"Hallo, boiler-burster," cried Gilmore, next time they met, while Macey
ran into a corner of the study to turn his face to the wall and keep on
exploding with laughter, "when are you going to do our conservatory up
here?"
"Oh, I say, don't chaff me," cried Vane, "I have felt so vexed about it
all."
"Distie has been quite ill ever since with delight at your misfortune.
It has turned him regularly bilious."
"Said it was a pity you weren't blown up, too," cried Macey.
"Bah! don't tell ugly tales," said Gilmore.
"I wish I could feel that he did not," thought Vane, who had a weakness
for being good friends with everybody he knew.
He had to encounter plenty of joking about the explosion, and for some
time after, Bruff used to annoy him by turning away when they met, and
shaking his shoulders as if convulsed with mirth, but after a sharp
encounter with Vane, when he had ventured to say he knew how it would
be, he kept silence, and later on he was very silent indeed.
For the new boiler came down, and was set without any objection being
made by cook, who was for some time, however, very reluctant to go near
the thing for fear it should go off; but familiarity bred contempt, and
she grew used to it as it did not go off, and to Bruff's great disgust
it acted splendidly, heating the greenhouse in a way beyond praise, and
with scarcely any trouble, and an enormous saving of fuel.
Vane was so busy over the hot-water apparatus, and had so much to think
about with regard to the damages in connection with the explosion, that
he had forgotten all about the adventure in the lane just prior to
meeting Macey, till one day, when out botanising with the doctor, they
came through that very lane again, and in their sheltered corner, there
were the gipsies, looking as if they had never stirred for weeks.
There, too, were the women cooking by the fire, and the horses and
ponies grazing on the strips of grass by the roadside.
But closer examination would have proved that the horses which drew cart
and van were different, and several of the drove of loose ones had been
sold or changed away.
There, too, were the boys whose duty it was to mind the horses slouching
about the lane, and their dark eyes glistened as the doctor and Vane
came along.
"Dear me!" said the doctor suddenly.
"What, uncle?"
"I thought I saw someone hurry away through the furze bushes as we came
up, as if to avoid being seen. Your friend Macey I think."
"Couldn't have been, uncle, or he would have stopped."
"I was mistaken perhaps.--A singular people these, so wedded to their
restless life. I should like to trace them back and find out their
origin. It would be a curious experience to stay with them for a year
or two," continued the doctor, after a long silence, "and so find out
exactly how they live. I'm afraid that they do a little stealing at
times when opportunity serves. Fruit, poultry, vegetables, any little
thing they can snap up easily. Then, too, they have a great knowledge
of herbs and wild vegetables, with which, no doubt, they supplement
their scanty fare. Like to join them for a bit, Vane?"
"Oh, no," said the boy laughing. "I don't think I should care for that.
Too fond of a comfortable bed, uncle, and a chair and table for my
meals."
"If report says true, their meals are not bad," continued the doctor.
"Their women are most clever at marketing and contrive to buy very
cheaply of the butchers, and they are admirable cooks. They do not
starve themselves."
"Think there's any truth about the way they cook fowls or pheasants,
uncle?"
"What, covering them all over with clay, and then baking them in the hot
embers of a wood fire? Not a doubt about it, boy. They serve squirrels
and hedgehogs in the same way, even a goose at times. When they think
it is done, the clay is burned into earthenware. Then a deft blow with
a stick or stone cracks the burnt clay and the bird or animal is turned
out hot and juicy, the feathers or bristles remaining in the clay."
"Don't think I could manage hedgehog or squirrel, uncle."
"I should not select them for diet. They are both carnivorous, and the
squirrel, in addition, has its peculiar odorous gland like the pole-cat
tribe."
"But a squirrel isn't carnivorous, uncle," said Vane, "he eats nuts and
fruit."
"And young birds, too, sometimes, my boy. Flesh-eating things are not
particularly in favour for one's diet. Even the American backwoodsman
who was forced to live on crows did not seem very favourably impressed.
You remember?"
"No, uncle; it's new to me."
"He was so short of food, winter-game being scarce, that he had to shoot
and eat crows. Someone asked him afterwards whether they were nice, and
he replied that he `didn't kinder hanker arter 'em.'"
"Well, I don't `kinder hanker arter' squirrel," said Vane, merrily, "and
I don't `kinder hanker arter' being a gipsy king ha--ha--as the old song
says. You'll have to make me an engineer, uncle."
"Steam engineer, boy?" said the doctor, smiling.
"Oh, anything, as long as one has to be contriving something new.
Couldn't apprentice me to an inventor, could you?"
"To Mr Deering, for instance?"
Vane shook his head.
"I don't know," he said, dubiously. "I liked--You don't mind my
speaking out, uncle?"
"No, boy, speak out," said the doctor, looking at him curiously.
"I was going to say that I liked Mr Deering for some things. He was so
quick and clever, but--"
"You didn't like him for other things?"
Vane nodded, and the doctor looked care-worn and uneasy; his voice
sounded a little husky, too, as he said sharply:--
"Oh, he is a very straightforward, honourable man. We were at school
together, and I could trust Deering to any extent. But he has been very
unfortunate in many ways, and I'm afraid has wasted a great deal of his
life over unfruitful experiments with the result that he is still poor."
"But anyone must have some failures, uncle. All schemes cannot be
successful."
"True, but there is such a large proportion of disappointment that I
should say an inventor is an unhappy man."
"Not if he makes one great hit," cried Vane warmly. "Oh, I should like
to invent something that would do a vast deal of good, and set everyone
talking about it. Why, it would mean a great fortune."
"And when you had made your great fortune, what then?"
"Well, I should be a rich man, and I could make you and aunt happy."
"I don't know that, Vane," said the doctor, laying his hand upon the
lad's shoulder. "I saved a pleasant little competence out of my hard
professional life, and it has been enough to keep us in this pleasant
place, and bring up and educate you. I am quite convinced that if I had
ten times as much I should be no happier, and really, my boy, I don't
think I should like to see you a rich man."
"Uncle!"
"I mean it, Vane. There, dabble in your little schemes for a bit, and
you shall either go to college or to some big civil engineer as a pupil,
but you must recollect the great poet's words."
"What are they, uncle?" said Vane, in a disappointed tone.
"`There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we may.'
"Now let's have a little more botany. What's that?"
"Orange peziza," said Vane, pouncing upon a little fungus cup; and this
led the doctor into a dissertation on the beauty of these plants,
especially of those which required a powerful magnifying glass to see
their structure.
Farther on they entered a patch of fir-wood where a little search
rewarded them with two or three dozen specimens of the orange milk
mushroom, a kind so agreeable to the palate that the botanists have
dubbed it delicious.
"Easy enough to tell, Vane," said the doctor, as he carefully removed
every scrap of dirt and grass from the root end of the stem, and
carefully laid the neatly-shaped dingy-green round-table shaped fungi in
his basket upon some moss. "It is not every edible fungus that proves
its safety by invariably growing among fir trees and displaying this
thick rich red juice like melted vermilion sealing-wax."
"And when we get them home, Martha will declare that they are rank
poison," said Vane.
"And all because from childhood she has been taught that toadstools are
poison. Some are, of course, boy, so are some wild fruits, but it would
be rather a deprivation for us if we were to decline to eat every kind
of fruit but one."
"I should think it would," cried Vane, "or two."
"And yet, that is what people have for long years done in England.
Folks abroad are wiser. There, it's time we went back."
Vane was very silent on his homeward way, for the doctor had damped him
considerably, and the bright career which he had pictured for himself as
an inventor was beginning to be shrouded in clouds.
"Civil engineer means a man who surveys and measures land for roads and
railways, and makes bridges," said Vane to himself. "I don't think I
should like that. Rather go to a balloon manufactory and--"
He stopped to think of the subject which the word balloon brought up,
and at last said to himself:
"Oh, if I could only invent the way how to fly."
"The boy has too much gas in his head," the doctor said to himself, as
they reached home; "and he must be checked, but somehow he has spoiled
my walk."
He threw himself into an easy chair after placing his basket on the
table, and into which Aunt Hannah peeped as Vane went up to his room.
"Botanical specimens, my dear," she said.
"Yes, for the cook," said the doctor dreamily.
"Oh, my dear, you should not bring them home. You know how Martha
dislikes trying experiments. My dear, what is the matter?"
"Oh, nothing--nothing, only Vane was talking to me, and it set me
thinking whether I have done right in trusting Deering as I have."
Aunt Hannah looked as troubled as the doctor now, and sighed and shook
her head.
"No," cried the doctor firmly, "I will not doubt him. He is a
gentleman, and as honest as the day."
"Yes," said Aunt Hannah quietly, "but the most honourable people are not
exempt from misfortune."
"My dear Hannah," cried the doctor, "don't talk like that. Why it would
ruin Vane's prospects if anything went wrong."
"And ours too," said Aunt Hannah sadly, just as Vane was still thinking
of balloons.