'He is as level-headed as a Yankee lawyer,' said Dick, 'and, besides, his arm isn't all right yet. I'm thinking the frost got into it a bit.'
So Frank went, and the boys saw him off, papers and all, and stood for nearly a quarter of an hour looking along those bright metals which led so straight towards the east, the iron link which binds the old world to the new.
CHAPTER XXVII
CONCLUSION
Just one more scene, readers, and then you must say good-bye to Snap and Frank, Dick, Towzer, and the author. I don't call you 'gentle' reader, as some fellows might do, because, though I like boys to grow up 'gentlemen,' I am not very fond myself of gentle boys—youngsters who sit in the drawing-room and do knitting and play the piano. I dare say they are good enough in their way, but they will never enjoy a merry bout with the boxing-gloves, or, when they grow older, a breathless scurry after stampeded cattle or a pack like the old Berkshire. And that last sentence brings me home again, of course.
It was a November morning at Fairbury, and the way the thrushes were whistling would have persuaded any but a hunting man that it was balmy April instead of bleak November. Bleak it certainly was not. The air was a little fresh and crisp, to be sure, and a good many of the leaves had fluttered down already, but the covers were still too thick to shoot, and the old cock-pheasants who were crowing lustily in the shrubbery last night knew that as well as old Admiral Chris, whose fingers had been itching ever since the first of October for a 'cut at a rocketer.'
'Uncle Chris always does kill a few "magpies" about the end of September,' had been Frank's verdict long ago, and I fear that the allegation was true in fact, for that keen old sportsman, used to shooting in an Indian jungle at everything he saw, from peacocks to a native gun-bearer, could not always resist the attractions of a precocious 'longtail.'
It was just nine o'clock; morning prayers were over, and the sun glanced off the old red brick and through the tree-boughs into the windows of the breakfast-room of the Hall. There it lit on a snowy cloth, glanced at a tempting pink ham and some cold game on the sideboard, peeped over the top of the plate-warmer before the fire, and discovered kidneys lying lovingly alongside little rolls of bacon (for all the world like the ringlets of the last generation) and many other good things. There was a pleasant aroma of coffee about the room; a glow of firelight within, and a more glorious glow of sunlight without.
Altogether it was a room the very memory of which makes me feel hungry and happy.
In the room, at the moment at which I ask you to peep into it, are four people: a little grey-haired lady in a dark dress, and a quantity of pretty feathery white things about her, as becoming as hoarfrost on an evergreen; and three men. You could not disguise the Admiral if you tried, so I won't try; but it is hard to believe that it is he indeed, for, instead of looking older, he looks positively juvenile, in spite of the old-fashioned blue stock which he wears.