Bob Strong's Holidays Part 22

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 h.e.l.lyer and d.i.c.k, 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 n.o.body 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, h.e.l.lyer 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 h.e.l.lyer 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 a.s.sure 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 seamans.h.i.+p 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 d.i.c.kens' _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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 h.e.l.lyer 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!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

WRECKED.

"How's that, sure?" asked Mrs Gilmour. "It's early yet, for the sun's still overhead."

"You forget, ma'am, our old friend up there is rather a late bird at this time of year," replied the Captain. "He hasn't crossed the line yet, you know."

"Well, then," argued the good lady, who was sitting at her ease on a pile of shawls and wraps, enjoying a second cup of tea which Nell had just poured out for her, "where's the hurry?"