The Weathercock | Page 3

for a walk, and to pick some of these to have cooked for breakfast; and just as I've got a nice basketful, I come upon you fellows, and you begin to chaff and play larks, and the next moment I might have been knocking all the skin off my knuckles against Distin's face, if I hadn't backed out--like a coward," he added, after a pause.
"Oh, never mind," said the others.
"But I do mind," cried the lad. "I want to be friends with everyone. I hate fighting and quarrelling, and yet I'm always getting into hot-water."
"Better go and get your hands in now--with soap," said Macey, staring at the soil-marks.
"Pooh! a rinse in the water-cress stream would take that off. Never mind Distin: come home, you two."
"No, not this morning," said Gilmore.
"I won't ask you to taste the mushrooms: honour bright."
"Wouldn't come if you did," said Macey, with a merry laugh on his handsome face. "Old Distie would never forgive us if we came home with you now."
"No," said Gilmore; "he'd keep us awake half the night preaching at you. Oh! here's old Syme."
"Ah, gentlemen, good-morning," said a plump, florid clergyman with glittering glasses. "That's right, walk before breakfast. Good for stamina. Must be breakfast time though. What have you got there, Lee?"
"Fungi, sir."
"Hum! ha!" said the rector bending over the basket. "Which? Fungi, soft as you pronounce it, or Fungi--Funghi, hard, eh?"
"Uncle says soft, sir," said Vane.
"Hum--ha--yes," said the rector, poking at one of the vegetable growths with the forefinger of his gloved hand. "He ought to know. But, vulgo, toadstools. You're not going to eat those, are you?"
"Yes, sir. Will you try a few?"
"Eh? Try a few, Lee? Thanks, no. Too much respect for my gastric region. And look here; hadn't you better try experiments on Jamby's donkey? It's very old."
"Wouldn't be any good, sir. Nothing would hurt him," said Vane, laughing.
"Hum! ha! Suppose not. Well, don't poison one of my pupils--yourself. Breakfast, gentlemen, breakfast. The matutinal coffee and one of Brader's rolls, not like the London French, but passably good; and there is some cold stuffed chine."
"Cold stuffed chine!" said Vane, as he walked in the other direction. "Why, these will be twice as good--if Martha will cook 'em. Nasty prejudiced old thing!"
Ten minutes later he reached a gate where the remains of a fine old avenue leading up to a low mossy-looking stone house, built many generations back; and as he neared it, a pleasant odour, suggestive of breakfast, saluted his nostrils, and he went round and entered the kitchen, to be encountered directly by quite an eager look from its occupant, as he made his petition.
The Weathercock--by George Manville Fenn
CHAPTER TWO.
AUNT AND UNCLE.
"No, Master Vane, I'll not," cried cook, bridling up, and looking as if an insult had been offered to her stately person; "and if master and missus won't speak, it's time someone else did."
"But I only want them just plainly stewed with a little butter, pepper, and salt," said Vane, with the basket in his hand.
"A little butter and pepper and salt, sir!" cried cook reproachfully; "a little rhubar' and magneshire, you mean, to keep the nasty pysonous thinks from hurting of you. Really I do wonder at you, sir, a-going about picking up such rubbish."
"But they're good food--good to eat."
"Yes, sir; for toads and frogs. Don't tell me, sir. Do you think I don't know what's good Christian food when I see it, and what isn't?"
"I know you think they're no good, but I want to try them as an experiment."
"Life isn't long enough, sir, to try sperrymens, and I'd sooner go and give warning at once than be the means of laying you on a bed of agony and pain."
"Oh, well, never mind, cook, let me do them myself."
"What?" cried the stout lady in such a tone of indignant surprise that the lad felt as if he had been guilty of a horrible breach of etiquette, and made his retreat, basket and all, toward the door.
But he had roused Martha, who, on the strength of many years' service with the doctor and his lady in London, had swollen much in mind as well as grown stout in body, and she followed him to the kitchen-door where he paused without opening it, for fear of the dispute reaching the ears of aunt and uncle in the breakfast-room.
"Look here, Martha," he said, "don't be cross. Never mind. I'm sorry I asked you."
"Cross? Cross, Master Vane? Is it likely I should make myself cross about a basketful of rubbishing toadstools that you've wasted your time in fetching out of the woods?"
"No, no, you are not cross, and I beg your pardon."
"And I wouldn't have thought it of you, sir. The idee, indeed, of you wanting to come and meddle here in my kitchen!"
"But I don't