“Dandies!” broke in Paul, “and dandy fun landing them!”
“Yes, ’tis rare sport landin’ un. And does you like troutin’?”
“Yes, to be sure. We expected to get trout here,” answered Remington.
“Th’ husky’s tellin’ me they’s plenty to be had a bit up the streams, sir, and big uns—wonderful big uns, by his tell, sir.”
“We’ll have to try them tomorrow.”
“Where did you learn to speak Eskimo, Tom?” asked Ainsworth.
“Where’d I learn un, sir? I never learned un. I allus knew un. I were born, sir, on the Labrador. My mother were a woman of Zoar, sir, an’ a half-breed. They talks mostly husky thereabouts. The first words she ever says to me, sir, was husky, an’ when I were a wee lad she talks all her baby talk to me in husky.”
“But your father was a white man?”
“Oh, aye, sir, he were from Conception Bay. He were down on the Labrador fishin’, an’ he meets my mother, an’ likes she, an’ th’ missionary marries un. Then he stays at Zoar an’ traps in winter, an’ there I were born, sir.”