"Never mind Merle," Mrs. Warner said hastily. "She's just an old stupid. Of course Dick isn't a beast, Bobby."
"I don't fink you looks like one," Bobby pronounced, solemnly, after inspecting him.
Dick grinned, somewhat confused. He was never a person of many words, except with his mother; it was somewhat disconcerting to be dissected in public.
"You come along, and I'll show you the gulls," he said, and Bobby tucked a fat little hand into his hard paw and trotted off ecstatically. They made great friends over the swooping gulls, and Dick learned that there were two little Warners younger than Bobby—"twinses," the small boy said. Being but three, they were considered too young to travel; they stayed in Perth with Grannie. "We's goin' back to find the twinses now," Bobby finished.
"Are you glad?"
"Wather! They's troublesome kids, but they's nice. I've got a pony at home."
"So have I," said Dick. "Is yours a good one?"
"He's lovely," Bobby said solemnly. "His name's Micky. Can yours jump?"
"Can he—what!" said Dick, with a sudden homesick vision of Tinker and the great galloping stretches at home, of the log fences over which they loved to fly. It was believed that Dick would take Tinker across anything over which the pony could lift his nose. "Yes, he can jump a bit." Speech fell upon him with that beloved subject, and he talked of Tinker, with his eyes dancing, while the little boy hung upon his words and spurred him whenever he paused with, "Tell me more about him."
"We lost him once when he was a two-year-old," Dick said. "Some ass of a swagman burned some of our boundary fence—didn't put his camp fire out properly—-and a lot of our horses got out through the gap and into the ranges. We got most of 'em back, but Tinker and a little bay mare joined a mob of wild horses, and we never saw them for six months."