“No wonder, hopping about amongst those granite boulders. My back’s a bit stiff too. There, let’s go into the parlour, light up, and then you shall fetch down the microscope.”
“Oh, not yet, uncle!—I say, have another pipe.”
“A vaunt, you young tempter! Trying to lead me astray into idleness! No, let’s get in. We have been playing all day; now let’s go and get a bit of work done before we lie down to sleep.”
“But I say, uncle, do you think that Napoleon will ever start another war in France?”
“Who knows, boy? His goings-on have brought nearly everything to a standstill, and there has been war enough to last for a hundred years.”
“Yes, uncle; but do you think that Napoleon and the war put a stop to your expedition that you were to make in a vessel of your own?”
“Of course I do, Pickle,” said Uncle Paul, smoking very slowly now, with his eyes shut, so as to make the little incandescent mass at the bottom of his bowl last for a few minutes longer. “Government promised me and my friends to make a grant for the fitting out of a small vessel, and for the payment of a captain and crew, and it was voted that we should have it; but do what we might, my friends and I could never get the cash, and it has always been put off, put off, on account of the expenses of the war.”
“But, uncle—” began Rodd.
“No, you don’t, sir,” said Uncle Paul, with a soft chuckle. “None of your artfulness! You are trying to lead me on to prattle about Bony, so as to avoid my lecture upon the fresh-water polypes I have taken to-day. Get out, you transparent young scrub! In with you, and fetch down the case, and light the two candles on the parlour table. Nice innocent way of doing it. Think I couldn’t see through you, sir? Be off!”
A few minutes later Uncle Paul’s pipe was cooling on the parlour chimney-piece, kept almost upright by the waxy end leaning against a glass tube which had been formed into a sort of ornamental rolling-pin to be suspended over the fire, and to be much treasured by its owner.