“Oh, Vane, my dear boy, don’t!” cried Mrs Lee, as the lad rushed down again, his feet finding the steps so rapidly that the wonder was that he did not go headlong, and a few seconds later, he was in his place at the dining-room table, tastily arranged with its plate, china, and flowers.
A walk before breakfast is a wonderful thing for the appetite, and Vane soon began with a sixteen-year-old growing appetite upon the white bread, home-made golden butter, and the other pleasant products of the doctor’s tiny homestead, including brahma eggs, whose brown shells suggested that they must have been boiled in coffee.
The doctor kept the basket he had brought in beside him on the cloth, and had to get up four times over to throw great fat wood-lice out of the window, after scooping them up with a silver tablespoon, the dark grey creatures having escaped from between the interstices of the basket, and being busily making their way in search of some dry, dark corner.
“It is astonishing what a predilection for peaches the wood-louse has,” said the doctor, resuming his seat.
“All your fault, uncle,” said Vane, with his mouth full.
“Mine! why?”
“You see you catch them stealing, and then you forgive them and let them go to find their way back to the south wall, so that they can begin again.”
“Humph! yes,” said the doctor; “they have plenty of enemies to shorten their lives without my help. Well, so you found some mushrooms, did you?”
“Yes, uncle, just in perfection.”
“Some more tea, dear?” said Vane’s aunt. “I hope you didn’t bring many to worry cook with.”