Chapter One.

Toadstools!

“Oh, I say, here’s a game! What’s he up to now?”

“Hi! Vane! Old weathercock! Hold hard!”

“Do you hear? Which way does the wind blow?”

Three salutations shouted at a lad of about sixteen, who had just shown himself at the edge of a wood on the sunny slope of the Southwolds, one glorious September morning, when the spider-webs were still glittering with iridescent colours, as if every tiny strand were strung with diamonds, emeralds and amethysts, and the thick green moss that clothed the nut stubbs was one glorious sheen of topaz, sapphire and gold. Down in the valley the mist still hung in thick patches, but the sun’s rays were piercing it in many directions, and there was every promise of a hot day, such as would make the shade of the great forest with its acorn-laden oaks welcome, and the whole place tempting to one who cared to fill pocket or basket with the bearded hazelnuts, already beginning to show colour in the pale green husks, while the acorns, too, were changing tint slightly, and growing too big for their cups.

The boy, who stood with his feet deep in moss, was framed by the long lithe hazel stems, and his sun-browned face looked darker in the shade as, bareheaded, his cap being tucked in the band of his Norfolk jacket, he passed one hand through his short curly hair, to remove a dead leaf or two, while the other held a little basket full of something of a bright orange gold; and as he glanced at the three youths in the road, he hurriedly bent down to rub a little loam from the knees of his knickerbockers—loam freshly gathered from some bank in the wood.

“Morning,” he said, as the momentary annoyance caused by the encounter passed off. “How is it you chaps are out so early?”

“Searching after you, of course,” said the first speaker. “What have you got there?”

“These,” said the lad, holding up his basket, as he stepped down amongst the dewy grass at the side of the road. “Have some?”

“Have some? Toadstools?”

“Toad’s grandmothers!” cried the lad. “They’re all chanterelles—for breakfast. Delicious.”

The first of the three well-dressed youths, all pupils reading with the Reverend Morton Syme, at the Rectory, Mavis Greythorpe, Lincolnshire, gave a sidelong glance at his companions and advanced a step.

“Let’s look,” he said.

The bearer of the basket raised his left hand with his fungoid booty, frankly trusting, and his fellow-pupil delivered a sharp kick at the bottom of the wicker receptacle—a kick intended to send the golden chalice-like fungi flying scattered in the air. But George Vane Lee was as quick in defence as the other was in attack, and his parry was made in the easiest and most effortless way.

It was just this:—

He let the basket swing down and just passed his right hand forward, seeming only to brush the assailant’s ankle—in fact it was the merest touch, but sufficient to upset the equilibrium of a kicker on one leg, and the next moment Lance Distin was lying on his back in a perfect tangle of brambles, out of which he scrambled, scratched and furious, amidst a roar of laughter from his companions.

“You beggar!” he cried, with his dark eyes flashing, and a red spot in each of his sallow cheeks.

“Keep off!” cried the mushroom bearer, backing away. “Lay hold of him, Gilmore—Aleck!”

The lads addressed had already caught at the irate boy’s arms.

“Let go, will you!” he yelled. “I’ll let him know.”

“Be quiet, or we’ll all sit on you and make you.”

“I’ll half kill him—I’ll nearly break his neck.”

“No, don’t,” said the boy with the basket, laughing. “Do you want your leave stopped? Nice you’d look with a pair of black eyes.”

“You can’t give them to me,” roared the lad, passionately, as he still struggled with those who held him, but giving them little trouble in keeping him back.

“Don’t want to. Served you right. Shouldn’t have tried to kick over my basket. There, don’t be in such a temper about that.”

“I’ll pay you for it, you miserable cad!”

“Don’t call names, Distie,” said the lad coolly. “Those who play at bowls must expect rubbers. Let him go, boys; he won’t hurt me.”

It was a mere form that holding; but as the detaining pair loosened their hold, Lance Distin gave himself a violent wrench, as if he were wresting himself free, and then coloured to the roots of his hair, as he saw the laugh in his adversary’s eyes.

“Distie’s got no end of Trinidad sun in him yet.—What a passionate fellow you are, Cocoa. I say, these are good, really. Come home with me and have breakfast.”

Lance Distin, son of a wealthy planter in the West Indies, turned away scornfully, and the others laughed.

“Likely,” said Fred Gilmore, showing his white teeth. “Why, I wouldn’t poison a cat with them.”

“No,” said Aleck Macey; “I know.”

“Know what?”

“It’s a dodge to make a job for his uncle, because the doctor can’t get any practice.”

“Don’t want any,” said the lad, good-humouredly. “If he did, he’d go back to Savile Row.”

“Not he,” snarled Distin, pausing in his occupation of removing thorns from his jacket. “Killed all his patients, and was obliged to run away into the country.”

“That’s it!” said Vane Lee, with a laugh. “What a clever chap you are, Distie; at least you would be if your tongue wasn’t quite so sharp. There, shake hands, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He stretched out rather a dirty hand, at which the young Creole gave a contemptuous glance, looked at his own white fingers, and thrust them into his pockets.

“Ah, well, they are dirty,” said Vane, laughing. “No, they’re not. It’s only good old English soil. Come on. Uncle will be glad to see you, and then we’ll all walk up to the Rectory together.”

Crick!

Distin struck a match, and, with a very haughty look on his thin face, began to puff at a cigarette which he had taken from a little silver case, Vane watching him scornfully the while, but only to explode with mirth the next moment, for the young West Indian, though he came from where his father’s plantations produced acres of the pungent weed, was not to the manner born, and at the third draw inhaled so much acrid smoke that he choked, and stood coughing violently till Vane gave him a hearty slap on his back.

Down went the cigarette, as Distin made a bound forward.

“You boor!” he coughed out; and, giving the lad a malevolent look, he turned haughtily to the others.

“Are you fellows coming home to breakfast?”

He did not pause for an answer, but walked off sharply in the direction of the Rectory, a quarter of a mile from the little sleepy town.

“Oh, I say,” cried Vane, in a tone full of remorse, “what an old pepper-pot he is! I didn’t mean to upset him. He began it,—now, didn’t he?”

“Yes, of course,” said Gilmore. “Never mind. He’ll soon come round.”

“Oh, yes,” said Macey. “I shouldn’t take any notice. He’ll forget it all before night.”

“But it seems so queer,” said the lad, taking out and examining one of his mushrooms. “I just came out 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.

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 want to, I tell you, so don’t say any more about it.”

But before Vane could grasp the woman’s intention, she had snatched the basket from his hand and borne it back to the table, upon which she thumped it with so much vigour that several of the golden chalice-like fungi leaped out.

“Here, what are you going to do?” cried Vane.

“What you told me, sir,” said cook austerely, and with a great hardening of her face. “I don’t forget my dooties, sir, if other people do.”

“Oh, but never mind, cook,” cried Vane. “I’m sorry I asked you.”

“Pray don’t say any more about it, sir. The things shall be cooked and sent to table, and it’s very thankful you ought to be, I’m sure, that master’s a doctor and on the spot ready, for so sure as you eat that mess in the parlour, you’ll all be on a bed of sickness before night.”

“Now, Martha,” cried Vane; “that’s just what you said when I asked you to cook the parasol mushrooms.”

“Paragrandmother mushrooms, sir; you might just as well call them by their proper name, umberrella toadstools, and I don’t believe any one ate them.”

“Yes; uncle and I ate them, and they were delicious. Cook these the same way.”

“I know how to cook them, sir, only it’s an insult to proper mushrooms to dress them in the same way as good wholesome food.”

“That’s good wholesome food,” said Vane, “only people don’t know it. I wanted to bring you some big puff balls to fry for me, but you turn so cross about it.”

“And enough to make anyone turn cross, sir. There, that will do now. I’ve said that I’d cook them, and that’s enough.”

Vane Lee felt that there was nothing to be done now but make a retreat, and he went into the hall where Eliza Jane, the doctor’s housemaid, was whisking a feather-brush about, over picture-frames, and ornaments, curiosities from different parts of the world, and polishing the hall table. From this she flew to the stand and caught up the hat brush with which she attacked the different hats on the pegs, speaking over her shoulder at Vane in a rapid way as she went on.

“Now, don’t you ask me to do anything, Master Vane, because I’m all behind, and your aunt’s made the tea and waiting for you, and your uncle will be back directly, for he has only gone down the garden for a walk, and to pick up the fallen peaches.”

“Wasn’t going to ask you to do anything,” was the reply.

“But you’ve been asking cook to do something, and a nice fantigue she’ll be in. She was bad enough before. I wouldn’t have such a temper for all the money in the Bank of England. What have you been asking her to do?—Bother the hat!”

Eliza was brushing so vigorously that she sent Vane’s hard felt hat, which she had just snatched up from where he had placed it, flying to the other end of the hall just as Doctor Lee, a tall, pleasant-looking grey-haired man, came in from the garden with a basket of his gleanings from beneath the south wall.

“That meant for me?” he said, staring down at the hat and then at Vane.

“Which I beg your pardon, sir,” said the maid, hurriedly. “I was brushing it, and it flew out of my hand.”

“Ah! You should hold it tight,” said the doctor, picking up the hat, and looking at a dint in the crown. “It will require an operation to remove that depression of the brain-pan on the dura mater. I mean on the lining, eh, Vane?”

“Oh, I can soon put that right,” said the boy merrily, as he gave it a punch with his fist and restored the crown to its smooth dome-like shape.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “but you see we cannot do that with a man who has a fractured skull. Been out I see?” he continued, looking down at the lad’s discoloured, dust-stained boots.

“Oh, yes, uncle, I was out at six. Glorious morning. Found quite a basketful of young chanterelles.”

“Indeed? What have you done with them?”

“Been fighting Martha to get her to cook them.”

“And failed?” said the doctor quietly, as he peered into the basket, and turned over the soft, downy, red-cheeked peaches he had brought in.

“No, uncle,—won.”

“Now, you good people, it’s nearly half-past eight. Breakfast—breakfast. Bring in the ham, Eliza.”

“Good-morning, my dear,” said the doctor, bending down to kiss the pleasantly plump elderly lady who had just opened the dining-room door, and keeping up the fiction of its being their first meeting that morning.

“Good-morning, dear.”

“Come, Vane, my boy,” cried the doctor, “breakfast, breakfast. Here’s aunt in one of her furious tempers because you are so late.”

“Don’t you believe him, my dear,” said the lady. “It’s too bad. And really, Thomas, you should not get in the habit of telling such dreadful fibs even in fun. Had a nice walk, Vane?”

“Yes, aunt, and collected a capital lot of edible fungi.”

“The word fungi’s enough to make any one feel that they are not edible, my dear,” said Aunt Hannah. “What sort did you get? Not those nasty, tall, long-legged things you brought before?”

“No, aunt; beautiful golden chanterelles. I wanted to have them cooked for breakfast.”

“And I have told him it would be high treason,” said the doctor. “Martha would give warning.”

“No, no, my dear, not quite so bad as that, but leave them to me, and I’ll cook them for lunch myself.”

“No need, aunt; Martha came down from her indignant perch.”

“I’m glad of that,” said the lady smiling; “but, one minute, before we go in the dining-room: there’s a beautiful souvenir rosebud over the window where I cannot reach it. Cut it and bring it in.”

“At your peril, sir,” said the doctor fiercely. “The last rose of summer! I will not have it touched.”

“Now, my dear Tom, don’t be so absurd,” cried the lady. “What is the use of your growing roses to waste—waste—waste themselves all over the place.”

“You hear that, Vane? There’s quoting poetry. Waste their sweetness on the desert air, I suppose you mean, madam?”

“Yes: it’s all the same,” said the lady. “Thank you, my dear,” she continued, as Vane handed the rose in through the window.

“My poor cut-down bloom,” sighed the doctor; but Vane did not hear him, for he was setting his hat down again in the museum-like hall, close by the fishing-tackle and curiosities of many lands just as a door was opened and a fresh, maddening odour of fried ham saluted his nostrils.

“Oh, murder!” cried the lad; and he rushed upstairs, three steps at a time, to begin washing his hands, thinking the while over his encounter with his Creole fellow-pupil.

“Glad I didn’t fight him,” he muttered, as he dried his knuckles, and looked at them curiously. “Better than having to ask uncle for his sticking-plaster.”

He stopped short, turning and gazing out of the bedroom window, which looked over the back garden toward the field with their Jersey cows; and just then a handsome game-cock flapped his bronzed wings and sent forth his defiant call.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo! indeed,” muttered Vane; “and he thinks me a regular coward. I suppose it will have to come to a set-to some day. I feel sure I can lick him, and perhaps, after all, he’ll lick me.”

“Oh, Vane, my dear boy, don’t!” cried Mrs Lee, as the lad rushed down again, his feet finding the steps so rapidly that the wonder was that he did not go headlong, and a few seconds later, he was in his place at the dining-room table, tastily arranged with its plate, china, and flowers.

A walk before breakfast is a wonderful thing for the appetite, and Vane soon began with a sixteen-year-old growing appetite upon the white bread, home-made golden butter, and the other pleasant products of the doctor’s tiny homestead, including brahma eggs, whose brown shells suggested that they must have been boiled in coffee.