Firio did not answer.
"You are not pleased? You—"
"Sí! I will keep them for you. You will want them; you will come back to all this;" and suddenly Firio was galvanized into the life of a single gesture. He swept his arm toward the sky, indicating infinite distance.
"No, I shall never come back! I can't!" Jack said; and his face had set hard, as if it were a wall about to be driven at a wall. "I must go and I must stay."
"Sí!" said Firio, resuming his impassiveness, and slipped around the corner of the house.
"He does care!" Jack cried with a smile, which, however, was not the smile of gardens, of running brooks, and of song. "I am glad—glad!"
He picked up his crutches and went out to the three steeds of trail memory:
"And you care—you care!" he repeated to them.
He drew a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of God. He tickled the sliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver in blissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ornamental equipment of his tribe.
"You are like most of us; we don't see our deformities, Jag Ear," Jack told him. "And if others were also blind to them, why, we should all be good-looking!"