"I'll send you up something to eat, as I suggested at first."
"I have no string, or rope, or anything I can let down."
This was scarcely accurate, but Reginald Hampton saw too many capabilities in the situation, to let it go readily. Finally, he overcame the girl's scruples, and she departed in quest of a ladder.
As his daughter disappeared at the rear of the house, Colonel Currie came round the front. He was smoking a cheroot, the slowly curling smoke from which, as also his whole gait and mien, was suggestive of peaceful proprietorship. He paused to examine his bed of spring wallflowers, stooped to uproot an impertinent dandelion which had taken root in his otherwise irreproachable turf, gathered a fine auricula and placed it in his button-hole. Then he took a contented survey of his fruit trees, until his eyes finally rested upon the white-robed bower of the balloon. A change came o'er the spirit of the Colonel's pastoral dream. His ruddy gills assumed a purplish hue, his grizzled hair stood up in fighting attitude. He advanced to the foot of the tree and peered upwards. His inability to see the occupant of the balloon called to battle the last drop of the plentiful supply of choler wherewith Indian heats had endowed him.
"What the mischief are you doing in my pear tree?" thundered the Colonel.
His voice was suggestive of heavy artillery at short range; but masculine anger was not one of the things that ruffled the balloonist's equanimity.
"I'm sitting tight until your gardener is kind enough to bring me a ladder," he responded, imperturbably.
"Eh? What? Well, upon my soul, sir! Do you know that this is my very finest pear-tree—jargonelles, sir, I tell you, jargonelles? You and your impudent machine have ruined the crop. It's just the spirit of this confounded age—anarchy, disruption, red riot—no man's house safe—his garden a refuge for any air-climbing rascal who cares to take up his quarters in it."
The Colonel, from this point onwards, seemed to imagine that he was talking at a coolie; coolie intercourse cultivates the faculty of expression wonderfully, and Reginald Hampton's host entertained that amused aeronaut for fully ten minutes with a wealth of epithet—very old in bottle, and of a fine tawny flavour. Hampton took advantage of the panting calm that followed the outburst to put in a plea for himself.
