Chapter 6 - Page 2

this point.

Smilash had now adopted a profession. In the last days of autumn
he had whitewashed the chalet, painted the doors, windows, and
veranda, repaired the roof and interior, and improved the place
so much that the landlord had warned him that the rent would be
raised at the expiration of his twelvemonth's tenancy, remarking
that a tenant could not reasonably expect to have a pretty,
rain-tight dwelling-house for the same money as a hardly
habitable ruin. Smilash had immediately promised to dilapidate it
to its former state at the end of the year. He had put up a board
at the gate with an inscription copied from some printed cards
which he presented to persons who happened to converse with him.
_______________________________________________________

JEFFERSON SMILASH

PAINTER, DECORATOR, GLAZIER, PLUMBER & GARDENER. Pianofortes
tuned. Domestic engineering in all its Branches. Families waited
upon at table or otherwise.

CHAMOUNIX VILLA, LYVERN. (N.B. Advice Gratis. No Reasonable offer
refused.) _______________________________________________________

The business thus announced, comprehensive as it was, did not
flourish. When asked by the curious for testimony to his
competence and respectability, he recklessly referred them to
Fairholme, to Josephs, and in particular to Miss Wilson, who, he
said, had known him from his earliest childhood. Fairholme, glad
of an opportunity to show that he was no mealy mouthed parson,
declared, when applied to, that Smilash was the greatest rogue in
the country. Josephs, partly from benevolence, and partly from a
vague fear that Smilash might at any moment take an action
against him for defamation of character, said he had no doubt
that he was a very cheap workman, and that it would be a charity
to give him some little job to encourage him. Miss Wilson
confirmed Fairholme's account; and the church organist, who had
tuned all the pianofortes in the neighborhood once a year for
nearly a quarter of a century, denounced the newcomer as Jack of
all trades and master of none. Hereupon the radicals of Lyvern, a
small and disreputable party, began to assert that there was no
harm in the man, and that the parsons and Miss Wilson, who lived
in a fine house and did nothing but take in the daughters of rich
swells as boarders, might employ their leisure better than in
taking the bread out of a poor work man's mouth. But as none of
this faction needed the services of a domestic engineer, he was
none the richer for their support, and the only patron he
obtained was a housemaid who was leaving her situation at a
country house in the vicinity, and wanted her box repaired, the
lid having fallen off. Smilash demanded half-a-crown for