“And the dismal desert. Why, you romantic young dreamer! You’ll never see a place south of here half so beautiful.”
“But what’s the good of its being beautiful if we can’t live upon it?”
“Then you’d be glad to go?”
“Oh yes, sir,” cried Ned.
“Humph! Well, Bourne, it seems then that you and I will have to go back to England empty and alone.”
“No, you won’t, father,” said Chris quickly. “I shouldn’t go without you went too.”
“And I shouldn’t either, father,” said Ned huskily, as he went and stood behind his father with his hands resting on Bourne’s shoulders.
“Here, I wish you two young fellows had held your tongues,” said Griggs roughly, “because it’s like filling a man full of pleasure, and then making a hole and letting it all out again. But it’s all right, lads, and thankye all the same. No, you can’t go away and leave your two dads; it wouldn’t be right, and you couldn’t expect to prosper if you did. But I wish they’d think as we do, and say they’d go and chance it. Raally, doctor, and raally, Mr Bourne, I’d go to bed and sleep on it. P’r’aps you’d feel a bit different in the morning. What do you say?”
The doctor was silent for a few moments, gazing full in the American’s face, the latter receiving the look without blenching.
“Let me see, Mr Griggs,” he said; “I’ve known you nearly four years, haven’t I?”