Bob Strong's Holidays

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

  A PICNIC UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

  They need not have been alarmed.

  Indeed, had she but given herself time for reflection, Nellie must haveknown this without any further assurance than the faithful Rover's bark,which would have been of quite a different tone had any stranger orsuspicious person invaded the spot he was left to guard.

  In such case, the good dog would have growled in the most unmistakablemanner, besides giving warning of there being danger ahead by adifferent intonation of his expressive voice.

  He did not growl now, however, although he who had invaded the sacredpicnic ground where their provender was so lavishly displayed was, inone sense, a stranger, being not one of the original members of thefestive party who had set out from "The Moorings."

  The reason for this was that the new-comer, really, was not a real"stranger" in the sense of the word. The intruder was, in fact,Hellyer, the coastguardsman, whom Rover had seen only so recently asthat very morning, when of course master doggie had accompanied Bob tothe beach for his bathe; and so, naturally, there was every reason forhis receiving Hellyer in a friendly manner. Hence, his bark, alarmingthough it might have sounded at the first go off to Nell and her aunt,was found now to have been a bark of recognition and joy and not one ofwarning.

  Mrs Gilmour felt such a sensation of relief at the sight of Hellyerthat her feelings prevented her from speaking. As she told Nellafterwards, she "couldn't have uttered a word to save her life"; andthere she remained, "staring at the poor man," to use her ownexpression, and one that savoured thoroughly of her country, "as if hewere a stuck pig!"

  Hellyer, however, did not remain dumb.

  "Beg pardon, mum," said he respectfully, doffing his sailor hat andtouching his forehead with his forefinger in nautical salute; "but, 'aveyou seen the Cap'en anywheres about here, mum?"

  "You mean Captain Dresser, I suppose?" replied Mrs Gilmour, recoveringher loss of speech at the sound of his voice, at least so it seemed; thegood lady answering the coastguardsman's question in her usual way, byasking him another!--"Eh, what, my man?"

  "Yes, mum. I've a message for him from our commander, mum; and theytold me at the house as how he were over at Seaview, so, mum, I comesacross by the next boat."

  "Well, he isn't very far-off, Hellyer," said Mrs Gilmour smiling; "Ididn't recognise you at first, sure, I was in such a terrible fright onhearing the dog bark, least somebody was making off with our luncheon.I'm really glad it's only you."

  "And I'm glad, too, mum."

  "So glad you're glad I'm glad!" whispered Nellie to her aunt, quotingsomething she had seen in an old volume of _Punch_, and going into fitsof laughter. "Eh, auntie?"

  "Hush, my dear," said Mrs Gilmour reprovingly, but obliged to laugh tooin spite of herself, although she tried to hide it for fear Hellyerwould think they were making fun of him; and she turned to him to say,"We expect the Captain, Hellyer, every minute. Why, here he is!"

  There he was, most decidedly; and he soon made his presence known.

  "Hullo, you good people!" he shouted, while yet some little distanceoff, as he made his way down the slope followed by Bob and Dick, "I hopeyou've got something for us to eat, for we're all as hungry as hunters."

  "Come on," answered Mrs Gilmour, "everything is ready, and Nell and Iare only waiting for you loiterers to begin."

  "Loiterers, indeed!" retorted the Captain good-humouredly, as he hobbledalong with some difficulty by the aid of his stick down the uneven path,"you would loiter too if you had my poor legs to walk with! Never mind,though, here we are at last; and, I tell you what, ma'am, that table-cloth there and the good things you've got on it is the prettiest sightI've seen to-day."

  "What!" exclaimed Mrs Gilmour. "Prettier than the Roman villa?"

  "Hang the Roman villa! I beg your pardon, ma'am, but the word slippedout unawares."

  After this apology for his somewhat strong expression, the old sailorwas proceeding to give the reason for his condemnation of thearchaeological remains he and the boys had been to see, when he noticedHellyer standing by in an attitude of attention.

  "Why, man," he cried, "what brings you here?"

  "I've got a letter for you, sir," replied Hellyer, handing an envelopeover to him, and saluting him in the same way as he had done MrsGilmour just before. "Here it is, sir!"

  "Humph!" ejaculated Captain. Dresser, opening the missive and runninghis eyes over the contents. "Here's some good news for you, MasterBob."

  "Oh?" said the latter expectantly. "Good news, Captain?"

  "Yes," went on the old sailor, "my friend, Commander Sponson, of theCoastguard, writes to me to say that one of the new ironclads is goingout of harbour next week on her trial trip; and, if you like, you shallhave a chance of seeing what sort of vessel a modern ship of war is."

  "Oh thank you, Captain Dresser, that will be jolly!" said Bob, his facecolouring up with pleasure. "But, will she fire her guns and all?"

  "Certainly," answered the other, "big guns, little guns, torpedo-tubes,and the whole of her armoury! Besides, my boy, you'll be able to seeher machinery at work, as she will try her speed on the measured mile;and then you can ask one of the engineers all those puzzling questionsyou bothered my old brains with when we were on board the steamer thismorning."

  "That will be jolly," repeated Bob; "and--"

  "There, there," cried the Captain, interrupting him, "I won't sayanother word now, I'm much too famished to talk. Mrs Gilmour, whathave you got for a poor hungry creature to eat, eh, ma'am?"

  "Anything you like," she responded with a smile. "Pray sit down andbegin."

  "I will," said he, seating himself with alacrity; and turning to thecoastguardsman, he added-- "I suppose, Hellyer, you could pick a bittoo, eh?"

  "Yes, sir, saving your presence. But, only after you and the ladies,sir," was Hellyer's respectful reply; and then, with all the training ofan experienced servant, knowledge he had gained in the exercise of hismanifold duties during several years' service as the Captain's coxswain,he proceeded to assist Dick in waiting, with an "If you'll allow me,sir."

  "Some bread, please," called out the Captain presently. "Any your side,Hellyer?"

  Hellyer and Dick both looked about the table, seeking in vain for therequired article.

  "I can't see none, sit," said the ex-coxswain deprecatingly, giving upthe quest after a bit in despair. He seemed, from the way in which hespoke, as if he thought it was his fault that the bread was missing."There ain't any this side, sir."

  Dick's search too was equally fruitless.

  "Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, all anxiety. "Look in the hamperagain. Sure, we must have forgotten to take it out."

  But there also, alas! no bread was to be found.

  The Captain could not help laughing at Mrs Gilmour's face of dismay;while Nellie clapped her hands in high glee.

  "Oh, auntie," she cried, "I thought you said just now when we werespreading the cloth that nothing had been forgotten, and how good Sarahwas to think of everything. Oh, auntie!"

  "Oh, auntie!" chorussed Bob, joining in the general laugh. "Fancyforgetting the bread!"

  "Aye, to leave out the staff of life, of all things!" put in theCaptain, having his say. "I hope `the good Sarah' has not remimbered toforgit anything more importint, sure!"

  "I won't have you mimicking me," expostulated Mrs Gilmour, although shetook their joking in very good part. "Sure, mistakes will happensometimes, and there are biscuits if you can't have bread."

  "All right, all right," said the Captain soothingly, "I dare say we'llget along very well as we are. Don't worry any more about the matter,ma'am. We've got your excellent piecrust, at any rate, and that's quitegood enough for me."

  He chuckled still, though, for some time; and he chuckled morepresently, when something else, quite as important as the bread, wasdiscovered also to be missing.

  The discovery came about in this wise. Before sitting down with theothers,
Bob had rigged up in gipsy fashion, on three forked sticks, alittle brass kettle, which he had specially asked his aunt to have putwith the other picnic things, in order to carry out thoroughly the ideaof "camping out" as he had read about it in books; and, besides slingingthe kettle artistically in the way described, he also filled it withwater from a stone jar which they had brought with them, as a precautionin the event of their not being able to get any of drinkable qualitywhere they intended making a halt, Mrs Gilmour expressing some littlerepugnance to his taking any out of the brook, although they had beenglad enough previously to use it for washing their scratched faces. Shesaid it had too many dead leaves and live creatures in it for her taste.

  Under the filled kettle, too, Bob had lit a fire, for which Nell andDick collected the sticks; and, long before luncheon was done, this wasblazing up quite briskly, and the kettle singing away at a fine rate.

  By and by, when the Captain declared he couldn't eat another morsel, andBob and Nellie also had had enough, Mrs Gilmour heaped up a couple ofplates with the remains of the veal-and-ham pie for Hellyer and Dick,who had all this time been busily employed ministering to their variouswants, and now retired some little distance off to enjoy their well-earned meal.

  Then came Bob's turn for action.

  "The kettle is boiling, auntie," he cried out, poking fresh sticks inthe fire, which crackled and spitted out as the sap in pieces of thegreener wood caught the heat, the smoke ascending in a column of spiralwreaths, and making Bob's eyes smart on his getting to leeward of theblazing pile. "Shall we have tea now?"

  "Yes, my dear boy," said she in a very pathetic voice. "Do, please,make it as quick as you can, I feel quite faint for want of some, as itis long past the time for my usual afternoon cup."

  "All right, auntie," replied Bob, bustling about with great zeal, "Iwill get it ready in a jiffy. But, where's the tea?"

  "It's in the teapot, I suppose, my dear; and you'll find that in thehamper with the teacups. Nellie and I thought we wouldn't unpack themuntil they were wanted."

  Nell, who had been sitting between her aunt and the Captain, on hearingher name introduced, at once got up to help Bob; but in spite of everysearch, neither of them could find the tea.

  As in the case of the bread, the "good Sarah" had forgotten it; for,neither in teapot, teacups or elsewhere could the tea be seen!

  "Well, ma'am!" exclaimed the Captain on hearing the painful news. "Thatbates Banagher, as one of your countrymen would say."

  "I'm sure nobody could be more sorry than I am," pleaded poor MrsGilmour, whom this second mishap completely overwhelmed, "I did so longfor a cup of tea!"

  "Well, well," said the Captain when he was able to speak, after a seriesof chuckles that made him almost choke, "the next time that a picnic'sin the wind I'd take care, if I were you, to overhaul your hamper beforestarting, to see that nothing is forgotten."

  "It's all `that good Sarah,' auntie," cried Bob slily; and, then, theyall had another laugh, the misfortunes of the day being provocative,somehow or other, of the greatest fun. "Oh that `good Sarah'!"

  It appeared as if Mrs Gilmour would be the only sufferer in having togo without her tea: but, at this critical point, Hellyer came to therescue.

  "Beg pardon, mum," said he, stepping up to her with a deferential touchof his forelock; "but I knows the woman in the keeper's lodge where youcomed in, and I thinks as how I could borrow a bit o' tea from her, ifyou likes."

  "Thank you very much, if it's no trouble," replied Mrs Gilmour, hailingthe offer with joy, "I certainly would like it."

  Hardly waiting to hear the termination of her reply, the thoughtfulfollow darted off along the winding path through the shrubbery by whichthey had gained the pleasant little dell; returning before they thoughthe could have reached the keeper's lodge with a little packet of tea.This Miss Nell took from Hellyer and at once emptied into the teapot,while Bob attended to the kettle and poured the boiling water in; sothat Mrs Gilmour was soon provided with the wished-for cup of herfavourite beverage.

  The good lady's equanimity being now restored, she proceeded to questionthe Captain about the Roman villa at Brading.

  "But, what did you see after all?" she asked; "you haven't told us aword yet."

  "Oh, don't speak about it, ma'am," he replied grumpily. "It's a regularswindle."

  "But, what did you see?" she repeated, knowing his manner, and that hewas not put out with her, at all events. "I want to know."

  "See?" echoed the Captain, snorting out the word somehow with suppressedindignation. "Well, ma'am, to tell you the truth, we saw nothing butsome fragments of old pottery--"

  "Just like broken pieces of flower-pots, auntie," interrupted Master Bobin his eagerness. "The same as you have at the bottom of the garden."

  "Yes," continued the old sailor, "that's exactly what these muchexaggerated `remains' resembled more than anything else, I assure you,ma'am. Of course, all these bits of earthenware were arranged in orderand labelled and all that; but I couldn't make head or tail of them."

  "Perhaps you do not understand archaeology?" suggested Mrs Gilmour,smiling at his description. "That's the rayson they didn't interestyou, sure!"

  "P'r'aps not, ma'am," he replied with the utmost good temper. "I fancyI know something of seamanship and a little about natural history, butof most of the other 'ologies I confess my ignorance; and, for the lifeof me, I can't see how some people can find anything to enjoy in the oldpots and pans of our great-great-grandfathers!"

  "You forget the light which these relics throw on the manners andcustoms of the ancients," argued the other. "There's a good deal ofinformation to be gleaned from their mute testimony sure, me dearCaptain."

  "Information?" growled the Captain. "Fiddlesticks! And as for themanners and customs of our ancestors; why, if all I have read be true,they were uncommonly similar to the account given by a middy of thenatives of the Andaman Isles, as jotted down in his diary, `manners,none--customs, beastly!'"

  "That's shocking," exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, laughing. "But the criticismwill not apply to the Romans, who were almost as civilised and refinedas ourselves."

  "And that's not saying much!" said the Captain with one of his slychuckles. "Faith we haven't any to boast of!"

  "Speak for yourself," she retorted, "sure that's a very poor complimentyou're paying me."

  "Present company always excepted," he replied, with an old-fashioned bowlike that of a courtier. "You know I didn't allude to you."

  "I accept your apology, sir," said she with equally elaboratepoliteness. "I would make you a curtsy if I were standing up, but youwouldn't wish me to rise for the purpose. Did you not see, though,anything at all like the ruins of a Roman villa or house at Brading?"

  The Captain took a pinch of snuff, as if to digest the matter beforeanswering her question.

  "Well, ma'am," he began, after a long pause of cogitation, "we wereshown some bits of brickwork, marked out in divisions like thefoundations of a house: and a place with a hole in the floor which, theysaid, was a bath-room. We also saw a piece or two of tesselatedpavement, with a lot of other gimcracks; but I certainly had to exercisea good deal of fancy to imagine a villa out of all these scattereddetails, like the Marchioness in Dickens' _Old Curiosity Shop_, which Iwas reading the other day, `made believe' about her orange-peel wine!"

  "Then we didn't lose much by not accompanying you?" she remarked. "Iwas rather sorry afterwards I was unable to go."

  "Lose anything?" he repeated with emphasis, "I should think not, indeed!If my poor legs could speak, they would tell you that you've gained`pretty considerably,' as a Yankee would say, by remaining comfortablyhere. Hullo, missy, what a splendid posy you've got there!"

  "Yes, are they not nice?" replied Nellie, on the Captain thus turningthe conversation to her collection of wild-flowers, some of which shehad arranged tastefully in a big bunch and placed them in her tin bucketfilled with water to keep them fresh. "Aunt Polly helped me to gatherthem."


  "I dare say she told you their names and all about them at the sametime, my dear."

  "Oh yes, Captain Dresser," said Nellie. "She told me lots."

  "Ah!" ejaculated the Captain, heaving a deep sigh of regret. "If I onlyknew as much as your auntie does of botany, missy, what a clever oldchap I should be!"

  "Don't you believe him, Nell!" cried Mrs Gilmour deprecating thecompliment. "Captain Dresser knows quite as much as I do about plantsand flowers, and a good deal more, too. I only wish he had been here totell you the story of the `Devil's bit,' for he would have narrated itin a much better fashion than I did, I'm sure."

  "The divvle a bit of it, ma'am!" exclaimed the old sailor, bursting intoa jovial laugh at his joke, wherein even the staid Hellyer joined."But, a truce to your blarney, ma'am; or, you'll make me blush. Allowme to inform you that time is getting on; and, unless we make a startfor the pier soon, we'll never catch the steamer and reach home to-night!"