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 the job, but on her demurring, immediately apologized and came down to a shilling.  For this sum he repainted the box, traced her initials on it, and affixed new hinges, a Bramah lock, and brass handles, at a cost to himself of ten shillings