Chapter Twenty Seven.
Loud Sighs.—More Sorrow.
Fred’s visit was now drawing fast to a close, and the boys among themselves were comparing notes as to how wonderfully swift the days had glided away.
“Oh, dear; oh, dear,” said Harry, with a sigh; “only think, next week we shall be back at school, and learning that beastly old Latin again; a nasty dirty old dead language. It isn’t right: if a language is dead, it ought to be buried. They ought to make a cavibus in terribus, and bury the old blunderbuss. Shouldn’t I like to have smothered old Valpy!”
“Ah,” said Philip; “Latin isn’t half so bad as that old Euclid, with all its straight lines, and angles, and bother. Heigho! wouldn’t it be nice to be a bird, and not have any lessons to learn! I should like to be an eagle, to circle up and up towards the sun, and—”
“Ho—ho—ho!” laughed Harry, who was not at all a poetical young gentleman; “you wouldn’t do for an eagle; if you turned into a bird, like that chap in ‘Evenings at Home,’ you’d be only an old cocksparrow, and cry ‘chizzywick, chizzywick,’ all day long.”
Hereupon Philip thought it was his duty to resent this great insult, and gave chase to Harry, who dodged him about in the field where they were; and the tormentor, being the more nimble of the two, escaped his well-merited punishment.
“Come, I say,” said Fred, shouting as loudly as he could, “it’s time to start. The car has gone round to the door.”
This announcement brought Fred’s cousins tearing up to the spot where he stood, and then, going round to the front, they found Mr Inglis with what few things he required, just giving orders to Sam to go and look for the boys.