"He doesn't seem so very old," remarked Aleck.
"I don't think he is," I answered, "but he's taught me to call him old George since I have been a baby; everybody else calls him Groves or Mr. Groves. Now there's one thing I want very much to begin, and that is digging a hole right through the earth to come out at the other side, where, you know, we should find ourselves standing on our heads! George has always kept putting off beginning. But haven't you heard of many people beginning to do something great when they were boys?"
"Yes," answered Aleck, musingly; "I have a book about wonderful boys, and one of them cut out a lion in butter, and another drew a picture upon a stump of a tree; but I don't think we should be able to dig so very far down—we should have to stop at last."
This unprejudiced opinion of my cousin's, adverse as it was to my favourite scheme, was rather disappointing, but we were now engaged in the excitement of descending the Zig-zag, so I had not leisure to think much about it.
"Isn't it a jolly way down?" I exclaimed. "Papa says it's two hundred feet to that piece of rock down below."
"It's not steeper than our hills at home," said Aleck; "only we have not the sea near us—oh, how I wish we had!"
Aleck was quite as good a scrambler as I was, so we were not long in reaching the lodge, where old George seemed to be on the watch for us, and welcomed us both with his wonted heartiness.
"Master told me you'd be coming down, young gentlemen, as he rode by, and that you were to go out as much as you liked in the boat; and so I've been telling my good wife she must keep the look-out for the gate. Ralph's coming along presently, and will be down at the Cove most as soon as we shall."
George wanted Aleck to go into the lodge and see certain objects of interest, which, to use his own words, he "set great store by." But I was too eager to allow of this, and insisted upon our setting out at once for the Cove. "I want to show him the greatest treasure I have of all my treasures," I exclaimed.
"Is that the 'Fair Alice' you were telling me of?" asked Aleck.