seventy-five cents was inadequate to buy the material itself, to say
nothing of the cost of steaming and bending the ribs, I reluctantly
abandoned the ideal of the graceful craft I had sketched, and compromised
on a flat bottom. Observe how the ways of deception lead to
transgression: I recalled the cast-off lumber pile of Jarvis, the
carpenter, a good-natured Englishman, coarse and fat: in our
neighbourhood his reputation for obscenity was so well known to mothers
that I had been forbidden to go near him or his shop. Grits Jarvis, his
son, who had inherited the talent, was also contraband. I can see now the
huge bulk of the elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting, soot-powdered
snow in front of his shop, and hear his comments on my pertinacity.

"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up, my lad, Gawd
'elp 'im!"

"Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?" I
demanded, indignant.

He laughed with his customary lack of moderation.

"You mind what old Jarvis says," he cried. "What you wants, you gets."

I did get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very
valuable, and without question he more than made up for them in my
mother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the
moment,--the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, I
smuggled him into the shed through the alley, acquiring likewise the
services of Tom Peters, which was more of a triumph than it would seem.
Tom always had to be "worked up" to participation in my ideas, but in the
end he almost invariably succumbed. The notion of building a boat in the