“I do call it too bad,” cried Tom, “now, too, that we are quite ready.”
“Patience, lad, patience. A star-gazer must have plenty of that. Do you know that a great astronomer once said that there were only about a hundred really good hours for observation in every year.”
“What?” cried Tom. “He meant in a night. I mean a week. No, I don’t: how absurd! In a month.”
“No, Tom,” said his uncle quietly, “in a year. Of course there would be plenty more fair hours, but for really good ones no doubt his calculation was pretty correct. So you will have to wait.”
The Vicar called again one day, and hearing from Mrs Fidler that her master was over at the observatory, he came to the yard gate and thumped with his stick.
“What’s that?” said Uncle Richard, who was down upon his knees carefully adjusting a lens.
“Tramp, I should think,” said Tom, who was steadying the great tube of the telescope.
“Then he must tramp,” said Uncle Richard. “I can’t be interrupted now. What numbers of these people do come here!”
“Mrs Fidler says it’s because you give so much to them, uncle, and they tell one another.”
“Mrs Fidler’s an old impostor,” said Uncle Richard—“there, I think that is exactly in the axis—she gives more away to them than I do.”