“It’s beyond thinking, sir, it’s wonderful. We’ve seen some tidy places as we come along, but this beats everything I ever saw. Seems to me that we’d better stop here altogether. They say ‘there’s no place like home,’ but I say there’s no place like this.”
“It really is beautiful, Ned. You should have stopped on deck and seen the wonderful transformation as the sun rose.”
“Couldn’t have been anything like coming upon it sudden, sir, after going below feeling that you’d been cheated. How I should like to send for my poor old mother to see it. But I dunno: she wouldn’t come. She’s got an idee that Walworth is about the loveliest place in the world. But it ain’t, Mr Jack, you may believe me, it really ain’t, not even when the sun shines; while when it don’t, and it happens to be a bit muddy, or it rains, or there’s a fog, it’s—well, I don’t think there’s anything short of a photo to show what it really is like, and one of them wouldn’t do it credit. But this isn’t Walworth, sir, and the next thing I want to do is to go ashore and see what the place is like.”
“All in good time, Ned. I suppose we shall soon begin collecting now.”
“Any time you like, Mr Jack, sir, and please remember that your obedient servant to command, Edward Sims, is aboard, and whether it’s sticking pins through flies and beetles like Sir John does, or shooting and skinning birds and beasts like the doctor, I want to be in it. My word, there ought to be some fine things here.”
“There’s no doubt about it.”
“Then if you’ll remember me, sir, as the song says, there isn’t anything I won’t do, even to being your donkey for you to ride when you’re tired, and,” added the man with a smile full of triumph, as if defying any one to surpass his offer, “you can’t say fairer than that.”
“I’ll try for you to come, Ned,” he replied.
“Do, sir, if it’s only to carry the vittles. Thankye, sir, all the same.”