"My name is Scraper, thank ye, not Scrape!" he said, dryly; "and as for the boy, I don't know exactly where you come in there."
The Skipper nodded. "True!" he said, tracing with his finger the fine lines of the Voluta Aulica; "you do not know where I come in there. In us both, knowledge has a limit, Mr. Scraper; yet I at the least am acquaint with your name. It is a fine name you have there,—Endymion! You should be a person of poetry, with this and your love for shells, hein? You love, without doubt, to gaze on the moon, Sir Scraper? You feel with her a connection, yes?"
"What the dickens are you talking about?" asked the old gentleman, testily. "How much do you want to swindle me out of for this Junonia, hey? not that I shall buy it, mind ye!"
"Three hundred!" said the Skipper; "and a bargain at that!"
[CHAPTER V.]
MYSTERY.
John was at work in the garden. At least, so it would have appeared to an ordinary observer; in reality he was carrying on a sanguinary combat, and dealing death on every side. His name was George Washington, and he was at Bunker Hill (where he certainly had no business to be), and the British were intrenched behind the cabbages. "They've just got down into the ground, they are so frightened!" he said to himself, pausing to straighten his aching back, and toss the red curls out of his eyes. "See 'em, all scrooched down, with their feet in the earth, trying to make believe they grow there! But I'll have 'em out! Whack! there goes the general. Come out, I say!" He wrestled fiercely with an enormous Britisher, disguised as a stalk of pig-weed, and, after a breathless tussle, dragged him bodily out of the ground, and flung his headless corpse on the neighbouring pile of weeds.
"Ha! that was fine!" cried the boy. "I shouldn't be a bit surprised if that was George the Third himself; it was ugly enough for him. Come up here! hi! down with you! Now Jack the Giant-Killer is coming to help me, and the British have got Cormoran (this was before Jack killed him), and there's going to be a terrible row." But General Washington waves his gallant sword, and calls to his men, and says,—
"Good morning, sir! you make a busy day, I see."