“What rubbish, Barney!”
“But you going to be a doctor!” cried the old sailor, rubbing his nose with a great gnarled finger. “You, who might be an admiral and command a squadron: no, sir, it won’t do.”
“It will have to do, Barney.”
“Well, sir, it mought and it moughtn’t; but it strikes me as you’ve got something coming on, sir, as is a weakening your head—measles, or fever, or such-like—or you wouldn’t talk as you do about the Ryle Navee.”
“I talk about it as I do because I don’t want to go to sea.”
“But it’s a flying in the face of the skipper and the admiral. Bobstays and chocks! I wish I was your age and got the chance o’ going instead o’ being always ashore here plarntin’ the cabbages and pulling up the weeds.”
“Then you don’t like being a gardener, Barney?”
“I ’ates it, sir.”
“And so do I hate being a sailor. There!”
“But it’s so onnat’ral, sir. Here’s your father been a sailor, same as I’ve been a sailor, and I’ve drilled up Pan-a-mar o’ purpose to be useful to you in the same ship. Why, it’s like wasting a season in the garden. I meant him to be your Jack factotum, as the skipper used to call it, and you never heard him say he didn’t want to go to sea.”