“Well,” said Rodd, “I don’t think it’s lazy. Uncle says that after you have been at work very hard it’s like unstringing the bow; and so it is. I want to begin fishing or dredging or sounding again. I don’t want any more shooting. Now, do you know what I should like just now?”
“No.”
“I’d soon show you then that I wasn’t lazy. I should like to see one of those beautiful ripples two or three hundred yards off which show that there’s a shoal of fish feeding on the transparent what-you-may-call-’ems—I forget Uncle Paul’s name for them.”
“Well, if that would give you any satisfaction,” said Morny, laughing, “I wish that a shoal would rise.”
“Don’t you be in such a hurry; I hadn’t finished. I was going to say I should then like to see one of those great sea-serpent-like creatures rise slowly from below, to begin feeding on the fish—one of those great scientific wonders that you and your father are trying to discover and capture; for that’s it, I suppose, though you do keep so squat about it.”
“Ah–h–h!” said Morny, with a sigh; and he glanced sidewise at his young English companion.
“It is quite a joke, that it is,” continued Rodd. “It’s just as if you were jealous and afraid that uncle and I would get beforehand with you, and win the credit of the discovery for old England, instead of you carrying it off for your la belle France.”
“Ah!” sighed Morny again, with a sad smile upon his lips.
“You French chaps are so sentimental. La belle France indeed! Just as if old England or the British Isles weren’t quite as beautiful! Only we don’t go shouting about it everywhere. I say, Morny, you don’t half believe in me.”
“It is false!” cried the young Frenchman angrily. “Why, I believe in you more than in any one living—except my father.”