“A rough, roaming, dreamy, restless being, who is always wandering about all over the world.”
“And what would England have been, uncle, if some of us had not been restless and wandered all over the world.”
Johnstone Murray, gentleman and naturalist, sat back in his chair and laughed.
“Oh, you may laugh, uncle!” said the boy with his face flushed. “You laugh because I said some of us: I meant some of you. Look at the discoveries that have been made; look at the wonders brought home; look at that, for instance,” cried the boy, snatching up the piece of pale, yellowish-green, metallic-looking stone. “See there; by your discoveries you were able to tell me that this piece which you brought home from abroad is pyrites, and—”
“Hold your tongue, you young donkey. I did not bring that stone home from abroad, for I picked it up the other day under the cliff at Ventnor, and you might have known what it was from any book on chemistry or mineralogy.—So you want to travel?”
“Yes, uncle, yes!” cried the boy.
“Very well, then; get plenty of books, and read them in an easy-chair, and then you can follow the footsteps of travellers all round the world without getting shipwrecked, or having your precious soft young body damaged in any way.”
“Oh dear! oh dear!” sighed the boy; “it’s very miserable not to be able to do as you like.”
“No, it isn’t, stupid! It’s very miserable to be able to do nearly as you like. Nobody can quite, from the Queen down to the dirtiest little boy in the streets. The freest man finds that he has the hardest master to satisfy—himself.”
“Oh, I say, uncle!” cried the boy; “don’t, don’t, please; that doesn’t seem like you. It’s like being at the rectory. Don’t you begin to lecture me.”