Fritz would have gone over the animal’s head but for the firm hold he had of his neck.
Don tried sitting down. Fritz stood up, but still astride of the donkey, and still holding on with all his might.
Then the quadruped turned his head and—so Fritz ever afterward believed—actually winked at his determined rider; immediately rising on all fours and setting off on a trot such as his venerable limbs had not attempted for years.
Around and around the grass plot he raced, till all at once he appeared to collapse; then he sunk down on the ground, rolled over on his side, and uttered a pathetic bray, as if his last hour had come.
“I did! I did! I did ride the old thing!” exulted the excited conqueror, and sped away to boast of his achievement to Abraham.
After this amusing conclusion of the set-to between her little brother and his victim, Octave’s laughter was checked by an unmistakable sigh from the boy beside her. She looked quickly around.
“Why, Melville! What is it?”
“To think that I can never do anything that any one else can!”
“Because you are to do that which nobody else can do.”
Melville looked up eagerly; but almost instantly his eye fell again, and, with the gloom of hopelessness, upon the group without.