“I’m going to put some squashes and potatoes in the canoe, for he hasn’t planted a hill of anything this year; I don’t see how people can live so. I should think, when he has such a nice place for a garden under the ledge, he would have a few peas and potatoes.”
“Ben believes in doing one thing at a time; and a mast that he can cut in an hour will buy as much garden stuff as he would raise in a whole summer. He won’t dabble with farming till the island is his, and then you’ll see some of the tallest kind of farming, or I’ll miss my guess.”
All the way to the island John was remarkably silent, apparently engaged in deep thought. At length he said, “Uncle Isaac, is it right to like an Englishmun?”
“Bless me! yes; what is the boy thinking about?”
“We’ve just done fighting and killing the Englishmun, and they’ve been killing our people, and wanted to hang General Washington, and I didn’t know as it would be right to like ’em; and they say this boy is an Englishmun.”
“It isn’t the nation, John, it’s the character, that makes a person good or bad; your grandfather and mine were both Englishmun; so you need not be afraid to like him on that account.”
When they landed Ben was eating supper. “You’ve come in good time,” he said; “sit down with us.”
The moment supper was over, Uncle Isaac said, “Now, I want to hear all about the pirates, for there are all sorts of stories going; it’s all come through Uncle Yelf, and he has drunk so much rum that he’s lost what little wit he ever had; and he never had brains enough to cover a beech leaf, and is deaf to boot.”
They told him the story from beginning to end.
“It was a good thing for me, at any rate,” said Ben, in conclusion; “for they left a new cable and anchor on the beach, and a first-rate little boy behind them.”