“Said it was a pity you weren’t blown up, too,” cried Macey.
“Bah! don’t tell ugly tales,” said Gilmore.
“I wish I could feel that he did not,” thought Vane, who had a weakness for being good friends with everybody he knew.
He had to encounter plenty of joking about the explosion, and for some time after, Bruff used to annoy him by turning away when they met, and shaking his shoulders as if convulsed with mirth, but after a sharp encounter with Vane, when he had ventured to say he knew how it would be, he kept silence, and later on he was very silent indeed.
For the new boiler came down, and was set without any objection being made by cook, who was for some time, however, very reluctant to go near the thing for fear it should go off; but familiarity bred contempt, and she grew used to it as it did not go off, and to Bruff’s great disgust it acted splendidly, heating the greenhouse in a way beyond praise, and with scarcely any trouble, and an enormous saving of fuel.
Vane was so busy over the hot-water apparatus, and had so much to think about with regard to the damages in connection with the explosion, that he had forgotten all about the adventure in the lane just prior to meeting Macey, till one day, when out botanising with the doctor, they came through that very lane again, and in their sheltered corner, there were the gipsies, looking as if they had never stirred for weeks. There, too, were the women cooking by the fire, and the horses and ponies grazing on the strips of grass by the roadside.
But closer examination would have proved that the horses which drew cart and van were different, and several of the drove of loose ones had been sold or changed away.
There, too, were the boys whose duty it was to mind the horses slouching about the lane, and their dark eyes glistened as the doctor and Vane came along.
“Dear me!” said the doctor suddenly.
“What, uncle?”