“No, I never thought you were, Jack,” I said, for I had known him for some years, and once or twice I had been fishing with him, though we were never companions. “But it’s all nonsense about your going with us. The doctor said this morning that the notion was absurd.”
“Let him mind his salts-and-senna and jollop,” said Jack sharply. “Who’s he, I should like to know? I knowed your father as much as he did. He’s given me many a sixpence for birds’ eggs and beetles and snakes I’ve got for him. Soon as I heard you were going to find him, I says to father, ‘I’m going too.’”
“And what did your father say?”
“Said I was a fool.”
“Ah! of course,” I exclaimed.
“No, it ain’t ‘ah, of course,’ Mr Clever,” he cried. “Father always says that to me whatever I do, but he’s very fond of me all the same.”
Just then the captain came forward with his glass under his arm, and his hands deep down in his pockets. He walked with his legs very wide apart, and stopped short before us, his straw hat tilted right over his nose, and see-sawing himself backwards and forwards on his toes and heels.
“You’re a nice young man, arn’t you now?” he said to Jack.
“No, I’m only a boy yet,” said Jack quietly.
“Well, you’re tall enough to be a man, anyhow. What’s your height?”