“My dear Jack—I was so glad to get your letter. I knew you had gone off at last. It did not surprise me, for I was sure you would go some day. I believe I have a very mean spirit, for I felt rather hurt at first that you did not tell me; but Mr. Wood gave me a good scolding, and said I was not fit to have a friend if I could not trust him out of sight or out of hearing. And that’s quite true. Besides, I think I knew more about it after Jem had been down. He has been so jolly to me since you left. It must be a splendid life on board ship, and I am glad you have been in the rigging, and didn’t fall off. I wish you had seen an iceberg or a water-spout, but perhaps
you will. For two days and two nights I was very miserable, and then Jenny rode down on Shag, and brought me a book that did me a great deal of good, and I’ll tell you why. It’s about a man whose friend is going to travel round the world, like you, and he has to be left behind, like me. Well, what does he do but make up his mind to travel round his own garden, and write a history of his adventures, just as if he had been abroad. And that’s the book; and you can’t tell what a jolly one it is. I mean to do the same, only as you are at sea I shall call it a Log, ‘Log of a Voyage round the Garden, the Croft, and the Orchard, by the Friend he left behind him,’ That’s good, isn’t it? I’ve been rather bothered about whether I should have separate books for each, or mix them all up; and then, besides, I’ve got to consider how to manage about the different times of year, for you know, of course, the plants and the beasts and everything are different at different times; but if I have a log of each place for each month, it would not be done by the time you come home. I think perhaps I shall have note-books for the four seasons, and that’ll take a good while. Two of the best chapters in Jenny’s book are called ‘on my face’ and ‘on my back,’ and they are about what he sees lying on his face and then on his back. I’m going to do the same, and put down everything, just as it
comes; beetles, chrysalises, flowers, funguses, mosses, earth-nuts, and land-snails, all just as I find them. If one began with different note-books for the creatures, and the plants, and the shells, it would be quite endless. I think I shall start at that place in the hedge in the croft where we found the bumble-bee’s nest. I should like to find a mole-cricket, but I don’t know if they live about here. Perhaps our soil isn’t light enough for them to make their tunnels in, but one ought to find no end of curious burrowing creatures when one is on one’s face, besides grubs of moths to hatch afterwards. When I am on my back, I fancy what I shall see most of are spiders. You can’t conceive what a lot of spiders there are in the world, all sorts and sizes. They are divided into hunters, wanderers, weavers, and swimmers. I expect you’ll see some queer ones, if you go to hot places. And oh, Jack! talking of burrows, of course you’re in Nova Scotia, and that’s where Cape Sable is, where the stormy petrels make their houses in the sand. They are what sailors call Mother Carey’s chickens, you know. I’m sure we’ve read about them in adventure books; they always come with storms, and sailors think they build their nests on the wave. But they don’t, Jack, so you mustn’t think so. They make burrows in the sand, and all day they are out on the wing, picking up what the storms
toss to the top, and what the cooks throw overboard, and then they go home, miles and miles and miles at night, and feed their young. They don’t take the trouble to make houses if they can find any old rabbit-burrows near enough to the sea, Mr. Wood says; like the puffins. Do you know, one evening when old Isaac came to see me, I made him laugh about the puffins till the tears ran down his face. It was with showing him that old stuffed puffin, and telling him how the puffin gets into a rabbit-burrow, and when the rabbit comes back they set to and fight, and the puffin generally gets the best of it with having such a great hooked nose. Isaac was so funny. He said he’d seen the rabbits out on the spree many and many a moonlight night when sober folks were in bed; and then he smacked his knees and said, ‘But I’d give owt to see one on ’em just nip home and find a Pooffin upon t’ hearthstun.’ And, my dear Jack, who else has been to see me, do you think? Fancy! Lorraine! You remember our hearing the poor Colonel was dead, and had left Lorraine all that he had? Well, do you know it is a great deal more than we thought. I mean he’s got a regular estate and a big house with old pictures inside, and old trees outside. Quite a swell. Poor Lorraine! I don’t mean poor because of the estate, because he’s rich, of course; but do you know, I think he’s sadder
than ever. He’s very much cut up that the Colonel died, of course, but he seems desperate about everything, and talks more about suicide than he did at Snuffy’s, Jem says. One thing he is quite changed about; he’s so clean! and quite a dandy. He looked awfully handsome, and Jenny said he was beautifully dressed. She says his pocket-handkerchief and his tie matched, and that his clothes fitted him so splendidly, though they were rough. Well, he’s got a straight back, Jack; like you! It’s hard he can’t be happy. But I’m so sorry for him. He went on dreadfully because you’d gone, and said that was just his luck, and then he wished to Heaven he were with you, and said you were a lucky dog, to be leading a devil-me-care life in the open air, with nothing to bother you. He didn’t tell me what he’d got to bother him. Lots of things, he said. And he said life was a wretched affair, all round, and the only comfort was none of his family lived to be old.
“Wednesday. I had to stop on Monday, my head and back were so bad, and all yesterday too. Dr. Brown came to see me, and talked a lot about you. I am better to-day. I think I had rather wound up my head with note-books. You know I do like having lists of everything, and my sisters have been very good. They got a lot of ruled paper very cheap, and have made me no end of books with brown-paper
backs, and Dr. Brown has given me a packet of bottle labels. You’ve only got to lick them and stick them on, and write the titles. He gave me some before, you remember, to cut into strips to fasten the specimens in my fern collection. I’ve got a dozen and a half books, but there will not be one too many. You see eight will go at once, with the four seasons ‘on my face,’ and the four ‘on my back.’ Then I want two or three for the garden. For one thing I must have a list of our perennials. I am collecting a good lot. Old Isaac has brought me no end of new ones out of different gardens in the village, and now the villagers know I want them, they bring me plants from all kinds of out-of-the-way places, when they go to see their friends. I’ve taken to it a good deal the last few weeks, and I’ll tell you why. It was the week before you ran away that Bob Furniss came up one evening, and for a long time I could not think what he was after. He brought me a Jack-in-the-green polyanthus and a crimson Bergamot from his mother, and he set them and watered them, and said he ‘reckoned flowers was a nice pastime for any one that was afflicted,’ but I felt sure he’d got something more to say, and at last it came out. He is vexed that he used to play truant so at school and never learned anything. He can’t read a newspaper, and he can’t write or reckon, and he said he was ‘shamed’
to go to school and learn among little boys, and he knew I was a good scholar, and he’d come to ask if I would teach him now and then in the evening, and he would work in the garden for me in return. I told him I’d teach him without that, but he said he ‘liked things square and fair,’ and Mr. Wood said I was to let him; so he comes up after work-hours one night and I teach him, and then he comes up the next evening and works in the garden. It’s very jolly, because now I can plot things out my own way, and do them without hurting my back. I’m going to clear all the old rose-bushes out of the shady border. The trees are so big now, it’s so shady that the roses never come to anything but blight, and I mean to make a fernery there instead. Bob says there’s a little wood belonging to Lord Beckwith that the trustees have cut down completely, and it’s going to be ploughed up. They’re stubbing up the stumps now, and we can have as many as we like for the carting away. Nothing makes such good ferneries, you get so many crannies and corners. Bob says it’s not far from the canal, and he thinks he could borrow a hand-cart from the man that keeps the post-office up there, and get a load or two down to the canal-bank, and then fetch them down to our place in the Adela. Oh, how I wish you were here to help! Jem’s going to. He’s awfully kind to me now you’re
gone. Talking of the Adela if you are very long away (and some voyages last two or three years), I think I shall finish the garden, and the croft and the orchard, or at any rate one journey round them; and I think for another of your voyages I will do the log of the Adela on the canal, for with water-plants, and shells, and larvæ, and beasts that live in the banks, it would be splendid. Do you know, one might give a whole book up easily to a list of nothing but willows and osiers, and the different kinds of birds and insects that live in them. But the number of kinds there are of some things is quite wonderful. What do you think of more than a hundred species of iris, and I’ve only got five in the garden, but one of them is white. I don’t suppose you’ll have much time to collect things, but I keep hoping that some day, if I live, you’ll command a ship of your own, and take me with you, as they do take scientific men some voyages. I hope I shall live. I don’t think I get any worse. Cripples do sometimes live a long time. I asked Dr. Brown if he believed any cripple had ever lived to be a hundred, and he said he didn’t know of one, nor yet ninety, nor eighty, for I asked him. But he’s sure cripples have lived to be seventy. If I do, I’ve got fifty-four years yet. That sounds pretty well, but it soon goes, if one has a lot to do. Mr. Wood doesn’t think it likely you could command
a vessel for twenty years at least. That only leaves thirty-four for scientific research, and all the arranging at home besides. I’ve given up one of my books to plotting this out in the rough, and I see that there’s plenty of English work for twenty years, even if I could count on all my time, which (that’s the worst of having a bad back and head!) I can’t. There’s one thing I should like to find out, if ever you think of going to Japan, and that’s how they dwarf big plants like white lilacs, and get them to flower in tiny pots. Isaac says he thinks it must be continual shifting that does it—shifting and forcing. But I fancy they must have some dodge of taking very small cuttings from particular growths of the wood. I mean to try some experiments. I am marking your journeys on a map, and where anything happens to you I put A, for adventure, in red ink. I have put A where you picked up Dennis O’Moore. He must be very nice. Tell him I hope I shall see him some day, and your Scotch friend too; I hope they won’t make you quite forget your poor friend Charlie.