"Do you know him, sir?
Have you ever been here before ?" The Skipper shook his head.

"Not of my life!" he said.

"Yet--I make a guess at the name; perhaps of this gentleman I have heard.

He--he is a kind person, Colorado ?" John hung his head.

He knew that he must not speak evil; his mother had always told him that; yet what else was there to speak about Cousin Scraper?
"He--he collects shells!" he faltered, after a pause, during which he was conscious of the Skipper's eyes piercing through and through him, and probably seeing the very holes in his stockings.