“Gently, mother,” said Gartok with a suppressed groan, “you lay hold of me as if I were a seal.”
“You are quite as self-willed, my son,” replied the old woman. “If you had not gone out to fight you would not have come back with a hole in your leg.”
“If I had not come into the world I should not have been here to trouble you, mother.”
“There’s truth in that, my son,” returned the woman, as if the idea were new to her.
At this Ondikik groaned—whether at the contemptibly obvious character of the idea, or at ideas in general, or in consequence of pain, we cannot tell.
“You said, mother, that Cheenbuk gave them a good deal of trouble?”
“Ay, he gave them sore hearts and sore bodies.”
“They deserved it! what right had they to come with their fire-spouters to attack us?”
“What right had you to go without your fire-spouters to attack them?” demanded old Uleeta, somewhat maliciously.
Gartok, who was destitute neither of intelligence nor of humour, laughed, but the laugh slid into a most emphatic “hoi!” as his mother gave the leg a wrench.