“Not going to,” I said.
“That’s right, boy. You’ll be like a man now who has got a blunderbuss in his house. Thieves all about know that he has got one, and so they leave him alone. Well when are you going to have another riding lesson?”
“Let’s begin again at once,” I said; and he promised to send or go down to the General’s, to ask the groom to bring up the horse in the morning.
“I’ll go myself if I can,” said Lomax, “and ride him up pretty quickly. He’ll have had such a rest that he’ll be quite skittish.”
All this being settled, and it being yet early, we had time for a walk, and the discovery of sundry objects, which Mercer looked upon as treasures, and carefully placed in boxes and pieces of paper.
The first was an unhappy-looking stag beetle which seemed to have been in the wars, for one of its horns was gone, while not a dozen yards farther on we came upon a dissipated cockchafer, with a dent in his horny case, and upon both of these Mercer pounced with delight, transferring them to a flat tin paste-blacking box, inside which we could hear them scratching to get out.
The next thing to attract his attention was a fat worm, which, after a crawl in the cool, dewy night, had lost his way back to his hole, and was now crawling slowly by the roadside, with more sand sticking to him than could have been comfortable.
“Oh, what a big one!” cried Mercer. “I say, I must have him.”
“For a bait for an eel or carp?” I said.
“No. To preserve.”