_ CHAPTER TWO. AUNT AND UNCLE
"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." _