“Talking it over?”
“Yes, sir. They says as a monkey’s next door to a man. Not as I thinks so.”
“Then what do you think, Billy?”
“Oh, I think he lives several streets off, sir; but the men thinks tother, and they says as though it’s all werry well for a monkey to play with a dog and be friends, just as a man might; it’s going down hill like for him to make a habit o’ sleeping in a dog-kennel.”
“Nonsense! the monkey’s happy enough with the dog.”
“So was a mate o’ mine with the Noo Zeeling savages, after cutting away from his ship; but our old skipper said he ought to be ashamed of hisself for going and living that way, and them beginning to tattoo him in a pattern. He said he was a-degrading of hisself, and fetched him aboard, saying as if he wanted tattooing some of his messmates should mark his back with a rope’s end. No, sir, we thinks a deal o’ that monkey—our crew does—and we don’t want to see him go wrong.”
“What stuff! My Bruff is quite as intelligent an animal as your monkey. Suppose I said he should not associate with the ugly brute?”
“No, no, sir: Jack aren’t ugly,” said Billy Widgeon in protest. “He aren’t handsome, but no one can’t say as he’s ugly; while that dog—”
“Oh, he isn’t handsome either, but it’s absurd to draw the line between the two animals like that.”
“Well, sir, I tell you what the men says; and they thinks a deal o’ Jacko, and looks after his morals wonderful. We do let him chew tobacco, though it don’t agree with him, ’cause he will swaller it; but as to a drop o’ rum, why, Old Greg nearly chucked a man overboard once for giving him a tot, and Small the boatswain stopped one chap’s grog for a week for teaching Jack to drink. We thinks a deal of that monkey, sir.”