“Everything. I’m as miserable as mizzer,” cried Dick. “Oh, this desert is dreary.”
“Not it, Dyke; it’s wild and grand. You are tired and disappointed. Some days must be dark and dreary, boy. Come, Dyke, pluck! pluck! pluck!”
“I haven’t got any; sun’s dried it all out of me.”
“Has it?” said his brother, laughing. “I don’t believe it. No, Dicky, we can’t go home and sneak in at the back door with our tails between our legs, like two beaten hounds. There are those at home who would sorrow for us, and yet feel that they despised us. We came out here to win, and win we will, if our perseverance will do it.”
“Well, haven’t we tried, and hasn’t everything failed?”
“No, boy,” cried the young man excitedly. “Look here: my story is of a party of American loafers down by a river. Come, I never told you that.”
“No,” said Dyke, raising his brown face from where he rested it upon his arm.
“That’s better. Then you can be interested still.”
“One needs something to interest one in this miserable, dried-up desert,” cried the boy.
“Miserable, dried-up desert!” said his brother, speaking in a low deep voice, as he gazed right away through the transparent air at the glorious colours where the sun sank in a canopy of amber and gold. “No, Dicky, it has its beauties, in spite of all you say.”