However, this was at last
broken by a laugh. It was a boyish laugh, and came from the youngest of
the party. The two others turned their profiles and glanced inquiringly
towards him, but did not speak.
"I was thinking," he began in apologetic explanation, "how mighty queer
it was that while we were working like niggers on grub wages, without
the ghost of a chance of making a strike, how we used to sit here, night
after night, and flapdoodle and speculate about what we'd do if we ever
DID make one; and now, Great Scott! that we HAVE made it, and are just
wallowing in gold, here we are sitting as glum and silent as if we'd
had a washout! Why, Lord! I remember one night--not so long ago,
either--that you two quarreled over the swell hotel you were going to
stop at in 'Frisco, and whether you wouldn't strike straight out for
London and Rome and Paris, or go away to Japan and China and round by
India and the Red Sea."
"No, we didn't QUARREL over it," said one of the figures gently; "there
was only a little discussion."
"Yes, but you did, though," returned the young fellow mischievously,
"and you told Stacy, there, that we'd better learn something of the
world before we tried to buy it or even hire it, and that it was just
as well to get the hayseed out of our hair and the slumgullion off our
boots before we mixed in polite society."
"Well, I don't see what's the matter with that sentiment now," returned
the second speaker good-humoredly; "only," he added gravely, "we didn't
quarrel--God forbid!"
There was something in the speaker's tone which seemed to touch a common
chord in their natures, and this was voiced by Barker with sudden and
almost pathetic earnestness.
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