“Now, look here, Ned,” said Mr Murray at last. “I do not say that some day when you have grown up to be a man, I may not ask you to accompany me on an expedition into some new untried country, such as the part of the Malay Peninsula I am off to visit next.”
“How long will it be before you consider I am a man, uncle?”
“Let’s see; how old are you now?”
“Sixteen turned, uncle.”
“Humph! Well, suppose we say at one and twenty.”
“Five years!” cried the boy in despair. “Why, by that time there will not be a place that you have not searched. There will be nothing left to discover, and—” (a sneeze), “there’s that dust again.”
“You miserable young ignoramus! what are you talking about?” cried the naturalist. “Why, if a man could live to be a hundred, and have a hundred lives, he would not achieve to a hundredth part of what there is to be discovered in this grand—this glorious world.”
He stood up with one hand resting on the table, and began to gesticulate with the other.
“Why, my dear boy, before I was your age I had begun to take an active interest in natural history, and for considerably over twenty years now I have been hard at work, with my eyes gradually opening to the wonders on every hand, till I begin now to feel sorrow and delight at how little I know and how much there is yet to learn.”
“Yes, uncle; go on,” cried the boy, eagerly.