“Brave vomans? Ha, ha! Brave vomans!” cried the Frenchman.
“Look here, Duncan!” said the doctor. “I don’t think we’ll trouble Mr Uggleston any more. We want to get back home.”
“Yes,” said my father; “but—”
He made a movement with his head towards the French skipper.
“Oh, come along, Captain Duncan,” growled old Jonas surlily. “You must drink a glass with him. I won’t poison you this time.”
“Thanks, Uggleston,” said my father quietly; and, intimate as I was with Bigley, school-fellows and companions as we were, I could not help noticing the difference, and how thoroughly my father was the gentleman and Jonas Uggleston the commonplace seafaring man.
“Here, Mother Bonnet!” cried old Jonas, “the boys want something. You see to them.”
The old woman took us into her kitchen, as she called it, and attended to our wants; but I could hear what went on in the other room, and the French skipper’s words as they all partook of something together.
Ten minutes after, my father called me by name, and I found him waiting with the doctor outside, the Frenchman beaming on all in turn.
“Ve are ze old amis, le vieux—ze old Jonas and myselfs. Sare, I am been glad I receive ze boys on my sheep.”