“Oh! I say, don’t think about home, Mas’ Don, because if you do, I shall too; it do make me so unked.”
“I can’t help it, Jem. It doesn’t seem natural to settle down here, and go on week after week. I get asking myself, what we are doing it for.”
“To catch fish, and find fruit and keep ourselves alive. Say, Mas’ Don, it’s under them trees they digs up the big lumps of gum that they burn. Ah, there’s a bit.” Jem stooped and picked out from among the rotten pine needles a piece of pale yellowish-looking gum of the size of his fist.
“That’ll do for a light for us,” Don said. “Take it back.”
“Going to,” said Jem laconically. “We may want it ’fore long.”
“Here’s another bit,” said Don, finding a similar sized piece, and thrusting it into the basket. “Couldn’t we make some matches, Jem?”
“Couldn’t we make some matches? Why, of course we could. There’s plenty of brimstone, I’m going to try and manage a tinder-box after a time.”
They again walked on in silence, climbing higher and higher, till, coming to an opening, they both paused in silent admiration of the view spread out before them, of river, lake, and mountain, whose top glistened like silver, where glacier and snow lay unmelted in spite of the summer heat.
“Wouldn’t you like to go up there, Mas’ Don?” said Jem, after a few moments’ silence.
“Go? I’d give anything to climb up there, Jem. What a view it must be.”