"They're such beggars for fighting," he explained. "And I don't want them to kill each other before I get them home to the aquarium."
He enquired tenderly about the ferret.
"Beastly shame they've let it get savage," he said. "But one of our fellows is going to send me a fox cub, if the governor will only let me keep it. Where's the mater? Hasn't she come down to the station?"
I had never lived before among a family of school-boys, and their rollicking ways, their slang, their endless chaff, their jokes, and the thrilling stories they told of their numerous adventures, were altogether a new experience for me. Being a visitor, they treated me at first with a certain amount of ceremony, but finding that I was ready to climb fences, play hare-and-hounds, ride, fish, or tramp miles over the heathery moors, they voted me "a jolly sort of girl", and included me in the bosom of the family circle.
"We thought, as you'd lived abroad, you'd perhaps go about shaking out your skirts, and holding up a parasol, and shriek if you saw a cow," said George, who had tested my courage by springing at me from behind corners, letting a bat loose in my bedroom, and locking me into the dark jam-cupboard, all of which ordeals I had borne with heroism.
"She can't be troubled with nerves if she can stand the Babe's little diversions. It makes a fellow quite limp to look at him this hot weather. Why don't you give her a book and a deck-chair in the garden, and leave her in peace?" said Edward, his suggestions for my entertainment being based on his own ideals of enjoyment.
With Dick I soon won golden opinions, as I took an interest in the birds' eggs, and would consent to carry the wriggling caterpillars and slimy snails which he collected on our walks, or to fill my pockets with stones and other specimens for the museum. This museum was a large cabinet with glass doors, which filled one entire end of the school-room at Marshlands. It held a very miscellaneous assortment of treasures, to which both Cathy and the boys were constantly adding, sometimes with rather more zeal than discretion. I shall never forget how Dick put the hornet's nest there.
"I've smoked it thoroughly with brown paper," he said, "and the grubs are as dead as door-nails, so you needn't be at all afraid of it."
But I fear the brown paper could not have been strong enough after all. A few days afterwards we were sitting at tea in the school-room, when a peculiarly irritated buzzing noise began to resound from the region of the cabinet, and Edward, who was giving us an imitation of his classical master's stately style on speech-day, suddenly ducked his head in a most undignified fashion, and, seizing the bread-knife, made a frantic cut into the air.
"It's a hornet!" he exclaimed. "Just see the size of it! Take care, Cathy, the brute's going into your hair! Look out! If there isn't another of them!"