“Well, I should have said married.”
“O no! I don’t think the thought of that ever did occur to me. I’m sorry, Jenkins, but I really cannot give you advice on that subject.”
“H’m! I’m not so sure o’ that, Little Bill. You’re such a practical little chap that I do believe if you was put to it you’d be able to—see, now. If you happened to want to marry a nice little gal, what would you do?”
“I would ask her,” said Little Bill, promptly.
“Jus’ so; but that is what I have not got courage to do.”
Jenkins laughed at the expression of blazing surprise with which the boy received this statement.
“Have not got courage!” he repeated; and then, after a pause—“Have all the stories you have told me, then, been nothing but lies!”
“What stories, Billie?”
“Why, such as that one about the pirates in the Java seas, when ten of them attacked you and you were obliged to kill four, and all the rest ran away?”
“No, Billie—that was no lie: it was quite true. But, then, these blackguards were cowards at bottom, and they saw that I’d got a brace o’ double-barrelled pistols in my belt, and was pretty well up in the cutlass exercise.”