Volume Three—Chapter One.
Gemini, with Mars in View.
With his grey hair starting out all over his head in a peculiarly fierce way, Major Day was standing and musing just at the edge of the wood, and a few yards from the path, very busy with one of those tortoise-shell framed lenses so popular with botanists, one of those with its three glasses of various powers, which, when superposed, form a combination of great magnifying strength.
Major Day had come upon a tree whose beautifully smooth bark was dappled with patches of brilliant amethystine fungus, a portion of which he had carefully slipped off with a penknife, for the purpose of examining the peculiarities of its structure under the glass.
The old gentleman was so rapt in his pursuit that he did not notice approaching footsteps till Sir John came close up, making holes in the soft earth with his walking-stick, and talking angrily to himself as he hurried along.
The brothers caught sight of each other almost at the same moment, Sir John stopping short and sticking his cane in the ground, as if to anchor himself, and the major slowly lowering his lens.
“Hullo, Jem, what have you found?” cried Sir John; “the potato disease?”
“No,” replied the major, smiling, “only a very lovely kind of Tremella.”
“Oh, have you?” growled Sir John.