The Long Vacation

Chapter V. A Happy Sprite

Such trifles will their hearts engage,
  A shell, a flower, a feather;
If none of these, a cup of joy
  It is to be together.--ISAAC WILLIAMS.

A retired soldier, living with his sister in a watering-place, is apt to form to himself regular habits, of which one of the most regular is the walking to the station in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General Mohun beheld, emerging on the platform, a slight figure in a grey suit, bag in hand, accompanied by a pretty pink-cheeked, fair-haired, knicker- bockered little boy, whose air of content and elation at being father's companion made his sapphire eyes goodly to behold.

"Mr. Underwood! I am glad to see you."

"I thought I would run down and look at the house you were so good as to mention for my sister, and let this chap have a smell of the sea."

There was a contention between General Mohun's hospitality and Lancelot's intention of leaving his bag at the railway hotel, but the former gained the day, the more easily because there was an assurance that the nephew who slept at Miss Mohun's for the sake of his day- school would take little Felix Underwood under his protection, and show him his curiosities. The boy's eyes grew round, and he exclaimed--

"Foolish guillemots' eggs?"

"He is in the egg stage," said his father, smiling.

"I won't answer for guillemots," said the General, "but nothing seems to come amiss to Fergus, though his chief turn is for stones."

There was a connection between the families, Bernard Underwood, the youngest brother of Lance, having married the elder sister of the aforesaid Fergus Merrifield. Miss Mohun, the sister who made a home for the General, had looked out the house that Lance had come to inspect. As it was nearly half-past twelve o'clock, the party went round by the school, where, in the rear of the other rushing boys, came Fergus, in all the dignity of the senior form.

"Look at him," said the General, "those are honours one only gets once or twice in one's life, before beginning at the bottom again."

Fergus graciously received the introduction; and the next sound that was heard was, "Have you any good fossils about you?" in a tone as if he doubted whether so small a boy knew what a fossil meant; but little Felix was equal to the occasion.

"I once found a shepherd's crown, and father said it was a fossil sea-urchin, and that they are alive sometimes."

"Echini. Oh yes--recent, you mean. There are lots of them here. I don't go in for those mere recent things," said Fergus, in a pre- Adamite tone, "but my sister does. I can take you down to a fisherman who has always got some."

"Father, may I? I've got my eighteenpence," asked the boy, turning up his animated face, while Fergus, with an air of patronage, vouched for the honesty of Jacob Green, and undertook to bring his charge back in time for luncheon.

Lancelot Underwood had entirely got over that sense of being in a false position which had once rendered society distasteful to him. Many more men of family were in the like position with himself than had been the case when his brother had begun life; moreover, he had personally achieved some standing and distinction through the 'Pursuivant'.

General Mohun was delighted with his companion, whom he presented to his sister as the speedy consequence of her recommendation. She was rather surprised at the choice of an emissary, but her heart was won when she found Mr. Underwood as deep in the voluntary school struggle as she could be. Her brother held up his hands, and warned her that it was quite enough to be in the fray without going over it again, and that the breath of parish troubles would frighten away the invalid.

"I'll promise not to molest him," she said.

"Besides," said Lance, "one can look at other people's parishes more philosophically than at one's own."

He had begun to grow a little anxious about his boy, but presently from the garden, up from the cliff-path, the two bounded in--little Felix with the brightest of eyes and rosiest of cheeks, and a great ruddy, white-beaded sea-urchin held in triumph in his hands.

"Oh, please," he cried, "my hands are too dirty to shake; we've been digging in the sand. It's too splendid! And they ought to have spines. When they are alive they walk on them. There's a bay! Oh, do come down and look for them."

"And pray what would become of Aunt Cherry's house, sir? Miss Mohun, may I take him to make his paws presentable?"

"A jolly little kid," pronounced Fergus, lingering before performing the same operation, "but he has not got his mind opened to stratification, and only cares for recent rubbish. I wish it was a half-holiday, I would show him something!"

The General, who had a great turn for children, and for the chase in any form, was sufficiently pleased with little Felix's good manners and bright intelligence about bird, beast, and fish, as to volunteer to conduct him to the region most favourable to spouting razor-fish and ambulatory sea-urchins. The boy turned crimson and gasped--

"Oh, thank you!"

"Thank you indeed," said his father, when he had been carried off to inspect Fergus's museum in the lumber-room. "'To see a real General out of the wars' was one great delight in coming here, though I believe he would have been no more surprised to hear that you had been at Agincourt than in Afghanistan. 'It's in history,' he said with an awe-stricken voice."

When Fergus, after some shouting, was torn from his beloved museum, Felix came down in suppressed ecstasy, declaring it the loveliest and most delicious of places, all bones and stones, where his father must come and see what Fergus thought was a megatherium's tooth. The long word was pronounced with a triumphant delicacy of utterance, amid dancing bounds of the dainty, tightly-hosed little legs.

The General and his companion went their way, while the other two had a more weary search, resulting in the choice of not the most inviting of the houses, but the one soonest available within convenient distance of church and sea. When it came to practical details, Miss Mohun was struck by the contrast between her companion's business promptness and the rapt, musing look she had seen when she came on him listening to the measured cadence of the waves upon the cliffs, and the reverberations in the hollows beneath. And when he went to hire a piano she, albeit unmusical, was struck by what her ears told her, yet far more by the look of reverent admiration and wonder that his touch and his technical remarks brought out on the dealer's face.

"Has that man, a bookseller and journalist, missed his vocation?" she said to herself. "Yet he looks too strong and happy for that. Has he conquered something, and been the better for it?"

He made so many inquiries about Fergus and his school, that she began to think it must be with a view to his own pretty boy, who came back all sea-water and ecstasy, with a store of limpets, sea-weeds, scales, purses, and cuttle-fish's backbones for the delectation of his sisters. Above all, he was eloquent on the shell of a lacemaker crab, all over prickles, which he had seen hanging in the window of a little tobacconist. He had been so much fascinated by it that General Mohun regretted not having taken him to buy it, though it appeared to be displayed more for ornament than for sale.

"It is a disgusting den," added the General, "with 'Ici on parle Francais' in the window, and people hanging about among whom I did not fancy taking the boy."

"I know the place," said Miss Mohun. "Strange to say, it produces rather a nice girl, under the compulsion of the school officer. She is plainly half a foreigner, and when Mr. Flight got up those theatricals last winter she sung most sweetly, and showed such talent that I thought it quite dangerous."

"I remember," said her brother. "She was a fairy among the clods."

The next morning, to the amazement of Miss Mohun, who thought herself one of the earliest of risers, she not only met the father and son at early matins, but found that they had been out for two hours enjoying sea-side felicity, watching the boats come in, and delighting in the beauty of the fresh mackerel.

"If they had not all been dead!" sighed the tender-hearted little fellow. "But I've got my lacemaker for Audrey."

"'The carapace of a pagurus,' as Fergus translated it." Adding, "I don't know the species."

"I can find out when father has time to let us look at the big natural history book in the shop," said Felix. "We must not look at it unless he turns it over, so Pearl and I are saving up to buy it."

"For instance!" said his father, laughing.

"Oh, I could not help getting something for them all," pleaded the boy, "and pagurus was not dear. At least he is, in the other way."

"Take care, Fely--he won't stand caresses. I should think he was the first crab ever so embraced."

"I wonder you got entrance so early in the day," said Miss Mohun.

"The girl was sweeping out the shop, and singing the morning hymn, so sweetly and truly, that it would have attracted me anyway," said Lancelot. "No doubt the seafaring men want 'baccy at all hours. She was much amazed at our request, and called her mother, who came out in remarkable dishabille, and is plainly foreign. I can't think where I have seen such a pair of eyes--most likely in the head of some chorus-singer, indeed the voice had something of the quality. Anyway, she stared at me to the full extent of them."

So Lancelot departed, having put in hand negotiations for a tolerable house not far from St. Andrew's Church, and studied the accommodation available for horses, and the powers of the pianos on hire.