Dick looked piteously in his brother’s face, and one tear stole softly down his cheek.
“I say, Dick,” cried Jack, imploringly, “don’t look like that. It makes me think so of poor mamma. You look so like her. I say don’t, or you’ll make me cry too; and I won’t,” he cried, grinding his teeth. “I said I’d never cry again, because it’s so childish; and I won’t.”
“Then I’m childish, Jack,” said Dick, as he rubbed the tear away with one hand.
“No, no. You have been so weak and delicate that you can’t help it. I’m strong. But I say, Dick, you are ever so much stronger than when we came out here.”
“Yes,” said Dick, with a wistful look at his brother’s muscular arms. “I am stronger, but I do get tired so soon, Jack.”
“Not so soon as you did, Dick; and father says you’ll be a strong man yet. Hallo! what’s the matter? Look there.”
The brothers turned round, and hardly knew whether to laugh or to be alarmed; for a short distance away there was Dinny dancing about, waving his arms and shouting, while Coffee and Chicory, each with his kiri, were making attacks and feints, striking at the Irishman fiercely.
“Ah, would you, ye black baste?” shouted Dinny, as roaring now with laughter the brothers ran back.
“Shoo, Shoo! get out, you dirty-coloured spalpeen. Ah, ye didn’t. Kape off wid you. An’ me widout a bit of shtick in me fist. Masther Dick, dear! Masther Jack! it’s murthering me the two black Whiteboys are. Kape off! Ah, would ye again! Iv I’d me shtick I’d talk to ye both, and see if your heads weren’t thick as a Tipperary boy’s, I would. Masther Dick! Masther Jack! they’ll murther me avore they’ve done.”
As aforesaid, the two Zulu boys had picked up a great deal of the English language, but their understanding thereof was sometimes very obscure. In this instance they had heard Dinny talking to his young masters in a way that had made the tears come in Dick’s eye, and driven him and Jack away. This, in the estimation of the Zulu boys, must be through some act of cruelty or insult. They did not like Dinny, who made no attempt to disguise his contempt for them as “a pair of miserable young haythens,” but at the same time they almost idolised the twin brothers as their superiors and masters, for whom they were almost ready to lay down their lives.