It was not a very aesthetic piece of art or ornamentation, being only composed of coloured flowers carefully cut out of a piece of chintz, before being gummed upon the inside of the glass tube. This was then filled up with salt, and the ornament was complete.
The candles were burning brightly after each application of the snuffers; the polished mahogany microscope case stood on a side-table, and the brass tube that had been taken out was ready to receive one of the many slips of glass, some of which had little cup-like hollows ground out of one side ready for receiving a tiny drop of water and one or other of the specimens, the result of the past day’s search.
Uncle Paul was on one side of the table with his big glass bottle; Rodd sat on the other, with his chin resting in his hands, trying to listen to his uncle’s discourse, and with his eyelids drooping down now and again.
“Bother the flies and moths!” said Uncle Paul testily. “Who’s to work with them circling round and round the candles, trying to singe themselves to death? What’s that white one, boy?”
“Ghost moth, uncle,” replied Rodd sharply, his uncle’s question seeming to rouse him up to attention.
“Good boy! Well named. Trying hard to make a ghost of itself too. Why, there’s a great Daddy Longlegs now! Here, you’ll have to shut the window.”
“Oh, don’t, uncle! It will make the room so hot.”
“Umph! So it will. Very tiresome, though, when one’s trying to work. Now then, let me see; let me see. I want to examine this hydra, but I must put on a lower power, and— Oh, dear, dear, dear! Gnats! Moths! Tipulae and— Really, really, Pickle, that lamp gives no light at all;” and Uncle Paul leaned forward, took a pin out of the edge of his waistcoat, and began to prick at and try to raise the wick of the reflecting microscope lamp.
Then there was a little catastrophe, for after a most vigorous application of the pin the wick seemed to resent it as if it were some kind of sea worm, and drew back out of reach into its little brass cell.
“There, now I’ve done it!” said Uncle Paul. “Did you ever see anything so tiresome in your life, Pickle?”