"It's all right enough now," replied Dyke, "because it's early and cool; but it is so horribly lonely." "Lonely! Why, I'm always with you," cried Emson--"the best of company. Then you've Jack and Tanta Sal, and Duke, and Breezy, and all the ostriches for pets, and the oxen; while, if you want more company, there's old Oom Schlagen out one way, and old Morgenstern out the other." "Ugh! Stupid old Boers!" cried Dyke. "Well, they're civil to you, and that's more than Oom Schlagen is to me. It's because you have got that Dutch name. I say, father meant you to be a painter, I'll be bound, and here you are, an ostrich-farmer." "Oh yes, and we're going to be very rich when the birds are all dead." "And they seem as if they meant to die, all of them," said Emson sadly, as he rode along by his brother, each with his rifle across his saddle-bow. "I don't seem to have got hold of the right way of managing them, Dyke: we must follow nature more by watching the habits of the wild ones. I have tried so hard, too." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Dyke merrily. "Who's grumbling now!" "That's better, and more like yourself, old fellow," said Emson, smiling down pleasantly. "That's more like the light-hearted chap who promised to stick to and help me like a brother should. You hurt me, Dyke, when you turn so low-spirited and sulky. I've plenty of troubles, though I say little, over my venture here; and when I see you so down, it worries me more than I can say." They rode on over the open veldt that glorious morning in silence for some minutes, and Dyke looked down at his horse's mane. "It makes me feel that I have done wrong in bringing a bright, happy lad away from home and his studies to this wild solitary place. I ought to have known better, and that it was not natural for a boy like you to feel the hard stern determination to get on that I, ten years older, possessed. I ought to have known that, as soon as the novelty had passed away, you would begin to long for change. Father did warn me, but I said to him: `I'm a man, and he's only a boy; but we've been together so much, and always been companions, Dyke and I can't help getting on together.'" "And we can't," cried the boy in a husky voice. "Don't, please don't, Joe, old chap; I can't bear it. I've been a beast." "Oh, come, come," cried Emson, leaning over to clap him on the shoulder; "I didn't mean to upset you like that." "But I'm glad you have," cried Dyke in half-suffocated tones. "I know well enough I have been a beast to you, Joe, and the more quiet and patient you've been with me, the worse I've got, till I quite hate myself." "Oh no, not so bad as that." "Yes," cried Dyke excitedly, "it's been worse; and all the while you've been the dear, good old chap to me; just the same as it always was when I was little, and grew tired and cross when we were out, and you took me up on your back and carried me miles and miles home." "Why, of course I did," said Emson, smiling.