“The trouble with you is that you just can’t see things as they really are,” his mother said severely to him.
She reached out and tried to nip his ear, but he skipped quickly behind her and there he began to play with her tail, leaping and skidding, the way a kitten will bound after his mother’s tail if he is feeling full of milk and bold as brass.
“Whoops!” he cried, making another flying leap after her tail as she tossed it in irritation into the air. “And, anyhow, how are things really?”
“Don’t be absurd,” snapped his mother as she ambled along behind the next camel’s hind legs and tail. “Things are exactly as they are.”
The sun was rising higher above them, and every instant it grew hotter until the heat seemed to have bleached all the color out of the sky.
“For instance, this sand is getting unbearably hot,” his mother went on, “and there is no stopping place until we reach the oasis, which will be about sundown. Also, there is a sore on my right hip which is being rubbed at every step by my haunch strap. And, last but not least, you are behaving like a perfect ninny. Such things are. Whether you like it or not, you have to admit they’re there.”
“Where is there?” asked the youngest camel smartly, and his mother answered:—
“There, of course, means here.”
“I don’t see how there can be here when there’s over there somewhere,” said her son, and she answered shortly:—
“Don’t waste your time talking so ridiculously. One of the things that doesn’t exist is the green vale I had always hoped to settle in. At my time of life I ought to have a place like that where I could stretch out and eat all the fresh vegetation I wanted and drink as much cool water as I wanted—” The camel driver gave her mouth such a jerk that she had to stop speaking for a moment, and then she added bitterly: “That’s just one of the things that can never possibly be.”