“Oh, I don’t know,” said the new partner, in a listless, disappointed way. “It seemed kind o’ curious, that’s all. Holdin’ her head up as high in the air as she does, you wouldn’t think she’d so much as look at an ordinary fellow like Dwight Ransom.”
“I suppose this is a free country,” remarked the boy, rising to rest his back.
“Oh, my, yes,” returned the other; “if she’s pleased, I’m quite agreeable. And--I don’t know, too--I dare say she’s gettin’ pretty well along. Maybe she thinks they ain’t any too much time to lose, and is making a grab at what comes handiest. Still, I should ’a’ thought she could ’a’ done better than Dwight. I worked with him for a spell once, you know.”
There seemed to be very few people with whom Newton Shull had not at one time or another worked. Apparently there was no craft or calling which he did not know something about. The old phrase, “Jack of all trades,” must surely have been coined in prophecy for him. He had turned up in Octavius originally, some years before, as the general manager of a “Whaler’s Life on the Rolling Deep” show, which was specially adapted for moral exhibitions in connection with church fairs. Calamity, however, had long marked this enterprise for its own, and at our village its career culminated under the auspices of a sheriff’s officer. The boat, the harpoons, the panorama sheet and rollers, the whale’s jaw, the music-box with its nautical tunes--these were sold and dispersed. Newton Shull remained, and began work as a mender of clocks. Incidentally, he cut out stencil-plates for farmers to label their cheese-boxes with, and painted or gilded ornamental designs on chair-backs through perforated paper patterns. For a time he was a maker of children’s sleds. In slack seasons he got jobs to help the druggist, the tinsmith, the dentist, or the Town Clerk, and was equally at home with each. He was one of the founders of the Octavius Philharmonics, and offered to play any instrument they liked, though his preference was for what he called the bull fiddle. He spoke often of having travelled as a bandsman with a circus. We boys believed that he was quite capable of riding a horse bareback as well.
When Marsena Pulford, then, decided that he must have some help, Newton Shull was obviously the man. How the arrangement came to take the form of a partnership was never explained, save on the conservative village theory that Marsena must have reasoned that a partner would be safer with the cash-box downstairs, while he was taking pictures upstairs, than a mere hired man. More likely it grew out of their temperamental affinity. Shull was also a man of grave and depressed moods (as, indeed, is the case with all who play the bass viol), only his melancholy differed from Marsena’s in being of a tirelessly garrulous character. This was not always an advantage. When customers came in, in the afternoon, it was his friendly impulse to engage them in conversation at such length that frequently the light would fail altogether before they got upstairs. He recognized this tendency as a fault, and manfully combated it--leaving the reception-room with abruptness at the earliest possible moment, and talking to the boy in the work-room instead.