Young Clarges looked up as he spoke, seriously: “I shall be done!”
“You? Well, so I should expect from a baby like you, Arthur! You will never grow up, never learn to think for yourself! Now let me alone on the subject, and let us look up this country place we were told about!” But Clarges was not easily silenced.
“Think of Lady Violet, Bovey! If anything were to happen to you out here, and the children, Bovey,—Rex and Florence, you know!”
“Oh! cut it, now, Arthur; I tell you it's of no use!”
Young Clarges looked out across the river, and bit the tiny yellow moustache. “Then I won't be done, either!” said he to himself. “It's borne in upon me that one of us has got to get this accursed thing, and if I can prevent it, it shan't be Bovey!” What a strange scene it was beneath, around, above and opposite them! Beneath flowed the river, solid with sawdust, the yellow accumulation of which sent up a strong resinous smell that almost made them giddy; to the left the tumultuous foam of the Chaudière cast a delicate veil of spray over the sharp outlines of the bridge traced against a yellow sky; to the right, the water stretched away in a dull gray expanse, bordered by grim pines and flat sterile country. Around them the three mighty cliffs on which the Capital is built, above them the cold gray of an autumnal sky, and opposite them the long undulations of purplish brown hills that break the monotony of the view, and beyond which stretch away to an untrodden north the wastes and forests of an uncleared continent.
“Are we looking due north, now, Arthur, do you know?”
“I suppose so,” returned Clarges. He was astride a cannon and still biting the tiny moustache. “Yes, by the direction of the sunset we must be, I suppose. I say, if we are, you know, I should like to be able to tell between what two trees—it would have to be between two of those trees there—we should have to walk to get to the North Pole.”
The Hon. Bovyne looked around suddenly and laughed. He was fishing apparently in his pockets for a paper or something of the kind, as he had a number of letters in his hand, looking them over.
“What two trees? Where? Arthur, you are a donkey. What are you talking about?”
“I say,” returned Clarges, “that it is perfectly true that as we sit here, facing due north, all we have to do is to walk straight over this river—”