“I should think it would,” cried Vane, “or two.”
“And yet, that is what people have for long years done in England. Folks abroad are wiser. There, it’s time we went back.”
Vane was very silent on his homeward way, for the doctor had damped him considerably, and the bright career which he had pictured for himself as an inventor was beginning to be shrouded in clouds.
“Civil engineer means a man who surveys and measures land for roads and railways, and makes bridges,” said Vane to himself. “I don’t think I should like that. Rather go to a balloon manufactory and—”
He stopped to think of the subject which the word balloon brought up, and at last said to himself:
“Oh, if I could only invent the way how to fly.”
“The boy has too much gas in his head,” the doctor said to himself, as they reached home; “and he must be checked, but somehow he has spoiled my walk.”
He threw himself into an easy chair after placing his basket on the table, and into which Aunt Hannah peeped as Vane went up to his room.
“Botanical specimens, my dear,” she said.
“Yes, for the cook,” said the doctor dreamily.