"What happens if you eat his favourite experiment?" asked Jerry, squelching his way diligently through a bunch of long, slender grapes of a translucent pale-green colour.
"He says, 'Donnerwetter! What see I?'" Hugh answered; "but he ties a red worsted round his first-class experiments and then we know. He has tied all my new grapes up except the bunch he took home."
Now that the children were in the vineyard, and heard Hugh talking learnedly of Black Portugals, Verdeilho, Shirez, and other strange-sounding names, they were more reverential towards his new grape, which might be called Hughenne, or even, he generously suggested, either Gordello or Campdonne.
"It has to have a winey sound, you see," he said, "or it wouldn't sell.
I think 'Gordello' sounds rather well myself."
It did not take very long to satisfy their appetite for grapes. The sun got hotter, their eyes ached with the glare, and they decided to return to the coolness of the woods and gardens lower down. The boys wanted to go exploring; the girls were to be left to collect peaches and melons for the new drink—which might bear the honoured name of Gordello until the famous champagne was put on the market—which would then be ready and cooling in the spring of the Fairy Dell by the time that the explorers were weary of exploring. Thus planned the boys.
"Boys propose, girls dispose," paraphrased Mollie, as the three pith helmets disappeared, after their owners had condescended to gather a share of the Gordello-destined grapes and carry them part of the way towards the Dell. "If Dick and Jerry want drinks they can jolly well come and make them. I am going to have a rest."
Prue looked a little shocked, but Grizzel heartily agreed with Mollie. "I shall pull six peaches and one water-melon exactly," she said. "I am tired and my legs ache, and I can't be bothered with Hugh and his old Gordello."
A short walk down the road between the gum trees brought them to the fruit gardens, where Mollie saw peaches that made up by their magnificence for any hothouse elegance lacking in the grapes. Large as apples, soft and downy as velvet, glowing with crimson and gold, they were a perfect revelation of what peaches could be when they tried, and Mollie could hardly bear to wait till they reached the Fairy Dell before devouring one. But Prudence was firm.
"No, Mollie; not after all those grapes while you are hot and tired. Come and get your water-melon, and we'll go straight to the Dell and rest and eat peaches there. If you ate them now you might die all of a sudden, and that would be so awkward for Grizzel and me."
Mollie thought it would be more awkward for her, but did not argue. She followed Prue obediently, finding her basket of grapes, plus six peaches and a large water-melon, quite enough to absorb all her energies. If only Gordello were an accomplished fact, she thought, it would be very delightful. If someone else had made it and she could find it "cooling in the spring", as the boys expected to do, it would be extraordinarily delicious, and the more she thought of it the more delicious it became in her fancy. Poor boys! She was sorry for the disappointment awaiting them. Australians seemed to be a strenuous lot of people; no wonder the Australian soldiers were so brown and chinny.