'No, no! For the next few months, with your permission, I'm going to live a life as free as a swallow's. I'm going on the road in my own house-upon-wheels. I'll see and mingle with all sorts of society, high and low, rich and poor. I'll be happy in spirit, healthy in body, and by the time I come back my mind will be quite a storehouse of knowledge that will better fit me for Parliament than all the lore in this great library, father.'
'You're going to take up with gipsies, Frank?'
'Be a sort of gip myself, daddy.'
'Bother me, boy, if there isn't something really good in the idea. But how are you going to set about it? Build a caravan for yourself?'
'Not build one, father. Nat Biffins Lee—a scion of the old, old gipsy Lee, you know—owns a real white elephant'——
'Bless my soul! is the lad going mad? You don't mean seriously to travel the country with a real white elephant, eh?'
'You don't understand, daddy. This Nat Lee has a splendid house-upon-wheels which belonged to the Duchess of X—— She went abroad, and Lee has bought it. But as it needs three powerful horses to rattle it along, it is quite a white elephant to Nat. So I'm going up north to Loggiemouth in Nairnshire, and if I like it I'll buy it. Is it all right?'
'Right as rain in March, boy. Go when you like.'
'Coming, Aggie; coming.'
. . . . . . .