“Like your wicked brother Matt?” queries the boy in amaze. David’s smile gleams droller.
“Avast there, you mustn’t hearken to the mother. She knows naught o’ Matt ’cept what I told her. She is Halifax bred, and we lived ’way up country. I ran away to sea, and left him anchored on dad’s farm. When I made port again dad was gone to glory, and Matt to England with a petticoat in tow.”
“But mother said he sold the farm, an’ your share, too.”
“And if he didn’t it’s a pity. He had improved the land, hadn’t he? and I might have been sarved up at fish dinners for all he knew. I don’t hold with this Frenchy law that says all the bairns must share and share alike. The good old Scotch fashion is good ’nough for me—Matt’s the heir, and God bless him.”
“Then why didn’t you marry a Scotchwoman?” asked Matt, with childish irrelevance.
“ ‘Twas your mother’s fault,” answers David, with a half-whimsical, half-pathetic expression.
“And why didn’t you take her to sea with you?”
“Nay, nay; the mother has no stomach for it, nor I either. And then there was Harriet—a little body in long clothes. And the land was pretty nigh cleared,” he adds, with a suspicion of apology in his accent, “and we couldn’t grow ’nough to pay the mortgage if I hadn’t shipped again.”
“And why am I like uncle?”
“Oh, he used to be allus lookin’ at the sky—not to find out whether to git the hay in, mind you, but to make little picturs on the sly in the hay-mow on Sundays, and at last he sold the farm and went to London to make ’em.”