But the little camel set his chin firmly and shook his head.
“Thank you very much, but I think I’d rather not,” he said, and instantly another white camel with golden hoofs joined the end of the caravan almost twenty thousand miles away.
Temptation after temptation followed this, and the little camel bravely resisted them all. There was the temptation to pick up his harp when he saw it lying before him on the sand, and the temptation to send a message to his mother by a bird of paradise who flew down close to him and said he knew just where she was and that he could take it to her without any trouble. And then, just as the sun was sinking beyond the desert’s horizon and the little camel believed he had really come to the end of his strength at last, he saw something so marvelous just ahead that he thought he must be dreaming. Yes, it was. No, it couldn’t possibly be. But still it was. Yes, surely, it was. The more he looked the more convinced he became, and suddenly he jumped straight up into the air with joy.
“My mother! I can see my mother over there!” he cried out, and the old white camel lifted himself lazily on one elbow on his cushions to see.
“Well, I must say it rather looks like her,” he said, stifling a yawn. “I wonder what she’s doing wandering about like that alone?” He sank back on his litter again and picked up his peacock-feather fan. “Perhaps she’s strayed from her caravan and is wandering around in despair.”
“Perhaps she’s looking for me!” cried the little camel in great excitement, but the white leader only yawned again. She was jogging along just ahead of them with her moth-eaten tail hanging down behind, and the youngest camel cried out: “It must be my mother! I know it’s my mother!”
“No one ever said it wasn’t,” said the old camel, and this time it really sounded as if he were falling asleep. “But you can’t possibly be sure at this distance whether it’s your mother or just a striking likeness—”
“But I couldn’t mistake my own mother, could I?” asked the youngest camel, almost tearfully. “I know the way her elbows look from the back, and the way her hump humps—”
“Well, there’s only one way of finding out for certain,” said the white leader, with his heavy head nodding drowsily. “You’d better skip along and catch her up.”
“Oh, would you excuse me for a minute while I do?” asked the little camel, so excited that he could scarcely wait.