The Star-Gazers Part 25

"And Captain Rolph for exhibitions of endurance, to prove that a man is stronger than a horse," said the major, drily.

"Yes, and not a bad thing, either, eh, Sir John?"

"Oh, every man to his taste," said the host; "but I believe in a man feeding himself up, and not starving himself down."

"Oilcake and turnips, eh?"

"Yes, both good things in their way, but I like the chemical components to have taken other forms, Rob, my boy; good Highland Scots beef and Southdown mutton."

"I hope you will be able to indulge in a good dinner, Rolph?" said the major, looking at the young officer as if he amused him.

"Trust me for that, major," replied the young man loudly. "I'm not bad at table."

"I thought, perhaps," said the major sarcastically, "that you might be in training, and forbidden to eat anything but raw steak and dry biscuit."

"Oh, dear, no," said Rolph seriously. "Quite free now, major, quite free."

"That's a blessing," muttered Sir John, who looked annoyed and fidgety.

"Hah, dinner at last."

"Walking makes me hungry and impatient, Miss Alleyne. Come along, you are my property. First lady."

He held out his arm, and, as Lucy laid her little hand upon it, he went out of the drawing-room chatting merrily; and, as he did so, Rolph leaped from his seat, and drew himself upright as if to display the breadth of his chest and the size of his muscles.

"Glad of it," he said. "I'm sharp set. Come along, Glynne."

Alleyne gazed at them intently with a strange feeling of depression coming over his spirit, and so lost to other surroundings that he did not reply to the major, who came up to him, moved by a desire to be polite to a man whom he was beginning to esteem.

Then Major Day drew back and his keen eyes brightened, for Glynne said quietly,--

"You forget. Go on in with uncle."

"Eh?" said the young officer, looking puzzled.

"Go on in with my uncle," said Glynne quietly.

And she crossed to where Alleyne was standing, and, in the character of hostess, laid her hand upon his arm.

"There, you're dismissed for to-night, Rolph," said the major, who could hardly conceal his satisfaction at this trifling incident.

Then, thrusting his arm through that of the athlete, he marched him to the dining-room, the young man's face growing dark and full of annoyance at having to give way in this case of ordinary etiquette.

"Confound the fellow! I wish they wouldn't ask him here," he muttered.

"Mind seems to be taking the lead over muscles to-day," said the major to himself, as he walked beside the young officer to the dining-room, while Glynne came more slowly behind, her eyes growing deeper and very thoughtful as she listened to Alleyne's words.

Volume 1, Chapter XIII.

MARS MAKES A MISTAKE.

The dinner, with its pleasant surroundings of flowers and glittering plate and gla.s.s, with the finest and whitest of linen, was delightful to Lucy, though to her it was as if there was something wanting, in spite of her position as princ.i.p.al guest. This resulted in her receiving endless little attentions from Sir John; but more than once she felt quite irritated with her brother, who seemed to find no more pleasure in the carefully cooked viands than in the homely joints at The Firs. He ate a little of what was handed to him, almost mechanically, and drank sparingly of the baronet's choice wines; but his mind was busy upon nothing else than the subject upon which Glynne was asking him questions.

The major had plenty to say to Lucy, but he kept noticing the increase of animation in Glynne. For she had been awakened from her ordinary, placid, dreamy state to an intense interest in the subject under discussion.

Major Day did not know why he did it, but three times as that dinner progressed, he laid down his knife and fork, thrust his hands beneath the table, and rubbed them softly.

"Muscles is out in the cold to-night," he muttered. "He'll have to go in training for exercising his patience. Bring him to his senses."

Possibly it was very weak of the major, but he had fresh in his memory, several little pieces of bitter ridicule directed at him by the captain, respecting the botanical pursuit in which he engaged.

Now, it so happened that early in the day the major had been out for a long walk, and had come upon a magnificent cl.u.s.ter of a fungus that he had not yet tried for its edible qualities. It was the peculiar grey-brown, scaly-topped mushroom, called by botanists _Amanita Rubescens_, and said to be of admirable culinary value.

"We'll have a dish of these to-night," thought the major, picking a fair quant.i.ty of the choicest specimens, which he took home and gave to the butler, with instructions to hand them to the cook for a dish in the second course.

Morris, the butler, put the basket down upon the hall table, and went to see to the drawing down of a window blind; and no sooner had he gone than Rolph, who had heard the order, came from the billiard-room into the hall to get his hat and stick preparatory to starting for a walk.

He was pa.s.sing the major's basket where it stood upon the hall table, when an idea flashed across his brain, and he stopped, glanced round, grinned, and then, as no one was near, took up the creel, walked swiftly across the hall out into the garden, dived into the plantation, ran rapidly down the long walk out of sight of the house, and turned into the pheasant preserve. Here, throwing out the major's fungi, he looked sharply about and soon collected an equal quant.i.ty of the first specimens he encountered, and then turned back.

"A sarcastic old humbug," he muttered; "let him have a dish of these, and if any of them disagree with him, it will be a lesson for the old wretch. He experimented upon me once with his confounded _boleti_, as he called them; now, I'll experimentalise upon him."

As a rule such an act as this could not have been performed unseen, but fate favoured the captain upon this occasion, and he reached the hall without being noticed, replaced the creel upon the table from which he had taken it, and then went for a walk.

Now, it so happened that Morris, the butler, had crossed the hall since, but the creel not being where he had placed it, he did not recall his orders; but going to answer a bell half-an-hour afterwards, he caught sight of the basket, remembered what he had been told, and, on his return, took the fungi into the kitchen.

"Here, cook," he said, "you're to dress these for the second course."

In due time cook, who was a very slow-moving, thoughtful woman, found herself by the basket which she opened, and then turned the fungi out upon a dish.

"Well," she exclaimed, "of all the tras.h.!.+ Mrs Mason, do, for goodness'

sake, look at these."

Glynne's maid, who was performing some mystic kind of cooking on her own account, to wit, stirring up a saucepan full of thin blue starch with a tallow candle, turned and looked at the basket of fungi, and said,--

"Oh, the idea! What are they for?"

"To cook, because them star-gazing folks are coming. Morris says Miss Glynne's always talking about finding the focus now."

"But these things are poison."

"Of course they are. I wouldn't give them to a pig;" and with all the autocratic determination of a lady in her position, she took the dish, and threw its contents behind her big roasting fire. "There, that's the place for them! Mary, go and tell Jones I want him."

Jones was cook's mortal enemy; and in the capacity of supplier of fruit and vegetables for kitchen use, he had daily skirmishes with the lady, whom he openly accused of spoiling his choice productions, and sending them to table unfit for use, while she retaliated by telling him often that he could not grow a bit of garden-stuff fit to be seen--that his potatoes were watery, his beetroot pink, his cauliflowers ma.s.ses of caterpillars and slugs.

Under these circ.u.mstances, Jones tied the string of his blue serge ap.r.o.n a little more tightly, twisted the said serge into a tail, which he tucked round his waist, and leaving the forcing-house, where he was busy, set his teeth, pushed his hat down over his nose, and, quite prepared for a serious quarrel, walked heavily into the kitchen. But only to be disarmed, for there was a plate on the white table, containing a splendid wedge of raised pie, with a piece of bread, and a jug of ale beside a horn.

Jones looked at cook, and she nodded and smiled; she also condescended to put her lips first to the freshly-filled horn, and then folded her arms and leaned against the table, while the gardener ate his "snack,"

feeling that after all, though she had her bit of temper, cook was really what he called "a good sort."