How was it? Oh, yes I Lunch-time to-day it
was, and your papa was smoking his cigar and
looking out to sea all by himself. It was very
quiet, with all the donkey-engines stopped and the
men eating inside the walls. On the bluff" beyond
the fort I was sitting, with my feet hanging over
the edge, and the mango-tree I've told you so often
about was shading me from the sun. The wind
was blowing just a wee mite, and every time the
wind would blow and the tree would wave, a mango
would drop into the bay. Plump! it would go
into the ocean below, and every time a mango
dropped down a Little Man in a green coat popped
up."

"All wet, papa?"



^Google



Sonnie-Boy's People

"Shiny wet, Sonnie-Boy, and blowing their
cheeks out like so many blub-blubs."

"What's blub-blubs, papa?"

"A blub-blub is a fat little fish who takes big
long gulps deep down in the ocean and then comes
to the top o' the water, and, when he sees anybody
watching him, puff's out his cheeks and goes —
blub-blub! like that."

"Like men sometimes, papa?"

"Just like. Well, by 'n' by there were twelve
o' the Little Men in green coats, and they sat under
the mango-tree all in a row and looked at me, and
the one at the head o' the row puts up one finger,
with his head to one side and his little round eye
rolling out at me, and he says: 'Did Sonnie-Boy's
godfather send him that steam-engine from Japan
yet, what you told us about? 'Cause if he did, we
have a fine pome about it.'

'"Yes, he did send him a fine steam-engine from
Japan,' I said, 'and you go on and let me hear your
pome, and if it's a good pome I'll give you all a fine
ripe mango to eat/ And so they all puffs out their
fat little cheeks and they begins:

"'Godfather bought him an engine, red and black,
It wabbles slightly and the wheels don't track *"

" But it don't, papa, 'n' the wheels do track."
"But that's what they said.
