“Who said I was, sir? Don’t want to be. That’s good enough for women folk. But I am useful. Come now.”
“So you are, Sam,” said Tim; “the jolliest, usefullest fellow that ever was.”
“Useful, Master ’Temus, but I don’t know about jolly. Who’s going to be jolly, transported for life out here like a convick? And as for that Injun corn, it was a great flop-leaved, striped thing as grew a ear with the stuff in it hard as pebbles on the sea-saw—seashore, I mean.”
“Sam’s got his tongue in a knot,” said Norman. “What are you eating, Sam?”
“Ain’t eating—chewing.”
“What are you chewing, then. India-rubber?”
“Tchah! Think I want to make a schoolboy’s pop-patch? Inger-rubber? No; bacco.”
“Ugh! nasty,” said Rifle. “Well, father says he shall grow tobacco.”
“’Tain’t to be done, Master Raffle,” said Sam, cracking his whip; nor grapes nayther. Yer can’t grow proper grapes without a glass-house.
“Not in a hot country like this?”