"No, Master Vane, I'll not," cried cook, bridling up, and looking as if
an insult had been offered to her stately person; "and if master and
missus won't speak, it's time someone else did."
"But I only want them just plainly stewed with a little butter, pepper,
and salt," said Vane, with the basket in his hand.
"A little butter and pepper and salt, sir!" cried cook reproachfully; "a
little rhubar' and magneshire, you mean, to keep the nasty pysonous
thinks from hurting of you. Really I do wonder at you, sir, a-going
about picking up such rubbish."
"But they're good food--good to eat."
"Yes, sir; for toads and frogs. Don't tell me, sir. Do you think I
don't know what's good Christian food when I see it, and what isn't?"
"I know you think they're no good, but I want to try them as an
experiment."
"Life isn't long enough, sir, to try sperrymens, and I'd sooner go and
give warning at once than be the means of laying you on a bed of agony
and pain."
"Oh, well, never mind, cook, let me do them myself."
"What?" cried the stout lady in such a tone of indignant surprise that
the lad felt as if he had been guilty of a horrible breach of etiquette,
and made his retreat, basket and all, toward the door.
But he had roused Martha, who, on the strength of many years' service
with the doctor and his lady in London, had swollen much in mind as well
as grown stout in body, and she followed him to the kitchen-door where
he paused without opening it, for fear of the dispute reaching the ears
of aunt and uncle in the breakfast-room.
"Look here, Martha," he said, "don't be cross. Never mind. I'm sorry I
asked you."
"Cross? Cross, Master Vane? Is it likely I should make myself cross
about a basketful of rubbishing toadstools that you've wasted your time
in fetching out of the woods?"
"No, no, you are not cross, and I beg your pardon."
"And I wouldn't have thought it of you, sir. The idee, indeed, of you
wanting to come and meddle here in my kitchen!"
"But I don't want to, I tell you, so don't say any more about it."
But before Vane could grasp the woman's intention, she had snatched the
basket from his hand and borne it back to the table, upon which she
thumped it with so much vigour that several of the golden chalice-like
fungi leaped out.
"Here, what are you going to do?" cried Vane.
"What you told me, sir," said cook austerely, and with a great hardening
of her face. "I don't forget my dooties, sir, if other people do."
"Oh, but never mind, cook," cried Vane. "I'm sorry I asked you."
"Pray don't say any more about it, sir. The things shall be cooked and
sent to table, and it's very thankful you ought to be, I'm sure, that
master's a doctor and on the spot ready, for so sure as you eat that
mess in the parlour, you'll all be on a bed of sickness before night."
"Now, Martha," cried Vane; "that's just what you said when I asked you
to cook the parasol mushrooms."
"Paragrandmother mushrooms, sir; you might just as well call them by
their proper name, umberrella toadstools, and I don't believe any one
ate them."
"Yes; uncle and I ate them, and they were delicious. Cook these the
same way."
"I know how to cook them, sir, only it's an insult to proper mushrooms
to dress them in the same way as good wholesome food."
"That's good wholesome food," said Vane, "only people don't know it. I
wanted to bring you some big puff balls to fry for me, but you turn so
cross about it."
"And enough to make anyone turn cross, sir. There, that will do now.
I've said that I'd cook them, and that's enough."
Vane Lee felt that there was nothing to be done now but make a retreat,
and he went into the hall where Eliza Jane, the doctor's housemaid, was
whisking a feather-brush about, over picture-frames, and ornaments,
curiosities from different parts of the world, and polishing the hall
table. From this she flew to the stand and caught up the hat brush with
which she attacked the different hats on the pegs, speaking over her
shoulder at Vane in a rapid way as she went on.
"Now, don't you ask me to do anything, Master Vane, because I'm all
behind, and your aunt's made the tea and waiting for you, and your uncle
will be back directly, for he has only gone down the garden for a walk,
and to pick up the fallen peaches."
"Wasn't going to ask you to do anything," was the reply.
"But you've been asking cook to do something, and a nice fantigue she'll
be in. She was bad enough before. I wouldn't have such a temper for
all the money in the Bank of England. What have you been asking her to
do?--Bother the hat!"
Eliza was brushing so vigorously that she sent Vane's hard felt hat,
which she had just snatched up from where he had placed it, flying to
the other end of the hall just as Doctor Lee, a tall, pleasant-looking
grey-haired man, came in from the garden with a basket of his gleanings
from beneath the south wall.
"That meant for me?" he said, staring down at the hat and then at Vane.
"Which I beg your pardon, sir," said the maid, hurriedly. "I was
brushing it, and it flew out of my hand."
"Ah! You should hold it tight," said the doctor, picking up the hat,
and looking at a dint in the crown. "It will require an operation to
remove that depression of the brain-pan on the _dura mater_. I mean on
the lining, eh, Vane?"
"Oh, I can soon put that right," said the boy merrily, as he gave it a
punch with his fist and restored the crown to its smooth dome-like
shape.
"Yes," said the doctor, "but you see we cannot do that with a man who
has a fractured skull. Been out I see?" he continued, looking down at
the lad's discoloured, dust-stained boots.
"Oh, yes, uncle, I was out at six. Glorious morning. Found quite a
basketful of young chanterelles."
"Indeed? What have you done with them?"
"Been fighting Martha to get her to cook them."
"And failed?" said the doctor quietly, as he peered into the basket, and
turned over the soft, downy, red-cheeked peaches he had brought in.
"No, uncle,--won."
"Now, you good people, it's nearly half-past eight. Breakfast--
breakfast. Bring in the ham, Eliza."
"Good-morning, my dear," said the doctor, bending down to kiss the
pleasantly plump elderly lady who had just opened the dining-room door,
and keeping up the fiction of its being their first meeting that
morning.
"Good-morning, dear."
"Come, Vane, my boy," cried the doctor, "breakfast, breakfast. Here's
aunt in one of her furious tempers because you are so late."
"Don't you believe him, my dear," said the lady. "It's too bad. And
really, Thomas, you should not get in the habit of telling such dreadful
fibs even in fun. Had a nice walk, Vane?"
"Yes, aunt, and collected a capital lot of edible fungi."
"The word fungi's enough to make any one feel that they are not edible,
my dear," said Aunt Hannah. "What sort did you get? Not those nasty,
tall, long-legged things you brought before?"
"No, aunt; beautiful golden chanterelles. I wanted to have them cooked
for breakfast."
"And I have told him it would be high treason," said the doctor.
"Martha would give warning."
"No, no, my dear, not quite so bad as that, but leave them to me, and
I'll cook them for lunch myself."
"No need, aunt; Martha came down from her indignant perch."
"I'm glad of that," said the lady smiling; "but, one minute, before we
go in the dining-room: there's a beautiful _souvenir_ rosebud over the
window where I cannot reach it. Cut it and bring it in."
"At your peril, sir," said the doctor fiercely. "The last rose of
summer! I will not have it touched."
"Now, my dear Tom, don't be so absurd," cried the lady. "What is the
use of your growing roses to waste--waste--waste themselves all over the
place."
"You hear that, Vane? There's quoting poetry. Waste their sweetness on
the desert air, I suppose you mean, madam?"
"Yes: it's all the same," said the lady. "Thank you, my dear," she
continued, as Vane handed the rose in through the window.
"My poor cut-down bloom," sighed the doctor; but Vane did not hear him,
for he was setting his hat down again in the museum-like hall, close by
the fishing-tackle and curiosities of many lands just as a door was
opened and a fresh, maddening odour of fried ham saluted his nostrils.
"Oh, murder!" cried the lad; and he rushed upstairs, three steps at a
time, to begin washing his hands, thinking the while over his encounter
with his Creole fellow-pupil.
"Glad I didn't fight him," he muttered, as he dried his knuckles, and
looked at them curiously. "Better than having to ask uncle for his
sticking-plaster."
He stopped short, turning and gazing out of the bedroom window, which
looked over the back garden toward the field with their Jersey cows; and
just then a handsome game-cock flapped his bronzed wings and sent forth
his defiant call.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo! indeed," muttered Vane; "and he thinks me a regular
coward. I suppose it will have to come to a set-to some day. I feel
sure I can lick him, and perhaps, after all, he'll lick me."
"Oh, Vane, my dear boy, don't!" cried Mrs Lee, as the lad rushed down
again, his feet finding the steps so rapidly that the wonder was that he
did not go headlong, and a few seconds later, he was in his place at the
dining-room table, tastily arranged with its plate, china, and flowers.
A walk before breakfast is a wonderful thing for the appetite, and Vane
soon began with a sixteen-year-old growing appetite upon the white
bread, home-made golden butter, and the other pleasant products of the
doctor's tiny homestead, including brahma eggs, whose brown shells
suggested that they must have been boiled in coffee.
The doctor kept the basket he had brought in beside him on the cloth,
and had to get up four times over to throw great fat wood-lice out of
the window, after scooping them up with a silver tablespoon, the dark
grey creatures having escaped from between the interstices of the
basket, and being busily making their way in search of some dry, dark
corner.
"It is astonishing what a predilection for peaches the wood-louse has,"
said the doctor, resuming his seat.
"All your fault, uncle," said Vane, with his mouth full.
"Mine! why?"
"You see you catch them stealing, and then you forgive them and let them
go to find their way back to the south wall, so that they can begin
again."
"Humph! yes," said the doctor; "they have plenty of enemies to shorten
their lives without my help. Well, so you found some mushrooms, did
you?"
"Yes, uncle, just in perfection."
"Some more tea, dear?" said Vane's aunt. "I hope you didn't bring many
to worry cook with."
"Only a basket full, aunty," said Vane merrily.
"What!" cried the lady, holding the teapot in air.
"But she is going to cook them for dinner."
"Really, my dear, I must protest," said the lady. "Vane cannot know
enough about such things to be trusted to bring them home and eat them.
I declare I was in fear and trembling over that last dish."
"You married a doctor, my dear," said Vane's uncle quietly; "and you saw
me partake of the dish without fear. Someone must experimentalise,
somebody had to eat the first potato, and the first bunch of grapes.
Nature never labelled them wholesome food."
"Then let somebody else try them first," said the lady. "I do not feel
disposed to be made ill to try whether this or that is good for food. I
am not ambitious."
"Then you must forgive us: we are," said the doctor dipping into his
basket. "Come, you will not refuse to experimentalise on a peach, my
dear. There is one just fully ripe, and--dear me! There are two
wood-lice in this one. Eaten their way right in and living there."
He laid one lovely looking peach on a plate, and made another dip.
"That must have fallen quite early in the night," said Vane, sharply,
"slugs have been all over it."
"So they have," said the doctor, readjusting his spectacles. "Here is a
splendid one. No: a blackbird has been digging his beak into that. And
into this one too. Really, my dear, I'm afraid that my garden friends
and foes have been tasting them all. No, here is one with nothing the
matter, save the contusion consequent from its fall from the mother
tree."
"On to mother earth," said Vane laughing. "I say, uncle, wouldn't it be
a good plan to get a lot of that narrow old fishing net, and spread it
out hanging from the wall, so as to catch all the peaches that fall?"
"Excellent," said the doctor.
"I'll do it," said Vane, wrinkling up his brow, as he began to puzzle
his brains about the best way to suspend the net for the purpose.
Soon after, the lad was in the doctor's study, going over some papers he
had written, ready for his morning visit to the rectory; and this put
him in mind of the encounter with his fellow-pupil, Distin, and made him
thoughtful.
"He doesn't like me," the boy said to himself; "and somehow I feel as if
I do not like him. I don't want to quarrel, and it always seems as if
one was getting into hot-water with him. He's hot-blooded, I suppose,
from being born in the West Indies. Well, if that's it," mused Vane,
"he can't help it any more than I can help being cool because I was born
in England. I won't quarrel with him. There."
And taking up his books and papers, he strapped them together, and set
off for the rectory, passing out of the swing-gate, going along the road
toward the little town above which the tall grey-stone tower stood up in
the clear autumn air with its flagstaff at the corner of the
battlements, its secondary tower at the other corner, holding within it
the narrow spiral staircase which led from the floor to the leads; and
about it a little flock of jackdaws sailing round and round before
settling on the corner stones, and the top.
"Wish I could invent something to fly with," thought Vane, as he reached
the turning some distance short of the first houses of the town. "It
does seem so easy. Those birds just spread out their wings, and float
about wherever they please with hardly a beat. There must be a way, if
one could only find it out."
He went off into the pleasant lane to the left, and caught sight of a
bunch of blackberries apparently within reach, and he was about to cross
the dewy band of grass which bordered the road, when he recollected that
he had just put on clean boots, and the result of a scramble through and
among brambles would be unsatisfactory for their appearance in the
rector's prim study. So the berries hung in their place, left to ripen,
and he went on till a great dragon-fly came sailing along the moist lane
to pause in the sunny openings, and poise itself in the clear air where
its wings vibrated so rapidly that they looked like a patch of clear
gauze.
Vane's thoughts were back in an instant to the problem that has puzzled
so many minds; and as he watched the dragon-fly, a couple of swallows
skimmed by him, darted over the wall, and were gone. Then, flopping
idly along in its clumsy flight, came a white butterfly, and directly
after a bee--one of the great, dark, golden-banded fellows, with a soft,
velvety coat.
"And all fly in a different way," said Vane to himself, thoughtfully.
"They all use wings, but all differently; and they have so much command
over them, darting here and there, just as they please. I wonder
whether I could make a pair of wings and a machine to work them. It
doesn't seem impossible. People float up in balloons, but that isn't
enough. I think I could do it, and--oh, hang it, there goes ten, and
the rector will be waiting. I wonder whether I can recollect all he
said about those Greek verbs."