'You're an impertinent young monkey, Frank,' laughed the Admiral, 'but still you may have it.'
And so it was settled that the Magpie match should be given up, and Frank and Billy be packed off on a fishing tour in Wales, whilst their mother and the Admiral went up to town and transacted the troublesome business which had had the bad taste to demand their attention during the Midsummer holidays.
A little later in the day a man came up from the village with a note from Mr. Hales for the Admiral. The boys did not see it, but it was understood to contain his consent in writing 'to the proposal that Snap should join the expedition.' For the rest of that day all was excitement and bustling preparations for a start. It seemed almost as if they were preparing for something much more important than a fortnight's trip into Wales. Snap was up at the house all day. That with him was common enough. His own packing had not taken him long. The boy was keener-eyed than his young companions, and, in spite of an apparent roughness, was more sensitive to external influences than either of them. Hence it was perhaps that he noticed what they overlooked; noticed that Mrs. Winthrop's eyes followed her sons about from room to room, that she seemed to dread to lose them from her sight, that the dinner that night was what the boys called a birthday dinner, that is, consisted of all the little dishes of which Mrs. Winthrop knew each boy was specially fond, and what struck him more than anything was that two or three times he was sure her eyes filled with tears at some chance remark of Frank's or Willy's which to him had no sad meaning in it. He was puzzled, and, worse than that, 'depressed.'
The start next morning was even less auspicious than 'packing-day' had been. The midsummer weather seemed to have gone, and the gables of the old house showed through a grey and rainy sky; rain knocked the leaves off the roses, and battered angrily at the window-panes. The pretty Tane was swollen and mud-coloured, and, altogether, leaving home on a fishing trip to Wales felt worse than leaving home the first time for school.
The Admiral had determined on seeing them on their way as far as the county town, and drove to the station with them in the morning. If it had not been so absolutely absurd, Snap would have fancied once or twice that the old gentleman did not like any of the boys to be alone with his neighbours, or even with the servants. It would have been very unlike him if it had been the case, so of course Snap was mistaken.
'Towzer,' asked Frank in a whisper as they drove away, 'what was the Mater crying about?'
The Admiral overheard him, and replied:
'Crying, what nonsense, Frank; your mother was waving good-bye and good riddance to you with that foolish scrap of lace of hers; that's all. Crying, indeed!' and the old seaman snorted indignantly at the idea.
It was all very well for the Admiral to deny the fact, and to go very near to getting angry about it, but Snap at any rate knew that it was a fact, and that Admiral Chris knew it too. It was the first untruth he had ever heard from the upright old gentleman by his side, and Snap's wonder and dislike to this journey grew. As Snap looked back a turn in the road gave him another rain-blurred glimpse of Fairbury, with a little drooping figure which still watched from the Hall steps, and a conviction that something was wrong somewhere forced itself insensibly upon him, though as yet he was not wise enough to guess where the evil threatened.
The rain had an angry sound in it, unlike the merry splash of heavy summer showers: there seemed a sorrow in the sigh of the wind, unlike the scent-laden sigh of summer breezes after rain. Nature looked ugly and unhappy, and the boys were soon glad to curl themselves up in their respective corners of the railway carriage, with their backs resolutely turned upon the rain-blurred panes of the carriage window.