But the poetic lips opened not to such numbers. Salsbury gazed long and earnestly, and finally gave vent to his emotion, indicating, with the amber tip of his cigar-tube, the setter that slept in the sunshine at his feet.
"Shocking place, this, for dogs!"—I regret to say he pronounced it "dawgs"—"Why, Carlo is as fat—as fat as—as a—"
His mind was unequal to a simile even, and he terminated the sentence in a murmur.
More silence; more smoke; more profound meditation. Directly Charley
Burnham looked around with some show of vitality.
"There comes the stage," said he.
The driver's bugle rang merrily among the drifted sand-hills that lay warm and glowing in the orange light of the setting sun. The young men leaned forward over the piazza-rail and scrutinized the occupants of the vehicle as it appeared.
"Old gentleman and lady, aw, and two children," said Ned Salsbury; "I hoped there would be some nice girls."
This, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and poetry, but with that odd, tired little drawl, so epidemic in some of our universities.
"Look there, by Jove!" cried Charley, with a real interest at last; "now that's what I call a regular thing!"
The "regular thing" was a low, four-wheeled pony-chaise of basket-work, drawn by two jolly little fat ponies, black and shiny as vulcanite, which jogged rapidly in, just far enough behind the stage to avoid its dust.