The Weathercock Part 3

"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 fis.h.i.+ng 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, pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.terfly, 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."

CHAPTER THREE.

IN THE STUDY.

Vane reached the rectory gate and turned in with his brains in the air, das.h.i.+ng here and there like a dragon-fly, skimming after the fas.h.i.+on of a swallow, flying steadily, b.u.mble-bee-fas.h.i.+on, and flopping faintly as the b.u.t.terfly did whose wings were so much out of proportion to the size of its body. Either way would do, he thought, or better still, if he could fly by a wide-spread membrane stretched upon steel or whalebone ribs or fingers like a bat. Why not? he mused. There could be no reason; and he was beginning to wonder why he had never thought of making some flying machine before, when he was brought back to earth from his imaginary soarings by a voice saying,--

"Hullo! here's old Weatherc.o.c.k!" and this was followed by a laugh which brought the colour into his cheeks.

"I don't care," he thought. "Let him laugh. Better be a weatherc.o.c.k and change about, than be always sticking fast. Uncle says we can't help learning something for one's trouble."

By this time he was at the porch, which he entered just as the footman was carrying out the breakfast things.

"Rector isn't in the study then, Joseph?" said Vane.

"No, sir; just coming in out of the garden. Young gents is in there together."

Vane felt disposed to wait and go in with the rector, but, feeling that it would be cowardly, he walked straight in at the study door to find Distin, Gilmore, and Macey seated at the table, all hard at work, but apparently not over their studies.

"Why, gracious!" cried Macey.

"Alive?" said Gilmore.

"Used to it," sneered Distin. "That sort of creature takes a deal of killing."

"What's the matter?" said Vane, good-humouredly, taking a seat.

"Why," said Gilmore, "we were all thinking of writing to our tailors to send us suits of mourning out of respect for you--believe it or not as you please."

"Thankye," said Vane quietly. "Then I will not believe it, because Distin wouldn't order black if I were drowned."

"Who said a word about drowned? I said poisoned," cried Gilmore.

"Not a word about it. But why?"

"Because you went home and ate those toadstools."

"Wrong," said Vane quietly, "I haven't eaten them yet."

"Then three cheers for the tailors; there's a chance for them yet,"

cried Macey.

"Why didn't you eat them?" asked Gilmore. "Afraid?"

"I don't think so. They'll be ready by dinner time, will you come?"

Grimaces followed, as Vane quietly opened his books, and glanced round the rector's room with its handsome book-cases all well filled, chimney-piece ornamented with cla.s.sic looking bronzes; and the whole place with its subdued lights and heavily curtained windows suggestive of repose for the mind and uninterrupted thought and study.

Books and newly-written papers lay on the table, ready for application, but the rector's pupils did not seem to care about work in their tutor's absence, for Macey, who was in the act of handing round a tin box when Vane entered, now pa.s.sed it on to the latter.

"Lay hold, old chap," he said. Vane opened it, and took out a piece of crisp dark brown stickiness generally known as "jumble," and transferred it to his mouth, while four lower jaws were now seen at work, giving the pupils the aspect of being members of that portion of the quadrupedal animal kingdom known as ruminants.