The Rajah of Dah | Page 3

a visit to his uncle--he called it home, for he had never known any other, and visited this but rarely, his life having been spent during the past four years at a Devon rectory, where a well-known clergyman received four pupils.
As the above words were said about six months before the start up the Salan River, Ned Murray's guardian raised a large magnifying-glass and carefully examined a glittering fragment of stone, while the boy leaned over the table upon which his elbows rested, and eagerly watched his uncle's actions.
"Is that gold, uncle?"
"Eh? gold? nonsense. Pyrites--mingling of iron and sulphur, Ned. Beautiful radiated lines, those. But, as I was saying, every man to his taste. Some people who have plenty of money like to go for a ride in the park, and then dress for dinner, and eat and drink more than is good for them. I don't. Such a life as that would drive me mad."
"But you didn't answer my question, uncle."
"Yes, I did, Ned. I said it was pyrites."
"No, no. I mean the other one, uncle. Will you take me?"
"Get away with you! Go back to the rectory and read up, and by-and-by we'll send you to Oxford, and you shall be a parson, or a barrister, or--"
"Oh, uncle, it's too bad of you! I want to do as you do. I say: do take me!"
"What for?"
"Because I want to go. I won't be any trouble to you, and I'll work hard and rough it, as you call it; and I know so much about what you do that I'm sure I can be very useful; and then you know what you've often said to me about its being so dull out in the wilds by yourself, and you would have me to talk to of a night."
"Silence! Be quiet, you young tempter. Take you, you soft green sapling! Why, you have no more muscle and endurance than a twig."
"Twigs grow into stout branches, uncle."
"Look here, sir: did your tutor teach you to argue your uncle to death when you wanted to get your own way?"
"No, uncle."
"Do you think I should be doing my duty as your guardian if I took you right away into a savage country, to catch fevers and sunstrokes, and run risks of being crushed by elephants, bitten by poisonous reptiles, swallowed by crocodiles, or to form a lunch for a fastidious tiger tired of blacks?"
"Now you are laughing at me again," said the boy.
"No, sir. There are risks to be encountered."
"They wouldn't hurt me any more than they would you, uncle."
"There you are again, arguing in that abominable way! No, sir; I shall not take you. At your ago education is the thing to study, and nothing else. Now, be quiet!" and Johnstone Murray's eyes looked pleasant, though his freckled brown face looked hard, and his eyes seemed to say that there was a smile hidden under the grizzled curly red beard which covered the lower part of his face.
"There, uncle, now I have got you. You've said to me scores of times that there was no grander education for a man than the study of the endless beauties of nature."
"Be quiet, Ned. There never was such a fellow as you for disputing."
"But you did say so, uncle."
"Well, sir, and it's quite right. It is grand! But you are not a man."
"Not yet, but I suppose I shall be, some day."
"Not if I take you out with me to catch jungle fever."
"Oh, bother the old jungle fever!"
"So say I, Ned, and success to quinine."
"To be sure. Hurrah for quinine! You said you took it often in swampy places to keep off the fever."
"That's quite right, Ned."
"Very well then, uncle; I'll take it too, as much as ever you like. Now, will you let me go?"
"And what would the rector say?"
"I don't know, uncle. I don't want to be a barrister. I want to be what you are."
"A rough, roaming, dreamy, restless being, who is always wandering about all over the world."
"And what would England have been, uncle, if some of us had not been restless and wandered all over the world."
Johnstone Murray, gentleman and naturalist, sat back in his chair and laughed.
"Oh, you may laugh, uncle!" said the boy with his face flushed. "You laugh because I said some of us: I meant some of you. Look at the discoveries that have been made; look at the wonders brought home; look at that, for instance," cried the boy, snatching up the piece of pale, yellowish-green, metallic-looking stone. "See there; by your discoveries you were able to tell me that this piece which you brought home from abroad is pyrites, and--"
"Hold your tongue, you young donkey. I did not bring that stone home from abroad, for I picked it up the other day under the