The Weathercock | Page 7

flying steadily, bumble-bee-fashion, and flopping faintly as the butterfly 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 Weathercock!" 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 weathercock 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 classic 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 passed 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.
"Worst of this stuff is," said Macey, "that you get your teeth stuck together. Oh, I say, Gil, what hooks! A whole dozen?"
Gilmore nodded as he opened a ring of fine silkworm gut, and began to examine the points and backs of the twelve bright blue steel hooks at the ends of the gut lengths, and the carefully-tied loops at the other.
"Where did you buy them?" continued Macey, as he gloated over the bright hookah.
No answer.
"Where did you buy them, Gil?" said Macey again.
"Cuoz--duoz--ooze."
"What!" cried Macey; and Distin and Vane both looked wonderingly at their fellow-pupil, who had made a peculiar incoherent guttural noise, faintly represented by the above words.
Then Vane began to laugh.
"What's the matter, Gil?" he said.
Gilmore gave his neck a peculiar writhe, and his jaws a wrench.
"I wish you fellows wouldn't bother," he cried. "You, Macey, ought to know better: you give a chap that stickjaw stuff of yours, and then worry him to speak. Come by post, I said. From London."
Distin gave vent to a contemptuous sniff, and it was seen that he was busily spreading tobacco on thin pieces of paper, and rolling them up into cigarettes with the nonchalant air of one used to such feats of dexterity, though, truth to tell, he fumbled over the task; and as he noticed that Vane was observing him with a quiet look of good-humoured contempt, his fingers grew hot and moist, and he nervously blundered over his task.
"Well," he said with a vicious twang in his tones, "what are you staring at?"
"You," replied Vane, with his hand holding open a Greek Lexicon.
"Then mind your lessons, schoolboy," retorted Distin sharply. "Did you never see a gentleman roll a cigarette before?"
"No," said Vane quietly, and