“Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,” says Mr. Browning. “I’ve got a lot of curiosity, but lepers are something I don’t need in my business. The nearest we get to that island is about a mile away from it.”
“Huh,” says Catty to me. “I had an idea leprosy was just a Bible disease and in Ben Hur. Didn’t ever figger we had it right at home.”
“Folks get it from eating fish,” says I.
“I’ve et fish all my life,” says he, “and I never got it. Why, when Dad and I were tramps, we pretty nearly lived on fish, and we never had a sign of it. Fish, your grandmother!”
“Maybe it wasn’t fish,” says I. “Maybe it was snakes.”
“And maybe it was angle worms,” says Catty.
“Anyhow, folks get it from something,” says I.
Just as we headed up the narrow channel that leads through rocks and reefs to Cuttyhunk, that a fish line is named after, there was a little lobster boat laying to and pulling up a lobster pot. We ran up alongside and cut out the engine, and Mr. Browning hollered to know if the man had any lobsters to sell.
“Got a pail?” says he, and Naboth fetched up a pail. Then the man filled it chock-full of little lobsters and passed it back to us, and Mr. Browning says, “How much?” and the man says, “Oh, about a dollar’n a quarter.”
Those were the first lobsters I’d ever seen, except on the labels of cans, and I didn’t think so much of them on account of their being so small, until Mr. Topper explained they were young ones, which was why the lobster man sold them to us so cheap.