A Fool and His Money | Page 7

falling down
unexpectedly one of these days and creating an earthquake. "Whew!"
he repeated.
My secretary is a youngish man with thin, stooping shoulders and a
habit of perpetually rubbing his knees together when he walks. I
shudder to think of what would happen to them if he undertook to run. I
could not resist a glance at them now.
"It is something of a climb, isn't it?" said I beamingly.
"In the name of heaven, Mr. Smart, what could have induced you to--"
He got no farther than this, and to my certain knowledge this
unfinished reproof was the nearest he ever came to openly convicting
me of asininity.
"Make yourself at home, old fellow," said I in some haste. I felt sorry
for him. "We are going to be very cosy here."
"Cosy?" murmured he, blinking as he looked up, not at me but at the
frowning walls that seemed to penetrate the sky.
"I haven't explored those upper regions," I explained nervously,
divining his thoughts. "We shall do it together, in a day or two."
"It looks as though it might fall down if we jostled it carelessly," he

remarked, having recovered his breath.
"I am expecting masons at any minute," said I, contemplating the
unstable stone crest of the northeast turret with some uneasiness. My
face brightened suddenly. "That particular section of the castle is
uninhabitable, I am told. It really doesn't matter if it collapses. Ah,
Britton! Here you are, I see. Good morning."
Britton, a very exacting servant, looked me over critically.
"Your coat and trousers need pressing, sir," said he. "And where am I
to get the hot water for shaving, sir?"
"Frau Schmick will supply anything you need, Britton," said I, happy
on being able to give the information.
"It is not I as needs it, sir," said he, feeling of his smoothly shaven chin.
"Come in and have a look about the place," said I, with a magnificent
sweep of my arm to counteract the feeling of utter insignificance I was
experiencing at the moment. I could see that my faithful retinue held
me in secret but polite disdain.
A day or two later the castle was swarming with workmen; the banging
of hammers, the rasp of saws, the spattering of mortar, the crashing of
stone and the fumes of charcoal crucibles extended to the remotest
recesses; the tower of Babel was being reconstructed in the language of
six or eight nations, and everybody was happy. I had no idea there were
so many tinsmiths in the world. Every artisan in the town across the
river seems to have felt it his duty to come over and help the men from
Linz in the enterprise. There were so many of them that they were
constantly getting in each other's way and quarrelling over matters of
jurisdiction with even more spirit than we might expect to encounter
among the labour unions at home.
Poopendyke, in great distress of mind, notified me on the fourth day of
rehabilitation that the cost of labour as well as living had gone up
appreciably since our installation. In fact it had doubled. He paid all of

my bills, so I suppose he knew what he was talking about.
"You will be surprised to know, Mr. Smart," he said, consulting his
sheets, "that scrub-women are getting more here than they do in New
York City, and I am convinced that there are more scrub-women.
Today we had thirty new ones scrubbing the loggia on the gun-room
floor, and they all seem to have apprentices working under them. The
carpenters and plasterers were not so numerous to-day. I paid them off
last night, you see. It may interest you to hear that their wages for three
days amounted to nearly seven hundred dollars in our money, to say
nothing of materials--and breakage."
"Breakage?" I exclaimed in surprise.
"Yes, sir, breakage. They break nearly as much as they mend.
We'll--we'll go bankrupt, sir, if we're not careful."
I liked his pronoun. "Never mind," I said, "we'll soon be rid of them."
"They've got it in their heads, sir, that it will take at least a year to
finish the--"
"You tell the foremen that if this job isn't finished to our satisfaction by
the end of the month, I'll fire all of them," said I, wrathfully.
"That's less than three weeks off, Mr. Smart. They don't seem to be
making much headway."
"Well, you tell 'em, just the same." And that is how I dismissed it. "Tell
'em _we've_ got to go to work ourselves."
"By the way, old man Schmick and his family haven't been paid for
nearly two years. They have put in a claim. The late owner assured
them they'd get their money from the next--"
"Discharge them