if he builds himself such a structure, can defy the weather—the much-abused weather, which, in spite of all that has been said, seems much the same as ever, people forgetting that they ask it to perform the same miracles of growth that it does in Eastern and Southern climes. Nature meant England to grow sloes, blackberries, and crabs, and we ask her to grow the pomegranate, the orange, and the date. She definitely says she won’t, though she does accord the fig, but in a very insipid, trashy way. Put up the glass umbrella however, and shut out her freezing winds, and she will perform wonders at our call. Our grandfathers thought they had done everything when they had planted their trees against a sheltering wall. Our fathers went farther, and gave us the idea of growing grapes and pines in a house of glass. But, the pine and grape were luxurious affairs, not to be approached by the meek, to whom these ideas are presented as facts that will add another pleasure to their lives.”
“As the celebrated Samuel Weller observed, when he had listened patiently to the Shepherd’s discourse, ‘Brayvo! Very pretty!’ But I say, I’m getting hungry.”
“Not seven yet,” said Sir James; “go and get yourself a glass of milk, and I’ll have a walk with you till breakfast time. Here, I’ll come with you now.”
“But, my dear boy, you are not coming out of this hot, moist atmosphere without first putting on a coat?”
“Stuff! Nothing hurts me, I’m used to it.”
“My dear fellow, you’ll have a bad attack some day,” said the doctor.
“Not if I know it, Jack. Get out, you old rascal, you want to run me up a bill. I’m as sound as a roach, and shall be as long as I lead my country-life. I say, I’m going to empty the pond to-day. We’ll get the water out, and then the ladies can come and see us catch the fish.”
“Us?” said the doctor, “us?”
“Yes, you shall have a landing-net at the end of a pole. You’ll come?”
“Is Prayle going to be there?”
“Of course.”
“Then I think I shall stay away.”
“Nonsense, you prejudiced humbug. I want you to see the fun. You will come?”
“My dear James Scarlett, I do not get on at my profession, I know now why. It is from weakness of will. I see it now. You have taught me that lesson this morning. First, I find myself listening to a rigmarole about growing fruit under glass. Now I am weakly consenting to make myself as much a schoolboy as you in your verdant idyllic life.”
“Then you’ll come?”
“Oh, yes,” said the doctor grimly, “I’ll come. Shall I go into the mud after eels?”
“If you like, I’ll lend you a pair of old trousers. I shall.”
“My dear fellow, I shall be attending you one of these days for paralysis brought on by cold; or spinal—”
“Nancy, two big glasses of new milk,” cried Sir James, for they had entered the dairy. “I say, Jack, old fellow, I want to give you a little more of my natural history lecture, because it would be sure to help me on.”
“I feel,” said the doctor, “as if I had a soft collar round my neck, and was being led about by a chain. There, make the most of me while I’m here, you don’t catch me down again.”
“Don’t I?” said Sir James. “Why, my dear Jack, Kitty and I have made up our minds to find you a wife.”
Volume One—Chapter Seven.
Sir James Catches Cold in the Back.
“And are there any fish in that muddy pond, Monnick?” said Arthur Prayle that morning after breakfast.
“Oh, sir, yes; you should see them sometimes; great fellows that come up after the bread you throw in. Are you coming to see it emptied?”
Arthur Prayle looked at his glossy black garments, and then, bowing his head, gravely said, “Yes, perhaps I shall be there,” and he raised his book and went on down the garden.
His “perhaps” proved a certainty, for when the party started from the house to go across the fields he walked sedately between Aunt Sophia and Naomi, talking softly all the time till they reached the place.
It was a large pond. How large? Well, about as big as ponds generally are; and it was pretty deep. There were mysterious places beneath the overhanging willows, whose roots hung in the water, where the hooked fish rushed and entangled the lines. There was that awkward spot where the old posts, and wood, and willow poles lay with their ends in the mud, where Sir James caught the great eel that twined himself in and out, and the stout silkworm gut line parted like tinder. There was a deep hole, too, by the penstock, and various linking places where, in the silence of the night, you could hear wallowings and splashings, and now and then a loud suck or smack of the lips as a fish took something from the top of the water.
On inspection half-a-dozen brawny brown-armed men were found picking and throwing out the earth, and graving a trench in a way that would have made a military engineer long for a few hundred of such fellows to form his earthworks. Deep down they delved till they had cut and laid bare certain pipes in a huge dyke, every foot of which was suggestive of the mysteries of the pond that required so vast a trench to drain off its waters. There was a good deal of speculation rife about that pond, inasmuch as one that was drained by Sir James a couple of years before proved to hold nothing but thousands of great fat newts that swarmed over the mud like alligators in a Florida lagoon. It was said that after all perhaps a carp or two and an eel would be all that were found, but, even as the speculative remarks were made, a shoal of small roach flecked the surface, and it was certain that the result could not be nil.
It boots not to tell of the way those men worked, as full of interest in the job as any one else, it is enough to say that the pond head was reached at last, the new drain ready, and over the pipe a piece of wire-work placed to stay any fish from passing down; and at last the water was allowed to flow till the pond was a couple of feet lower, the roots of the bank vegetation and the willows bare, and dozens of slimy holes visible, such as would be affected by eels, water-voles, and other lovers of such snuggeries in the banks. Ragged pieces of wood stood out at all angles from the mud and water, the penstock rose up like a model in old oak of Tyburn Tree, kept for the execution of rats; and the great wooden pump, with its platform in the corner where the water-barrels were tilled, trailed its leaden pipe down into the depths like a monstrous antediluvian eel.
Not so much as a splash to tell that there was anything within the waters rushing away in a flood, down through the alders in an old marl pit hard by. More hours went on and there were no signs of fish. Mud and to spare, and the banks looking slimy and strange. Tangles of wood that had lain at the bottom for years began to show as lower sank the water, revealing pots, old boots, hurdles, and rusty iron, but still no fish of size. Then there was a shout of triumph from one of the men at the sight of a billhook some six feet from the bank, one that had been dropped in years before, when the overhanging willows were being lopped, and there was no Mercury at hand to bring it up transformed to silver or gold. The keen-edged implement was recovered, hardly the worse for its immersion,
