“I’m eighteen in October.”
“When will you be ten?”
“I don’t understand your language,” replied John. “In your superlunary efforts to appear intellectual you sometimes state things that are incomprehensible, even to people of my limited intellectual parts.”
“Oh, quit!” broke in Fred, “don’t spoil the day and scare the fish away. I want to tell you about Professor Jackson. You know him, don’t you?”
“Yes,” replied Grant, “he’s the man who came on Monday, isn’t he? The man who is making investigations of the island, digging up all sorts of relics?”
“That’s the man,” acknowledged Fred. “Yesterday he dug up some cannon balls. He said they were relics of the French and Indian war.”
“They were all right,” said George. “I know, for one of the guides told me that they were the same balls that had been dug up by every old fellow for the last twenty-five years.”
“A new crop?” laughed Fred.
“Not at all. They are the same old cannon balls. They plant them every spring and give pleasure to some of these old fellows, who are traveling around the island in their gentle, antiquated gait looking for things that belonged to our grandfathers. They give them the childish pleasure of making ‘discoveries’ every year.”
“I should think they would take the balls away with them,” suggested John.