“It wouldn’t have made a better fellow of you, Josh,” said Will, with a merry twinkle in his eye.
“I dunno ’bout that,” said Josh disparagingly; “I ain’t much account,” and he rubbed his nose viciously with the back of his hand, the result being that he spread a few more scales upon his face.
“Why, you’re the strongest man I know, Josh. You can throw anyone in Peter Churchtown, and I feel like a baby when you grip hold of me.”
Josh felt flattered, but he would not show it in the face of such a chance for giving a lesson.
“Babby! And that’s just what you are—a big soft, overgrown babby, with no more muscle in you than a squid. I’d be ashamed o’ myself, that I would, if I was you.”
“Can’t help it, Josh,” said the young fellow, wrinkling his sun-browned forehead, and still turning the soft nets into filmy ropes by passing them through his hands.
“Can’t help it! Why, you ain’t got no more spirit in you than a pilchar’—no more’n one o’ these as run its head through the net last night, hung on by its gills and let itself die, whar it might ha’ wriggled itself out if it had had plenty o’ pluck. If you don’t take care, my lad, you’ll get a name for being a regular soft. I believe if one of the lads o’ your own size hit you, you’d cry.”
“Perhaps I should, Josh, so I hope no one will hit me.”
The lad thrust back his scarlet woollen cap, and bent down over the brown nets so that his companion should not see his face; and as he shook down the soft meshes, with the heap growing bigger and bigger, so did the pile of silvery pilchards grow taller, as Josh growled to himself and shook out the fish easily enough, for though the gills of the herring-like fish acted as barbs to complete their arrowy form as they darted through the sea, and kept them from swimming back, the hold on the net was very frail, and they kept falling pat, pat, upon the deck or in the well.
“After all I’ve done for you I don’t want you to turn out a cur,” growled Josh at last.