“I want to know! An’ how about you, Jack? Wasn’t you in high school, too?”
“Last year. I had to quit when father died. Someone had to make some money and it looked like it was up to me.”
“Of course. Well, edication’s a good thing, I cal’ate, though I never had much time for it, but it don’t butter no parsnips, Jack.”
“I’m going back some day, I expect. I want to, anyway. I want to go to college if I can, too. Looks now, though, as if I might be pretty old before that happens.”
“College, eh? H’m; I had a feller sailin’ with me a couple o’ years back that was a college grad-oo-ate; name o’ Jasper Fitzwilliam. He wan’t no good at all. But I cal’ate there’s a difference in ’em. I cal’ate that young Folsom’ll have a college edication. I passed him comin’ in, him an’ another boy. They was in a motor-boat about half a mile off The Lump. Seemed to be hove to off there an’ I cal’ate they was fishin’. He’ll be a rich man some day, when his dad dies, eh?”
“I suppose so. He seems a nice chap. He was in my class at high school last year, though I didn’t know him very well. Funny place to fish, off The Lump, Desco. I never heard of anyone catching anything there, did you?”
Desco shook his head as the signal came to stop pumping. The sailor crawled up through the hatch with the hose and Desco bade him lug it forward to the small butt lashed by the deck-house. Jack began his labors again. Desco, his gaze fixed on the western sky, where a few white clouds like great bunches of cotton batting were creeping up, pointed with the stem of his pipe.
“There’s goin’ to be a thunder squall before long, Jack,” he said. “Better get your slicker out.”
Jack looked and nodded. “It feels like it too,” he answered. “I’d just as lief it didn’t come till I get this old lugger back to the Cove.”
There was a yell from the sailor at the hose and Jack stopped pumping. A few minutes later Desco dropped Jack’s line to the deck of the water boat and Jack, pushing the boom out, took the tiller again and waved good-bye to the master of the Hetty and Grace.