My old friend Captain Roberts is quite a remarkable man in his way—yes, I might go farther and say, in many of his ways. As a pedestrian, for example, there are few young men can beat him. When he and I make up our minds to have a walk, the elements do not prevent us. We start and go through with it.
But in summer or spring weather, when the roads are not quite ankle-deep in mud, we dearly love to mount our tricycles and go for a good long spin. We like to return feeling delightfully hungry and delightfully tired; then we dine together, and after dinner, when good old Ben gets his pipe in full blast, it would indeed do your heart good to listen to him. Everything or anything suggests a yarn to Ben, or brings back to his mind some sunny memory or gloomy recollection.
One day last summer we started for a ride, for the morning looked very promising, and the roads were in splendid form. We followed the course of the Thames upwards, and about noon found ourselves enjoying our frugal luncheon near a pretty little reach of the river, one of the thousand beautiful spots by the banks of this famous old stream.
As the clouds, however, began to bank up rather suddenly in the west, and as they soon met and quite hid the sun, and as the day was still and sultry, we expected, what we soon got, a thunderstorm. Neither my friend nor I am very shy, when it comes to the push, so we ran for shelter, and just as the thunder began to roll and the raindrops to fall, we got our ’cycles comfortably housed in a farmer’s shed.
The farmer was not content, however, until he had us both indoors in his comfortable parlour. He threw the window wide open, because, he said, the glass drew the lightning; so there we sat with the thunder rattling overhead, the rain pattering on the grass and sending up delicious odours of red and white clover, while the lightning seemed to run along the ground, and mix itself up with the sparkling rain-rush in quite a wonderful way.
“Terrible thunder!” said Captain Roberts. “Terrible! puts me in mind of South America.”
The farmer looked eagerly towards him.
The farmer’s wife entered with tea, and this completed our feeling of comfort.
“You’ve got something to tell us, Ben,” I said. “There is something which that storm reminds you of. Better out with it, without much further parley.”