“This,” says my uncle, with a gentle tug at my ear, “is Dannie.”
“Ay; but whose young one?”
“Tom Callaway’s son.”
“Tom Callaway’s son!” cries Tom Bull.
There was that about me to stir surprise; with those 14 generous days so long gone by, I will not gainsay it. Nor will I hold Tom Bull in fault for doubting, though he stared me, up and down, until I blushed and turned uneasy while his astonished eyes were upon me.
“Tom Callaway’s son!” cries he again.
That I was.
“The same,” says my uncle.
Forthwith was I once more inspected, without reserve––for a child has no complaint to make in such cases––and with rising wonder, which, in the end, caused Tom Bull to gape and gasp; but I was now less concerned with the scrutiny, being, after all, long used to the impertinence of the curious, than with the phenomena it occasioned. My uncle’s friend had tipped the bottle, and was now become so deeply engaged with my appearance that the yellow whiskey tumbled into his glass by fits and starts, until the allowance was far beyond that which, upon information supplied me by my uncle, I deemed proper (or polite) for any man to have at one time. The measurement of drams was in those bibulous days important to me––of much more agreeable interest, indeed, than the impression I was designed to make upon the ’longshore world.
“No such nonsense!” exclaims Tom Bull. “Tom Callaway died ’ithout a copper t’ bury un.”