“Can you ride?”
“Oh yes,” I cried, as I recalled the days when I had about as wild a little Welsh pony as ever boy sat.
“Come, that’s something; but you can’t ride without a horse.”
“No, sir.”
“And have you any capital to buy land, and stock it?”
“Only a few pounds left, sir.”
“Oh, you have a few pounds. Well, yours seems a lively position, and I suppose you both see that you have very little chance of getting on.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said Esau. “We’ve seen lots of places where we could build a hut to begin with, and get on by degrees.”
“Your eyes want opening a little wider, my lad. Suppose you took up one of the beautiful patches of land you saw near the river.”
“Yes, sir, quite close, where we could catch salmon same as the Indians do, and dry them. I don’t see if the Indians can live why we couldn’t.”