The Weathercock | Page 6

George Manville Fenn
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
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