‘What are you two conspiring about?’ demanded Jasper, with an invalid’s customary peevishness, from the bed. And then Sir Sykes had to resume his seat and to say a few soothing words.
‘You’ll soon be well, my boy,’ he said kindly; ‘and sooner back with us at Carbery, under your sisters’ good nursing. Dr Aulfus here will, I hope, contrive to come over and give us a call every day till you get your strength again.’
Dr Aulfus said that he should be delighted to attend his patient at Carbery Chase, and indeed he looked radiant as he said it. A physician is, after all, a man, and probably a parent, and little Dr Aulfus had a wife and was the happy donor of six hostages to fortune. He valued the privilege of professional admittance at Carbery very highly, less on account of the emoluments directly derived therefrom, than of the many small people who would augur well of his skill, since beneath a baronet’s roof he should prescribe for a baronet’s heir.
The brief conversation between Sir Sykes and his son was rendered the less marked because of Jasper’s habitual reticence, and of his father’s unwillingness to touch on any topic that might prove painful. Thus the lawyer and his bills met with no mention, and the steeplechase would also have been passed over, had not Jasper himself said: ‘I told Jack Prodgers I shouldn’t go in for cross-country work again, except with the hounds in winter. No fear, sir, of my donning the silk jacket any more, after this sharp lesson of aching bones and empty pockets. Don’t be angry, please, though, with poor old Jack. He meant all for the best, he did.’
Sir Sykes replied that he had already had the pleasure of shaking hands with Captain Prodgers, whom he had formerly met, it appeared, in London society. And soon afterwards, in compliance with an almost imperceptible motion of the doctor’s head, he withdrew; and Captain Jack was recalled to keep watch, uncomplainingly, beside his friend’s couch, while the patient dozed or talked in snatches.
‘Smoke away, old man; it rather does me good than not,’ Jasper had said, and the captain’s cigar was seldom extinguished during his vigil.
‘He’ll do!’ was the little doctor’s cheery whisper as he paid his early morning visit to his charge. And soon after noon, Jasper, pale and tottering, and with his bruised arm in a sling, was helped into one of the Carbery carriages and propped with cushions; and under the tender escort of his two sisters, Lucy and Blanche Denzil, was slowly and heedfully conveyed home to Carbery Chase.
OUR SEA AND SALMON FISHERIES.
In the department of fishing-industries the march of scientific inquiry has already borne good fruit. The influence of the weather, or more properly speaking of the variations of temperature, on the plentifulness or scarcity of our food-fishes, has grown in importance as an element in determining the success or failure of the herring-fishery, for example; and at more than one fishing-station thermometrical observations are daily made by the fishermen, and reported to the meteorological authorities, who in their turn deduce generalisations and laws from the observations thus recorded. Thus the teachings of the formerly despised ‘science’ are beginning to bear fruit, and to be openly and fully recognised; and in the future, the fisherman, as a result of the generalisations just alluded to, may be able to determine with tolerable accuracy, before setting sail for the fishing-grounds, the chances of a successful or unsuccessful day’s labour. Add to this, that, with increased knowledge of the conditions of life, development, and general history of our food-fishes, wise legislation may provide for the protection of these fishes and for the determination of the proper periods for the exercise of the fisher’s art, and it will be owned that the gains from a scientific investigation of the fishing-industries are simply incalculable.