“No, we rode it. We came down in pretty good time. There’s something the matter with the brake, so we had to let her go.”
Possibly Railsford had a better notion of the narrow escape of the two hare-brained young guests of the club than they had themselves. They forgot all about it the moment they saw a hamper being carried in the direction of the river and heard Mr Roe announce that they might as well have lunch now, and explore the abbey afterwards.
“Hear, hear,” whispered Dig to his friend. “Eh?”
“Rather,” said Arthur.
And they were invaluable in spreading the repast and hastening the moment when Mr Roe at last announced that they were all ready to begin.
It was rather an imposing company. The doctor was there, and his niece, and Messrs Roe, Grover, Railsford, and one or two other masters. Smedley also was present, very attentive to Miss Violet; and Clipstone was there, as well as our friends Ainger, Barnworth, and Stafford. And all the learned luminaries of the Fifth were there, too, and one or two scientists from the Fourth. Arthur and Dig had rarely been in such good company, and had certainly never before realised how naturalists can eat. It was a splendid spread, and the two chums, snugly entrenched behind a rampart of hampers, drowned their sorrows and laid their dust in lemonade, and recruited their minds and bodies with oysters and cold beef, and rolls and jam tarts, till the profession of a naturalist seemed to them to be one of the most glorious in all this glorious world.
“Now,” said Mr Roe, who was president of the club and host, “let us go and see the abbey. I have put together a few notes on its history and architecture, which I thought might be useful. Let us go first to the Saxon crypt, which is unquestionably the oldest portion of the structure.”
“Oh, lag all that,” said Dig to his friend. “Are you going to hear all that rot?”
“Not if I know it,” replied Arthur. “We’d better lie low, and help wash up the plates, and when they’re gone we can go for a spin up the big window.”
So, when Mr Roe, having collected his little audience round him, began to descant with glowing countenance on the preciousness of some fragments of a reputed Druidical font lately dug up in the crypt, two naturalists, who should have been hanging on his lips, were busy polishing up the plates and the remnants of the repast, at the water’s edge, and watching their chance for a “spin” up the ruined arch of the great window. That window in its day must have been one of the finest abbey windows in England. It still stood erect, covered with ivy, while all around it walls, towers, and roof had crumbled into dust. Some of the slender stone framework still dropped gracefully from the Gothic arch, and at the apex of all there still adhered a foot or two of the sturdy masonry of the old belfry.