At last they reached home, to find Mary carrying in the dinner, after Mr Inglis had been waiting about an hour for the truants, and at last, exhausted in patience, had ordered it in.
“Look! look! Papa, Mamma,” shouted Harry, rushing in through the French window; “look, here’s a fish!”
“Soak, soak,” went his boots as he went in.
“Take him outside,” said his father to the two other boys, who were just coming breathlessly in, only Fred was entangled by the rods crossing the window. “Take him outside, the young rascal is spoiling the carpet with his wet boots.”
It was no use to think of dinner then, so Papa and Mamma both had to come outside the window to see and admire the carp, and hear how it was captured, before the mid-day meal could be gone on with.
“Ah!” said the Squire at last, “there used to be plenty of fine carp in Trencher Pond down the deep hole under the tree, but I did not know there were any left, for the dry summers killed them when the railway cutting was made and took off so much water. But come, boys, dinner.”
And then he drove them off, and made them enter the hall-door so as to make themselves fit for the repast that awaited them. But he was not quite successful, for Harry made a double, and ran off to pop his carp in the pond, but was back directly, and shortly after in the dining-room, feasting away with a country boy’s appetite—an appetite, too, that Fred already began to show symptoms of possessing, as the fruit of his visit to Hollowdell.