“Same as you and me?”
“A little whiter, I should say, Abe. What are you driving at?”
“Look here, sonny! I’ve been in this country, man an’ boy, ever since I were born; and, you b’lieve me, I never get hole of a paper from the Ole Land but there’s some abuse of us colonists. That’s why I ask you is they white.”
“What have they been saying now?”
“Saying; why the same old story—that we’re a hard lot, always driving the Kaffirs, an’ killing ’em, an’ stealing their lands, an’ ’busin’ their women-folk, and grindin’ ’em down.”
“Well; what does it matter!”
“It matters the hull sackful. Look at me—I’ve never been to England, but all the same it’s my home. I love the ole flag, and cry ‘Hurrah’ for the Queen; an’, ole as I am, I’d boost anybody over the head as ’ud up an’ say England was not the best and the biggest and the grandest country in the world. Yessir!”
“She’s not very big, Abe.”
“Soh! Well, she’s big enough to spread her arms all round the yearth, and fetch anybody on the other side ‘ker-blum’ with a man-o’-war’s big gun. We give her all—it ain’t much, maybe—an’ we get back a crop of suspicions. That’s why I ask, is the people in the Ole Land white?”
“We are all of one family, Abe, and relations don’t compliment each other.”