"Bran wouldn't agree," said Tom, laughing. "And anyhow, the old bear's no good as a pet. He's pretty, enough, but he's awfully stupid. The fact is, he's practically blind in the daytime—he can only see at night, and even then he hasn't much brain-power. Anything he meets—you, or a gate-post, or a house—he wants to climb up immediately, thinking it's a tree. He's really uninteresting; and he can scratch like fury!"
"What a pity!" Aileen said. "He looks such a dear."
"I don't think he means to be savage," Tom said. "He only claws in self-defence, if he's touched."
"Why shouldn't he?" said Garth. "Does he growl, or roar, or anything, Dad?"
"He may coo to his young, for all I know," said his father, laughing. "But he's generally considered a silent beggar; only if he's hurt or badly frightened, he cries exactly like a child. The blacks have a yarn that he was really a child, ages ago. I once saw some dogs attack an unlucky little fellow that was trying to get to a tree, and the way he cried made me shiver."
"Poor little chap!" Aileen said pityingly. "Does he ever get tame in captivity?"
"I don't think so: he's too stupid to be really tamed. You couldn't make a pet of him."
"Then it's really a pity he looks so jolly," was Garth's verdict; "'cause it only excites your hopes for nothing. I vote we go on; he doesn't look as if he'd move if we stopped here all day."
"He won't," said his father. "I always think he'd make an excellent heathen god, for he looks so wise, and it wouldn't matter in the least that he hasn't any brains at all. His great ability is for sitting still, and that's quite a desirable quality for a god."
They went on, through scrub that grew so closely that the path they followed became a mere sheep-track, and the bushes brushed their shoulders. Overhead a laughing-jackass broke into a peal of wild laughter, and was answered by another some distance off: and presently they saw one of the big brown birds alight on a bough, turning up his broad tail with a jerk as he came to rest, and then laughing as if the world were one huge joke.