“Not I—his masters.”
“Well, let me now try if I can’t make a boy of the old man. Look at him. Can you believe it?”
Jack walked by them, in his white duck suit and pith hat, just then, with the mate.
“Find it too hot, father? Shall I fetch your white umbrella?”
“No, no, thank you, my boy; I’m going to sit under the awning and watch the shipping. But—er—don’t expose yourself to the heat too much; the sun has great power.”
“Yes, it is hot,” said Jack quietly, “but I like it.”
“Yes, Mr Jack, sir,” said Edward, who had overheard his master’s remarks, “and so do I like it; but it’s a sort of country where you feel as if you would like to have a great deal of nothing to do, and lie about on the sand like the niggers. I’ve just been watching ’em, and it seems to me that they don’t eat much, nor drink much. You see ’em nibbling a few dates, or swallowing lumps of great green pumpkins.”
“Melons, Ned,” said Jack, correcting him.
“Melons, sir? Yes, I know they call ’em melons, but they’re not a bit better than an old pumpkin at home, or an old vegetable marrow gone to seed. I know what a melon is, same as Mackay grows at home, red-fleshed and green-fleshed, and netted. They’re something like; but as for these—have you tried one, sir?”
“No.”