A Dog with a Bad Name Part 23

"If any one went with him, it would need to be some one who, instead of encouraging him in his odd ways, would keep him in hand, and see he did not come to any harm."

"Oh," says Raby, laughing, "he wouldn't take me with him if I paid him a hundred pounds. He says girls don't know anything about science and inventions."

"He is probably right," observes Mrs Rimbolt severely.

"Certainly, as regards the science _he_ practises," says her husband.

"What was it he had in hand last week? Some invention for making people invisible by painting them with invisible paint? Ha! ha! He invited me to let him try it on me."

"He _did_ try it on me," chimes in Raby.

"It is nothing to laugh about," says the mother; "it is much better for him to be of an inquiring turn of mind than--idle," adds she, looking significantly at her niece's empty hand.

"It strikes me it is we who are of an inquiring turn of mind just now,"

said the father. "I fancy he'll turn up. He generally does.

Meanwhile, I will go and finish my writing." And he politely retires.

"Raby, my dear," says Mrs Rimbolt--Raby always knows what is coming when a sentence begins thus--"Raby, my dear, it does not sound nice to hear you making fun of your cousin. Percy is very good to you--"

"Oh yes!" interrupts Raby, almost enthusiastically.

"Which makes it all the less nice on your part to make a laughing-stock of him in the presence of his own father. It may seem unlikely that people should be rendered invisible--"

Mrs Rimbolt stops, conscious she is about to talk nonsense, and Raby gallantly covers her retreat.

"I'm sure I wish I knew half what he does about all sorts of things."

"I wish so too," replies the aunt, severely and ungratefully.

Several hours pa.s.s, and still Master Percy does not put in an appearance. As Mrs Rimbolt's uneasiness increases, half a dozen servants are sent out in various directions to seek the prodigal. It is an almost daily ceremony, and the huntsmen set about their task as a matter of course. No one can recollect an occasion on which Master Percy has ever come home at the right time without being looked for. If the appointed hour is four, every one feels well treated if his honour turns up at five. Nor, with the exception of his mother, and now and then Raby, does any one dream of becoming agitated for three or four hours later.

When therefore, just as the family is sitting down to dinner at half- past six, Walker enters radiant to announce that Master Percy has come in, no one thinks any more about his prolonged absence, and one or two of the servants outside say to one another that the young master must be hungry to come home at this virtuous hour.

This surmise is probably correct, for Percy presents himself in a decidedly dishevelled condition, his flannel costume being liberally bespattered with mud, and his hair very much in need of a brush and comb.

You cannot help liking the boy despite the odd, self-willed solemnity of his face. He is between fourteen and fifteen apparently, squarely built, with his mother's aquiline features and his father's strong forehead. The year he has spent at Rugby has redeemed him from being a lout, but it is uncertain whether it has done anything more. The master of his house has been heard to predict that the boy would either live to be hanged or to become a great man. Some of his less diplomatic school- fellows had predicted both things, and when at the end of a year he refused point blank to return to school, and solemnly a.s.sured his father that if he was sent back he should run away on the earliest opportunity, it was generally allowed that for a youth of his age he had some decided ideas of his own.

The chief fault about him, say some, is that he has too many ideas of his own, and tries to run them all together. But we are digressing, and keeping him from his dinner.

"My dear boy, where have you been?" says the mother; "we have been looking for you everywhere."

"Oh, out!" replies Percy, hastily taking stock of the bill of fare.

"Well, run and dress yourself, or dinner will be cold."

"I'm too f.a.gged," says Percy, coolly taking a seat. "Some soup, please."

"I can't have you sit down in that state, Percy," says Mr Rimbolt; "it is not polite to your mother and Raby."

"If the poor boy is tired," says Mrs Rimbolt, "we must excuse him this once."

So Mr Rimbolt, as has happened more than once before, gives in, and Percy does as he pleases.

He does full justice to his dinner, and takes no part in the conversation, which is chiefly carried on by Mr Rimbolt, sometimes with his wife, sometimes with Raby. At length, however, the first cravings of appet.i.te being subdued, he shows a readiness to put in his oar.

"How goes the invisible paint, Percy?" asks his father, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Used up," replies the boy solemnly. "I'm sure it would answer. I painted Hodge with it, and could scarcely see him at all from a distance."

"I believe you paint yourself," says Raby, laughing, "and that's why the men can't find you."

Percy is pleased at this, and takes it as a recognition of his genius.

He has great faith in his own discovery, and it is everything to him to find some one else believing in it too.

"If you like to come to the river to-morrow, I'll show you something,"

says he condescendingly. "It licks the paint into fits!"

"Raby will be busy in the village to-morrow," says her aunt. "What is it you are doing at the river?"

"Oh, ah!" solemnly responds the son, whose year at a public-school has not taught him the art of speaking respectfully to his parents; "wouldn't you like to know?"

"I wish you'd play somewhere else, dear. It makes me so uneasy when you are down by the river."

"Play!" says Percy rather scornfully; "I don't play there--I work!"

"I fear you are neglecting one sort of work for another, my boy," says Mr Rimbolt; "we never got through Virgil yet, you know--at least, you didn't. I've been through three books since you deserted our readings."

"Oh, Virgil's jolly enough," replied the boy; "I'm going to finish it as soon as my experiments are over."

"What experiments?"

"Oh, it's a dodge to--I'd show it you as soon as it's finished. It's nearly done now, and it will be a tremendous tip."

This is all that can be extracted from the youthful man of science--at least, by the elders. To Raby, when the family retires to the drawing- room, the boy is more confidential, and she once more captivates him by entering heart and soul into his project and entreating to be made a party in the experiments.

"I'd see," says he; "but mind you don't go chattering!"

Mr Rimbolt gravitates as usual to his library, and here it is that half an hour later his son presents himself, still in his working garb.

"Father," says the hopeful, "please can you give me some money?"

"Why, you have had ten shillings a week since you came home!"

"Aren't you a millionaire, father?"

"Some people say so."

"Doesn't that mean you've got a million pounds?"

"That's what 'millionaire' means."