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It is of no use to carry clothes-poles and drying-lines where there are no conveniences for washing and drying. Next comes a travelling umbrella-mender, fagoted on the back like the man in the moon of the nursery rhyme-book.
Keep him in a glass case? 'Oh no; he always lives with me, and comes with me everywheres. Bobby looked up at the umbrella-mender with serious alarm in his eyes. 'Then this here broken body be of no manner of use. You leave him with me and I'll give him a good stout stick, and he'll be better'n new. 'You won't hurt him doing it? 'Bless your heart, he be proper enjoyin' the thought of it.
"A gentleman, Sally? Impossible. No gentleman would endure such an affront. Look again." "Yessum. It's dat po' white trash dey call Plooie. Mainded yo' umbrella oncet." "My umbrella-mender!" Apologetically but shrewdly Sally opined that the neighborhood of the advancing mob was "no place foh a niggah." With perfect faith in the powers of her superior she added: "You desist 'em, mist'ess."
A band of timber-cutters about to go for a month's sojourn in the woods needed a cook, so Hughes became their potslinger. Frail as he was, he seemed to thrive on hardship. In succession he became sheep shearer, railway labourer, boundary rider, stock runner, scrub-cleaner, coastal sailor, dishwasher in a bush hotel, itinerant umbrella-mender and sheep drover.
"I was brought to a miner, over to Wheal Jewel, in Illogan Parish; but got conversion fifteen years since, an' now I go about praising the Name. I've been miner, cafender, cooper, mason, seaman, scissor-grinder, umbrella-mender, holli-bubber, all by turns. I sticks my hands in my pockets, an' waits on the Lord; an' what he tells me to do, I do. This day week I was up to Fowey, working on the tip.
I'm also an umbrella-mender and harness-maker, and I can glaze stewing-pans. 'If that is so you might spend the winter here. When can you begin? 'I'll sit down now and work through the night. 'As you like. Ask them to give you some tea in the kitchen. 'Begging your Reverence's pardon, may I ask that the sugar might be served separately? 'Don't you like your tea sweet?
He is described in the legal reports as a Tinker and Umbrella-mender, but his especial line of industry, novel to us at any rate, seems to have been that of a scraper and cleaner of old tombstones.
This is the only commentary I ever heard him make upon any one in Our Square, which in turn completely ignored him until the development of his love affair stimulated our condescending and contemptuous interest. The object of Plooie's addresses was a little Swiss of unknown derivation and obscure history. She appeared to be as detached from the surrounding world as the umbrella-mender himself.
This was becoming dangerous. That there was no real intent to drown the unfortunate umbrella-mender I was well satisfied. But mob intent is subject to mob impulse. If they once got him into the water, the temptation of the playful to push his head under just once more might be too strong. Plainly the time was ripe for intervention.
The summer sun was never on the street, but in the morning about breakfast-time, when it came with the water-carts and the old clothes men, and the people with geraniums, and the umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along.
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