This consultation was held in English, while its objects sat close together, looking at the sailor as he laid down the case and expostulated with himself, pro and con, with considerable energy.
"Jube," he said, in broken French, feeling in sad want of counsel, "Jube, what do you say to living in the country?"
"Oh, anywhere Jube is ready to live—anywhere that little masser and you like!" cried the negro, eagerly.
"Well, say in a nice, cosy place up in Connecticut, with plenty of chores to do, and no hard work."
"Yes, masser Rice," said Jube, attempting English.
"Then, our little Paul, he ought to go to school—capital district school on Shrub Oak—beautiful red school-house, with the turnpike running in front, and a river back of it. You can hear the water sing all day long, behind the hemlock bushes. Besides, there's an apple tree at one end that bears splendid green apples, and a bell pear tree, that the scholars are forbid to look at. Then—keep that to yourself Paul, no one but Kate ever found it out—but, there's a hollow at one end of the school-house, and the banks are covered with strawberry vines, white in the spring, and red all under the grass where the sun has shined on 'em long enough—sich strawberries, plump as a baby's mouth, and sweet as its kisses. What do you think of that, Paul?"
The little fellow did not quite comprehend what Rice was talking about, but the subject seemed a pleasant one, so he replied, in broken English, that he should like it very much indeed.
"Yes," said Dave, kindling into enthusiasm by a remembrance of his own school days, brief as they had been, and spent in a much less pleasant place than the one he described. "Yes, I kinder see you now, with yer dinner basket on one arm—the squaws, back of Chewstown, make scrumptious little baskets, now I tell yer—and Webster's blue-covered spelling book under t'other, a marching off to that ere seat of larning which I've been telling you about. The picter is so enticing that I'm in a hurry to begin. Have you ever been to school?"
The boy looked at Jube in doubt what to answer.
"District school, I mean," said Dave, with a flourish of the hand. "Where the master or mistress boards about, and ferrules the children with a pine ruler, if they don't toe a crack every spelling time."