“’Tain’t my fault.”
“What is not?”
“That. I was born and brought up to walk on flag-stones. I was never meant to do this sort of thing; if I had been, mother would have paid for me to learn to walk on tight-ropes.”
“There,” I said, “you got over it. Never mind now.”
“But I ain’t got over it, and I do mind now,” he cried angrily. “How would you like to be laughed at because you were thought to be a coward? And I ain’t one, I’m sure.”
“Of course you are not.”
“But of course I am, and you know I am. I never expected British Columbia was made like this. Here’s a pretty place! Why, it’s just as if the world had been split open ever so far, and we was obliged to walk along the bottom of the crack.”
“Yes,” I said, as I looked up the side of the canon to where the sky seemed to be a mere strip above our heads; “but then see how awfully grand it is.”
“Oh, yes, I know it’s awfully enough, but I don’t see no grand. I wish I hadn’t come.”
“What, because we’ve had a bit of difficulty?”