Lly did look exasperating. He saw everything and he enjoyed everything.
Plainly he was the miscreant. He was waddling round on his stout little
legs, flourishing a huge jack-knife, and grinning as if he were going to
have a big dish of whale-fat for dinner. He looked comical enough. He
was dressed in seal-skin, and was bobbing up and down in his mother's
seal-skin boots. The women's boots are of tanned seal-skin, bleached
white and then colored. The boots of Billy's mother were very gay. They
were bright red ones. When Billy from his tent-door saw Sammy coming, he
crawled into the huge big boots, and bare-headed rushed--no, waddled
out, to greet the discomfited fisherman. "Billy, I'll give it to you?"
"Will you, Sammy? Try it, old boy." Thereupon, he put his thumb to his
nose and wriggled his finger as exasperatingly as any Yankee boy here in
this enlightened land. His flat face, his black little eyes, his stubby
little nose, his hair black as coal and long behind, but fashionably
"banged" in front, the seal-skin suit, mother's big red boots, and the
nasal gesture made a very interesting picture, and a most provoking one
also. "Billy, you _will_ catch it!" "I should rather think you had
caught it already. Did you bring any seal-fat, Sammy?" Sammy felt mad
enough and hot enough to set the water to boiling between his kayah and
the shore. "You had better run, Billy." "Plenty of time, Sammy." Sammy's
kayah was now ashore. Sammy unlaced his jacket and let himself out of
jail. Pulling his kayah high up the shore, he turned it over and let the
water escape. There were two ugly gashes in the seal-skin bottom--just
as he expected. "Now where's that Billy?" asked Sammy at last. But
mother's red boots had prudently withdrawn. "I _will_ give it to him,"
said Sammy; "but I will mend this first." He took up his beloved kayah
and walked to the little village. It was not very large. There were half
a dozen seal-skin tents, a few houses of stone and turf, and one or two
wooden buildings, besides
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