They need not have been alarmed.
Indeed, had she but given herself time for reflection, Nellie must have
known this without any further assurance than the faithful Rover's bark,
which would have been of quite a different tone had any stranger or
suspicious person invaded the spot he was left to guard.
In such case, the good dog would have growled in the most unmistakable
manner, besides giving warning of there being danger ahead by a
different intonation of his expressive voice.
He did not growl now, however, although he who had invaded the sacred
picnic ground where their provender was so lavishly displayed was, in
one sense, a stranger, being not one of the original members of the
festive party who had set out from "The Moorings."
The reason for this was that the new-comer, really, was not a real
"stranger" in the sense of the word. The intruder was, in fact,
Hellyer, the coastguardsman, whom Rover had seen only so recently as
that very morning, when of course master doggie had accompanied Bob to
the beach for his bathe; and so, naturally, there was every reason for
his receiving Hellyer in a friendly manner. Hence, his bark, alarming
though it might have sounded at the first go off to Nell and her aunt,
was found now to have been a bark of recognition and joy and not one of
warning.
Mrs Gilmour felt such a sensation of relief at the sight of Hellyer
that her feelings prevented her from speaking. As she told Nell
afterwards, she "couldn't have uttered a word to save her life"; and
there she remained, "staring at the poor man," to use her own
expression, and one that savoured thoroughly of her country, "as if he
were a stuck pig!"
Hellyer, however, did not remain dumb.
"Beg pardon, mum," said he respectfully, doffing his sailor hat and
touching his forehead with his forefinger in nautical salute; "but, 'ave
you seen the Cap'en anywheres about here, mum?"
"You mean Captain Dresser, I suppose?" replied Mrs Gilmour, recovering
her loss of speech at the sound of his voice, at least so it seemed; the
good lady answering the coastguardsman's question in her usual way, by
asking him another!--"Eh, what, my man?"
"Yes, mum. I've a message for him from our commander, mum; and they
told me at the house as how he were over at Seaview, so, mum, I comes
across by the next boat."
"Well, he isn't very far-off, Hellyer," said Mrs Gilmour smiling; "I
didn't recognise you at first, sure, I was in such a terrible fright on
hearing the dog bark, least somebody was making off with our luncheon.
I'm really glad it's only you."
"And I'm glad, too, mum."
"So glad you're glad I'm glad!" whispered Nellie to her aunt, quoting
something she had seen in an old volume of _Punch_, and going into fits
of laughter. "Eh, auntie?"
"Hush, my dear," said Mrs Gilmour reprovingly, but obliged to laugh too
in spite of herself, although she tried to hide it for fear Hellyer
would think they were making fun of him; and she turned to him to say,
"We expect the Captain, Hellyer, every minute. Why, here he is!"
There he was, most decidedly; and he soon made his presence known.
"Hullo, you good people!" he shouted, while yet some little distance
off, as he made his way down the slope followed by Bob and Dick, "I hope
you've got something for us to eat, for we're all as hungry as hunters."
"Come on," answered Mrs Gilmour, "everything is ready, and Nell and I
are only waiting for you loiterers to begin."
"Loiterers, indeed!" retorted the Captain good-humouredly, as he hobbled
along with some difficulty by the aid of his stick down the uneven path,
"you would loiter too if you had my poor legs to walk with! Never mind,
though, here we are at last; and, I tell you what, ma'am, that table-
cloth there and the good things you've got on it is the prettiest sight
I've seen to-day."
"What!" exclaimed Mrs Gilmour. "Prettier than the Roman villa?"
"Hang the Roman villa! I beg your pardon, ma'am, but the word slipped
out unawares."
After this apology for his somewhat strong expression, the old sailor
was proceeding to give the reason for his condemnation of the
archaeological remains he and the boys had been to see, when he noticed
Hellyer standing by in an attitude of attention.
"Why, man," he cried, "what brings you here?"
"I've got a letter for you, sir," replied Hellyer, handing an envelope
over to him, and saluting him in the same way as he had done Mrs
Gilmour just before. "Here it is, sir!"
"Humph!" ejaculated Captain. Dresser, opening the missive and running
his eyes over the contents. "Here's some good news for you, Master
Bob."
"Oh?" said the latter expectantly. "Good news, Captain?"
"Yes," went on the old sailor, "my friend, Commander Sponson, of the
Coastguard, writes to me to say that one of the new ironclads is going
out of harbour next week on her trial trip; and, if you like, you shall
have a chance of seeing what sort of vessel a modern ship of war is."
"Oh thank you, Captain Dresser, that will be jolly!" said Bob, his face
colouring up with pleasure. "But, will she fire her guns and all?"
"Certainly," answered the other, "big guns, little guns, torpedo-tubes,
and the whole of her armoury! Besides, my boy, you'll be able to see
her machinery at work, as she will try her speed on the measured mile;
and then you can ask one of the engineers all those puzzling questions
you bothered my old brains with when we were on board the steamer this
morning."
"That will be jolly," repeated Bob; "and--"
"There, there," cried the Captain, interrupting him, "I won't say
another word now, I'm much too famished to talk. Mrs Gilmour, what
have you got for a poor hungry creature to eat, eh, ma'am?"
"Anything you like," she responded with a smile. "Pray sit down and
begin."
"I will," said he, seating himself with alacrity; and turning to the
coastguardsman, he added-- "I suppose, Hellyer, you could pick a bit
too, eh?"
"Yes, sir, saving your presence. But, only after you and the ladies,
sir," was Hellyer's respectful reply; and then, with all the training of
an experienced servant, knowledge he had gained in the exercise of his
manifold duties during several years' service as the Captain's coxswain,
he proceeded to assist Dick in waiting, with an "If you'll allow me,
sir."
"Some bread, please," called out the Captain presently. "Any your side,
Hellyer?"
Hellyer and Dick both looked about the table, seeking in vain for the
required article.
"I can't see none, sit," said the ex-coxswain deprecatingly, giving up
the quest after a bit in despair. He seemed, from the way in which he
spoke, as if he thought it was his fault that the bread was missing.
"There ain't any this side, sir."
Dick's search too was equally fruitless.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, all anxiety. "Look in the hamper
again. Sure, we must have forgotten to take it out."
But there also, alas! no bread was to be found.
The Captain could not help laughing at Mrs Gilmour's face of dismay;
while Nellie clapped her hands in high glee.
"Oh, auntie," she cried, "I thought you said just now when we were
spreading the cloth that nothing had been forgotten, and how good Sarah
was to think of everything. Oh, auntie!"
"Oh, auntie!" chorussed Bob, joining in the general laugh. "Fancy
forgetting the bread!"
"Aye, to leave out the staff of life, of all things!" put in the
Captain, having his say. "I hope `the good Sarah' has not remimbered to
forgit anything more importint, sure!"
"I won't have you mimicking me," expostulated Mrs Gilmour, although she
took their joking in very good part. "Sure, mistakes will happen
sometimes, and there are biscuits if you can't have bread."
"All right, all right," said the Captain soothingly, "I dare say we'll
get along very well as we are. Don't worry any more about the matter,
ma'am. We've got your excellent piecrust, at any rate, and that's quite
good enough for me."
He chuckled still, though, for some time; and he chuckled more
presently, when something else, quite as important as the bread, was
discovered also to be missing.
The discovery came about in this wise. Before sitting down with the
others, Bob had rigged up in gipsy fashion, on three forked sticks, a
little brass kettle, which he had specially asked his aunt to have put
with the other picnic things, in order to carry out thoroughly the idea
of "camping out" as he had read about it in books; and, besides slinging
the kettle artistically in the way described, he also filled it with
water from a stone jar which they had brought with them, as a precaution
in the event of their not being able to get any of drinkable quality
where they intended making a halt, Mrs Gilmour expressing some little
repugnance to his taking any out of the brook, although they had been
glad enough previously to use it for washing their scratched faces. She
said it had too many dead leaves and live creatures in it for her taste.
Under the filled kettle, too, Bob had lit a fire, for which Nell and
Dick collected the sticks; and, long before luncheon was done, this was
blazing up quite briskly, and the kettle singing away at a fine rate.
By and by, when the Captain declared he couldn't eat another morsel, and
Bob and Nellie also had had enough, Mrs Gilmour heaped up a couple of
plates with the remains of the veal-and-ham pie for Hellyer and Dick,
who had all this time been busily employed ministering to their various
wants, and now retired some little distance off to enjoy their well-
earned meal.
Then came Bob's turn for action.
"The kettle is boiling, auntie," he cried out, poking fresh sticks in
the fire, which crackled and spitted out as the sap in pieces of the
greener wood caught the heat, the smoke ascending in a column of spiral
wreaths, and making Bob's eyes smart on his getting to leeward of the
blazing pile. "Shall we have tea now?"
"Yes, my dear boy," said she in a very pathetic voice. "Do, please,
make it as quick as you can, I feel quite faint for want of some, as it
is long past the time for my usual afternoon cup."
"All right, auntie," replied Bob, bustling about with great zeal, "I
will get it ready in a jiffy. But, where's the tea?"
"It's in the teapot, I suppose, my dear; and you'll find that in the
hamper with the teacups. Nellie and I thought we wouldn't unpack them
until they were wanted."
Nell, who had been sitting between her aunt and the Captain, on hearing
her name introduced, at once got up to help Bob; but in spite of every
search, neither of them could find the tea.
As in the case of the bread, the "good Sarah" had forgotten it; for,
neither in teapot, teacups or elsewhere could the tea be seen!
"Well, ma'am!" exclaimed the Captain on hearing the painful news. "That
bates Banagher, as one of your countrymen would say."
"I'm sure nobody could be more sorry than I am," pleaded poor Mrs
Gilmour, whom this second mishap completely overwhelmed, "I did so long
for a cup of tea!"
"Well, well," said the Captain when he was able to speak, after a series
of chuckles that made him almost choke, "the next time that a picnic's
in the wind I'd take care, if I were you, to overhaul your hamper before
starting, to see that nothing is forgotten."
"It's all `that good Sarah,' auntie," cried Bob slily; and, then, they
all had another laugh, the misfortunes of the day being provocative,
somehow or other, of the greatest fun. "Oh that `good Sarah'!"
It appeared as if Mrs Gilmour would be the only sufferer in having to
go without her tea: but, at this critical point, Hellyer came to the
rescue.
"Beg pardon, mum," said he, stepping up to her with a deferential touch
of his forelock; "but I knows the woman in the keeper's lodge where you
comed in, and I thinks as how I could borrow a bit o' tea from her, if
you likes."
"Thank you very much, if it's no trouble," replied Mrs Gilmour, hailing
the offer with joy, "I certainly would like it."
Hardly waiting to hear the termination of her reply, the thoughtful
follow darted off along the winding path through the shrubbery by which
they had gained the pleasant little dell; returning before they thought
he could have reached the keeper's lodge with a little packet of tea.
This Miss Nell took from Hellyer and at once emptied into the teapot,
while Bob attended to the kettle and poured the boiling water in; so
that Mrs Gilmour was soon provided with the wished-for cup of her
favourite beverage.
The good lady's equanimity being now restored, she proceeded to question
the Captain about the Roman villa at Brading.
"But, what did you see after all?" she asked; "you haven't told us a
word yet."
"Oh, don't speak about it, ma'am," he replied grumpily. "It's a regular
swindle."
"But, what did you see?" she repeated, knowing his manner, and that he
was not put out with her, at all events. "I want to know."
"See?" echoed the Captain, snorting out the word somehow with suppressed
indignation. "Well, ma'am, to tell you the truth, we saw nothing but
some fragments of old pottery--"
"Just like broken pieces of flower-pots, auntie," interrupted Master Bob
in his eagerness. "The same as you have at the bottom of the garden."
"Yes," continued the old sailor, "that's exactly what these much
exaggerated `remains' resembled more than anything else, I assure you,
ma'am. Of course, all these bits of earthenware were arranged in order
and labelled and all that; but I couldn't make head or tail of them."
"Perhaps you do not understand archaeology?" suggested Mrs Gilmour,
smiling at his description. "That's the rayson they didn't interest
you, sure!"
"P'r'aps not, ma'am," he replied with the utmost good temper. "I fancy
I know something of seamanship and a little about natural history, but
of most of the other 'ologies I confess my ignorance; and, for the life
of me, I can't see how some people can find anything to enjoy in the old
pots and pans of our great-great-grandfathers!"
"You forget the light which these relics throw on the manners and
customs of the ancients," argued the other. "There's a good deal of
information to be gleaned from their mute testimony sure, me dear
Captain."
"Information?" growled the Captain. "Fiddlesticks! And as for the
manners and customs of our ancestors; why, if all I have read be true,
they were uncommonly similar to the account given by a middy of the
natives of the Andaman Isles, as jotted down in his diary, `manners,
none--customs, beastly!'"
"That's shocking," exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, laughing. "But the criticism
will not apply to the Romans, who were almost as civilised and refined
as ourselves."
"And that's not saying much!" said the Captain with one of his sly
chuckles. "Faith we haven't any to boast of!"
"Speak for yourself," she retorted, "sure that's a very poor compliment
you're paying me."
"Present company always excepted," he replied, with an old-fashioned bow
like that of a courtier. "You know I didn't allude to you."
"I accept your apology, sir," said she with equally elaborate
politeness. "I would make you a curtsy if I were standing up, but you
wouldn't wish me to rise for the purpose. Did you not see, though,
anything at all like the ruins of a Roman villa or house at Brading?"
The Captain took a pinch of snuff, as if to digest the matter before
answering her question.
"Well, ma'am," he began, after a long pause of cogitation, "we were
shown some bits of brickwork, marked out in divisions like the
foundations of a house: and a place with a hole in the floor which, they
said, was a bath-room. We also saw a piece or two of tesselated
pavement, with a lot of other gimcracks; but I certainly had to exercise
a good deal of fancy to imagine a villa out of all these scattered
details, like the Marchioness in Dickens' _Old Curiosity Shop_, which I
was reading the other day, `made believe' about her orange-peel wine!"
"Then we didn't lose much by not accompanying you?" she remarked. "I
was rather sorry afterwards I was unable to go."
"Lose anything?" he repeated with emphasis, "I should think not, indeed!
If my poor legs could speak, they would tell you that you've gained
`pretty considerably,' as a Yankee would say, by remaining comfortably
here. Hullo, missy, what a splendid posy you've got there!"
"Yes, are they not nice?" replied Nellie, on the Captain thus turning
the conversation to her collection of wild-flowers, some of which she
had arranged tastefully in a big bunch and placed them in her tin bucket
filled with water to keep them fresh. "Aunt Polly helped me to gather
them."
"I dare say she told you their names and all about them at the same
time, my dear."
"Oh yes, Captain Dresser," said Nellie. "She told me lots."
"Ah!" ejaculated the Captain, heaving a deep sigh of regret. "If I only
knew as much as your auntie does of botany, missy, what a clever old
chap I should be!"
"Don't you believe him, Nell!" cried Mrs Gilmour deprecating the
compliment. "Captain Dresser knows quite as much as I do about plants
and flowers, and a good deal more, too. I only wish he had been here to
tell you the story of the `Devil's bit,' for he would have narrated it
in a much better fashion than I did, I'm sure."
"The divvle a bit of it, ma'am!" exclaimed the old sailor, bursting into
a jovial laugh at his joke, wherein even the staid Hellyer joined.
"But, a truce to your blarney, ma'am; or, you'll make me blush. Allow
me to inform you that time is getting on; and, unless we make a start
for the pier soon, we'll never catch the steamer and reach home to-
night!"