“Yes, to be sure!” said Harry. “You’re Cousin Fred, and I’m Harry, and that’s Phil. Come along into the chaise. Here Sam—Jem! bring the box and let’s be off. But I say, Fred, isn’t it hot?”
Fred replied that it was, seeming hardly to know what to make of the rough, hearty manners of his cousins, and he looked, if anything, rather disappointed when he was met by the rough grin of Sam, who was of anything but a smooth exterior, and altogether a very different man to his father’s well-brushed livery-servant, who had seen him safely off to the station in the morning.
“I’ve come,” said Fred at last, when they were fairly started with Philip and Fred in the chaise, and Harry this time upon the donkey bringing up the rear—“I’ve come because Papa said you would not like it if I did not; but I’d much rather you had both come up to me in London. One can find something to do there, and there’s something to see. I can’t think how you people manage to live down here.”
“Oh! we find something to do, don’t we, Harry?” said Philip, laughing. But Harry was very busy with Neddy, who had taken it into his head to go down a lane which led to the pound—a place where he had been more than once locked up; and it was as much as ever the lad could do to stop him; so Philip’s question remained unanswered. “I say,” continued Philip at last, after they had been conversing some time, during which Master Fred had been cross-questioning Philip as to his educational knowledge, and giving that young gentleman to understand what a high position he occupied at Saint Paul’s School—“I say,” said Philip, “can you swim?”
“No,” replied Fred.
“Can you play cricket?”
“No,” said Fred.
“Fish, row, shoot, rat, and all that sort of thing?” said Philip.
“No!” said the other. “I have always lived in London, where we do not practise that class of amusement.”
“Oh! come, then,” said Philip, “we shall be able to teach you something. Only wait a bit, and you’ll see how we live down here. But here we are; and there’s Papa waiting for us under the porch.”