"Mawning, sah!" This was a chorus.
"All along dey blessed good-foh-nuffin boys I no come so queeck," said Chloe.
"Stay, stay, Chloe," cried Jake, "never let your angry passions rise. 'Sides, Chloe, I calculate such language ain't half-proper. But how glittering your cheeks are, Chloe, how white your teeth! There! you smile again. And that vermilion blouse sets off your dark complexion to a nicety, and seems just made for it. Chloe, I would kiss you, but the fear of making Bill jealous holds me back."
Burly Bill shook with laughter. Bill was well named the Burly. Though not so tall as Jake, his frame was immense, though perhaps there was a little more adipose tissue about it than was necessary in a climate like this. But Bill's strength was wonderful. See him, axe in hand, at the foot of a tree! How the chips fly! How set and determined the man's face, while the great beads of sweat stand like pearls on his brow!
Burly Bill was a white man turned black. You couldn't easily have guessed his age. Perhaps he was forty, but at twenty, when still in England, Bill was supple and lithe, and had a skin as white as a schoolboy's. But he had got stouter as the years rolled on, and his face tanned and tanned till it tired of tanning, and first grew purple, and latterly almost black. The same with those hirsute bare arms of his.
There was none of the wild "Ha! ha!" about Bill's laughter. It was a sort of suppressed chuckle, that agitated all his anatomy, the while his merry good-natured eyes sought shelter behind his cheeks' rotundity.
Under a great spreading tree the two men laid themselves down, and Chloe spread their breakfast on a white cloth between them, Jake keeping up his fire of chaff and sweet nothings while she did so. Keemo and Kimo, and the other "good-foh-nuffin boys" had brought their morning meal to the men who fed the great buzz-saw.
"Ah, Chloe!" said Jake, "the odour of that coffee would bring the dead to life, and the fish and the beef and the butter, Chloe! Did you do all this yourself?"
"All, sah, I do all. De boys jes' kick about de kitchen and do nuffin."
"Dear tender-eyed Chloe! How clever you are! Guess you won't be so kind to me when you and I get spliced, eh?"