“I know that. He can’t bray. He whinnies and squeals; but he tries to bray, and opens his mouth just like you do.”
“Perhaps so,” said Ned, changing the conversation at once. “I say, doesn’t that peak look beautiful? It’s just as if it is red-hot.”
“You’d find it pretty cold if you were up there,” said Chris, giving up making rude allusions to his companion’s yawning.
“Yes; that always seems to me so strange,” said Ned.
“What does?”
“That the nearer you get up to the sun the colder it is. It ought to be hotter.”
“Don’t find fault with nature,” said Chris dogmatically. “I wasn’t finding fault. I only say it seems queer. I want to thoroughly understand why it is.”
“Ask your father, he knows.”
“I did,” said Ned, “and he said it was because the atmosphere was thinner, the higher you get.”
“Then the lower you get I suppose the thicker it is,” said Chris thoughtfully, “and that’s why it’s so thick and hot down there on the salt desert. Oh, my word, how it used to scorch! It was just as if the haze was one great burning-glass.”