"Ostrich-farmer!" cried Dyke, in a tone full of disgust. "Ugh! I'm sick of the silly-looking, lanky goblins. I wish their heads were buried in the sand, and their bodies too." "With their legs sticking straight up to make fences, eh, old man?" said Joseph Emson, smiling behind his beard--a smile that would have been all lost, if it had not been for a pleasant wrinkle or two about his frank blue eyes. "Well, they would be some good then," said Dyke, a little more amiably. "These wire fences are always breaking down and going off _spang_, and twisting round your legs. Oh, I do wish I was back at home." "Amongst the rain and clouds and fog, so that you could be always playing cricket in summer, and football in winter, and skating when there was ice." "Don't you sneer at the fog, Joe," retorted Dyke. "I wish I could see a good thick one now." "So that you could say, `Ah, you should see the veldt where the sun shines brightly for weeks together.'" "Sun shines!" cried Dyke. "Here, look at my face and hands." "Yes; they're burnt of good Russia leather colour, like mine, Dyke. Well, what do you say? Shall we pack the wagon, give it up, and trek slowly back to Cape Town?" "Yes, I'm ready!" cried the boy eagerly. "Get out, you confounded young fibber! I know you better than that." "No, you don't," said Dyke sulkily. "Yes, I do, Dicky. I know you better than you know yourself. You're not of that breed, my boy. You've got too much of the old dad's Berserker blood in your veins. Oh, come, now: withdraw all that! British boys don't look back when they've taken hold of the plough handles." "Bother the plough handles!" "By all means, boy; but, I say, that isn't English, Dyke. Where would our country's greatness have been if her sons had been ready to sing that coward's song?" "Now you're beginning to preach again, Joe," said the boy sulkily. "Then say `Thank you,' my lad. Isn't it a fine thing for you to have a brother with you, and then, when there isn't a church for hundreds of miles--a brother who can preach to you?" "No; because I know what you're going to say--that we ought to go on and fight it out." "That's it, Dicky. Didn't some one say that the beauty of a British soldier was that he never knew when he was beaten?" "I'm not a soldier, and I am beaten," cried Dyke sourly. "Not you. I know you better. Why, if I said `Yes; let's give it up,' and packed up all we cared to take, and got the wagon loaded to-night, you'd repent in the morning when we were ready to start, and say, `Let's have another try.'" "Well, perhaps I might say--" "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Joseph Emson; "what a young humbug you are, Dicky. Fancy you going back with me to the old dad, and us saying, `Here we are, back again, like two bad shillings, father. We've spent all our money, and we're a pair of failures.'" "Well, but it is so hot and tiresome, and the ostriches are such horribly stupid beasts, and--"