You offered to hire me to do a thing I'm accustomed to.

It's my occupation." His companion made a little sign of comprehension, though there was a faintly whimsical smile in his eyes.
"Now, you're wondering why I brought you back east all this way ?" Weston admitted it, and the contractor fixed his eyes on him.
"Well," he said, "it seems that there's fishing and sailing to be done, and I'm not quite sure about that major man.

Guess he's always had people to wait on him, and that doesn't tend to smartness in any one.

When my daughter and her friends go out on the lake, or up the river, you'll go along with them." This was, perhaps, a little hard on Major Kinnaird, but Weston to some extent sympathized with his employer's point of view.

The contractor was not a sportsman as the term is generally understood, but he was a man who could strip a gun, make or mend harness, or break a horse.
When he had gone shooting in his younger days it was usually to get something to eat, and, as a rule, he obtained it, though he rent his clothes or got wet to the waist in the process.