, well, great pleasure, have chairs, what c'n I do for you?" he babbled. They neither sat nor offered observations on the weather.
There was a little polishing of walnut work and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs, remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer. Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful skill of his contractor.
Every yoke of oxen was sold within a week, one ranchman took all the cows, an army contractor took one thousand of the largest beeves, feeders from Iowa took the younger steers, and within six weeks after arriving I did not have a hoof left. In the mean time I kept an account of each sale, brands and numbers, in order to render a statement to the owners of the cattle.
"The design pleases me. What artist made it?" The merchant shrugged his shoulders. "Sir, I do not know," he answered. "These goods are supplied to us with many others, such as joinery and carving, by one Septimus, who is a contractor and, they say, a head priest among the Christians, employing many hands at his shops in the poor streets yonder.
Luckily, for by that time Jim Hooker had, with characteristic gloominess, found time to taste the pangs of envy an envy the more keen since, in spite of his success as a peaceful contractor, he had always secretly longed for military display and distinction. He looked at the man who had achieved it, as he firmly believed, by sheer luck and accident, and his eyes darkened.
"I'm my own contractor, my own carpenter, and my own bricklayer, and I shall be sixty-seven come Michaelmas," he added, by no means irrelevantly. There was pride in his voice, pardonable pride, I thought, for who of us would not be proud to be able to build his own house from floor to chimney?
One contractor was putting down sidewalks in the same street where another laid sewer pipe and a third put in telephone poles. A branch line of a trans-continental railroad was moving across the desert to tap the new oil field. Houses rose overnight. Mule teams jingled in and out freighting supplies to Malapi and from there to the fields.
I shall be much obliged to you if you will do so; and I would rather that the engagement should be a temporary one, on both sides, so that I should be free to leave, at a few days' notice." The contractor, after a chat with Gregory Hilliard, was glad to secure his services.
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