other angry look at him.

"And do you think I want a parrot to amuse me for hours?" he said
bitterly.

"Have a monkey," said Joe, who had heard the last words. "Shaddy will
get you a young one, and you can pet that and teach it to play tricks
without any risk to anybody, if you must have a plaything."

He accompanied this with so taunting a look that it fired Rob's temper,
just at a time when he was bitterly disappointed at the result of his
adventure. Joe's words, too, conveyed the boy's feeling, which was
something akin to jealousy of the new object which took so much of the
young Englishman's thoughts.

Stung then by his companion's words and look, Rob turned upon him and
said sarcastically,--

"Thank you: one monkey's enough on board at a time."

The young Italian's eyes flashed, as, quick as lightning, he took the
allusion to mean himself, and he turned sharply away without a word, and
went right aft to sit gazing back over the water.

"Well, you've been and done it now, Mr Rob, and no mistake," whispered
Shaddy. "You've made Master Jovanni's pot boil over on to the fire, and
it ain't water, but oil."

"Oh, I am sorry, Shaddy," said Rob in a low tone, for all his own anger
had evaporated the moment he saw the effect of his words on the
hot-blooded young Southerner.

"Sorry, lad? I should think you are. Why, if I said such a thing as
that to an Italian man, I should think the best thing I could do would
be to go and live in old England again, where there would be plenty of
policemen to take care of me."

"But I was not serious."

"Ay, but you were, my lad, and that's the worst of it. You said it in a
passion on purpose to sting him, and he's as thin-skinned as a silkworm.
He has gone yonder thinking you despise him and consider he's no better
than a monkey, and if you'd set to for six hundred years trying to think
out the nastiest thing you could invent to hurt his feelings you
couldn't have hit on a worse."

"But it was a mere nothing--the thought of the moment, Shaddy,"
whispered Rob.

"O' course it was, dear lad, but, you see, that thought of the moment,
as you call it, has put his back up. For long enough now English folk
have said nasty things to Italians, comparing 'em to monkeys, because of
some of 'em going over to England playing organs and showing a monkey at
the end of a string. You see, they're so proud and easily affronted
that such a word feels like a wapps's sting and worries