LITMIR.BIZ

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society ought to, it would have saved me a deal of trouble, and the ram some danger. But no sooner had the train started than the obstreperous brute began to bob his head and stamp his feet at me and my companions in the most ominous way.

      Luckily the dogs were coupled; I could thus more easily command them. But no sooner had the ram begun to stamp and bob, than both dogs commenced to growl, and wanted to fly straight at him. “Let us kill that insolent ram,” said Nero, “who dares to stamp and nod at us.”

      “Yes,” cried Aileen, “happy thought! let us kill him.”

      I was ten minutes in that van before the train pulled up, ten minutes during which I had to exercise all the tact of a great general in order to keep the peace. Had the ram, who was just as eager for the fray as the dogs, succeeded in breaking his fastenings, hostilities would have commenced instantly, and I would have been powerless.

      By good luck the train stopped in time to prevent a catastrophe, and we got out, but for nearly a week, as a result of my struggle with the dogs, I ached all over and felt as limp as a stranded jelly-fish.

      Chapter Three.

      Containing the Story of One of Aileen’s Friends

      “The straw-thatched cottage, or the desert air,

      To him’s a palace if his master’s there.”

      Just eighteen months after the events mentioned in last chapter, as novelists say, things took a turn for the better, and we retired a little farther into the country into a larger house. A bigger house, though certainly not a mansion; but here are gardens and lawn and paddock, kennels for dogs, home for cats, and aviaries for birds, many a shady nook in which to hang a hammock in the summer months, and a garden wigwam, which makes a cool study even in hot weather, bedraped as it is in evergreens, and looks a cosy wee room in winter, when the fire is lighted and the curtains are drawn. “Ah! Gordon,” dear old Frank used to say – and there was probably a grain of truth in the remark – “there is something about the quiet contented life you lead in your cottage, with its pleasant surroundings, that reminds me forcibly of the idyllic existence of your favourite bard, Horace, in his home by the banks of the Anio.

      “‘Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,

          Ut prisca gens mortalium,

      Patenta rure bubus exercet suis

          Solutus omni fenore,

      Neque excitatur classico miles truci

          Neque horret iratum mare.’”

      “True, Frank,” I replied, “at sea I often thought I would dearly love a country life. My ambition – and I believe I represent quite a large majority of my class – used to be, that one day I might be able to retire on a comfortable allowance – half-pay, for instance – take a house with a morsel of land, and keep a cow and a pony, and go in for rearing poultry, fruit, and all that sort of thing. Such was my dream.

      “There were six of us in our mess in the saucy little ‘Pen-gun.’

      “It was hot out there on the East Coast of Africa, where we were stationed, and we did our best to make it hotter – for the dhows which we captured, at all events, because we burned them. Nearly all day, and every day, we were in chase, mostly of slave dhows, but sometimes of jolly three-masters.

      “Away out in the broad channel of the blue Mozambique, with never a cloud in the sky, nor a ripple on the ocean’s breast, tearing along at the rate of twelve knots an hour, with the chase two miles ahead, and happy in the thoughts of quite a haul of prize-money, it wasn’t half bad fun, I can assure you. Then we could whistle ‘A sailor’s life is the life for me,’ and feel the mariner all over.

      “But, when the chase turned out to be no prize, but only a legitimate trader, when the night closed in dark and stormy, with a roaring wind and a chopping sea, then, it must be confessed, things did not look quite so much couleur de rose, dot a mariner’s life so merry-o!

      “On nights like these, when the fiddles were shipped across the table to keep things straight – for a lively lass was the saucy ‘Pen-gun,’ and thought no more of breaking half-a-dozen wine-glasses, than she did of going stem first in under a wave she was too lazy to mount – when the fiddles were shipped, when we had wedged ourselves into all sorts of corners, so as we shouldn’t slip about and fall, when the steward had brought the coffee and the biscuits called ships’, then it was our wont to sit and sip and talk and build our castles in the air.

      “‘It’s all very fine,’ one of us would say, ‘to talk of the pleasures of a sailor’s life, it’s all very well in songs; but, if I could only get on shore now, on retired pay – ’

      “‘Why, what would you do?’ – a chorus.

      “‘Why, go in for the wine trade like a shot,’ from the first speaker. ‘That’s the way to make money. Derogatory, is it? Well, I don’t see it; I’d take to tea – ’

      “Chorus again: ‘Oh! come, I say!’

      “Some one, more seriously and thoughtfully: ‘No; but wouldn’t you like to be a farmer?’ The ship kicks, a green sea breaks over her. We are used to it, but don’t like it, even although we do take the cigars from our lips, as we complacently view the water pouring down the hatchway and rising around our chairs’ legs.

      “‘A farmer, you know, somewhere in the midland counties; green fields and lowing kine; a nice stream, meandering – no not meandering, but —

      “‘Chattering over stony ways,

      In little sharps and trebles,

      Bubbling into eddying bays.

      Babbling o’er the pebbles;

      Winding about, and in and out,

      With here a blossom sailing,

      And here and there a lusty trout,

      And here and there a grayling.’

      “‘Yes,’ from another fellow, ‘and of course a comfortable house of solid English masonry, and hounds not very far off, so as one could cut away to a hunt whenever he liked.’

      “‘And of course balls and parties, and a good dinner every day.’

      “‘And picnics often, and the seaside in season, and shooting all the year round.’

      “‘And I’d go in for bees.’

      “‘Oh! yes, I think every fellow would go in for bees.’

      “‘And have a field of Scottish heather planted on purpose for them: fancy how nice that would look in summer!’

      “‘And I’d have a rose garden.’

      “‘Certainly; nothing could be done without a rose garden.’

      “‘Then one could go in for poultry, and grow one’s own eggs.’

      “‘Hear the fellow! – fancy growing eggs!’

      “‘Well, lay them, then – it’s all the same. I’m not so green as to imagine eggs grow on trees.’

      “‘And think of the fruit one might have.’

      “‘And the mushroom beds.’

      “‘And brew one’s own beer and cider.’

      “‘And of course one could go in for dogs.’

      “‘Oh! la! yes – have them all about the place. Elegant Irish setters, dainty greyhounds, cobby wee fox-terriers, a noble Newfoundland or two, and a princely bloodhound at each side of the hall-door.’

      “‘That’s the style!’

      “‘Now, give us a song, Pelham!’

      “‘What shall it be – Dibdin?’

      “‘No, Pelham, give us, “Sweet Jessie, the Flower o’ Dumblane,” or something in that style. Let us fancy we are farmers.

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