“I’ll wait. When I sit down to a meal I like to enjoy myself.”
“If that’s how you feel,” I returned and moved towards the lounge.
Just then a kid came quietly up the verandah steps. He was a little Indian boy, very dirty, wearing a dirty white shirt and a pair of ragged trousers. He carried a small wooden box In one of his grubby bands and he looked at Bogle with a calculating eye.
Bogle smirked at him. “Hullo, son,” he said. “Coming to have a talk with old Uncle Sam?” The kid stared at him thoughtfully with his head on one side and shuffled his bare feet on the verandah floor.
Bogle looked over at me. “I like kids,” he said simply, exploring his teeth with his finger nail. “This little punk’s all right, ain’t he?”
The kid shuffled a few paces nearer. “Shine, Johnny?” he said, hopefully.
“You don’t have to be scared of me,” Bogle said, leering at him. “Come and tell Uncle Sam all about it.”
The kid didn’t seem full of confidence, but he put his box down and said again, “Shine, Johnny?”
Bogle stared at him. “Wadjer mean… shine?”
“He wants to shine your shoes, you dope,” I said, grinning. “He’s got beyond Uncle Samuel’s bedside chats for kiddies.”