“Captain Coates may be able to inform you.”
“Ha! ha! going to ride the high horse. Eh?”
“What’s your name, little un? Tsck!” This to Jill.
Jill bridled up now.
“When I’m as big as you, I’ll thrash you,” said my brother.
“But you’ll never be, ’cause I’ll keep growing. See?”
I looked at him disdainfully up and down.
“You don’t give promise at present,” I said, “of ever attaining heroic dimensions.”
“Eh?” he said, putting a finger behind his left ear, as deaf people do. “I didn’t catch on. What ship did you say?”
“Because,” I added, “you’re squat, and you’re not wholesome, nor handsome.”