Bob Strong's Holidays Part 11

Here he was soon afterwards joined by Nellie, who was equally 'spry' in her movements; and the pair amused themselves till breakfast was ready in looking out of the windows at the busy scene which the offing presented, so different to that of the previous evening, when all was quiet and calm, with Neptune gone to sleep and Boreas speaking but in a whisper!

The whilom gla.s.sy surface of the deep was now, however, a ma.s.s of short choppy waves, the sea king's 'white horses' leaping up friskily in every direction and chasing each other as they rolled in landward, throwing aloft clouds of feathery spray in their sport, as if champing it from their bits. Such was the scene far as the eye could span away to the eastward, where the sky was lit up by a stray gleam or two from the long-since risen sun, who, though trying to hide himself behind a bank of blue-black clouds, was not quite able to conceal his whereabouts.

Out at sea opposite, facing south and almost on the horizon line, a lot of vessels could be seen scudding down Channel, under short canvas but outward bound, just coming in sight beyond Saint Helen's to make sure of their landfall and then disappearing the next moment behind the Isle of Wight, which shut them out from view; while, to the left, snugly sheltered under the lee of the Ryde hills, several others had run in and anch.o.r.ed off the Motherbank, waiting for a change of wind before proceeding on their voyage up, along the coast, to the river--'the river' of the world, the Thames!

As Bob and Nellie gazed out, taking in all these varied details of the scene by degrees, they could not help being pleased, everything was so novel; but, they saw something else beyond the prospect which cast 'a damper' over their spirits, theoretically as well as practically.

This was the rain, which came in squalls, the smart showers hurtling down in pattering intensity, momentarily shutting out the sea and its surroundings from sight; while the swollen raindrops dashed against the window-panes like hail, trying, like the whirling storm-blast, to force a pa.s.sage into every nook and cranny that lay open to attack.

"Oh dear!" sighed Bob dismally, his nose pressed like a piece of putty against the gla.s.s. "It's awful rain, Nell; I don't think it will ever stop!"

"Oh dear!" sighed Nellie, in responsive echo; but, just then their aunt bustled into the room, her face the picture of good-humour, in marked contrast to theirs, and she caught the mournful exclamation--"Oh dear!"

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Mrs Gilmour, in a cheerful tone, on their turning round as she entered. "To look at you both, one would think that something dreadful had happened!"

"It's raining," said Bob, in a melancholy tone. "It's raining, auntie!"

"So I can see," retorted Mrs Gilmour. "Haven't I got eyes of my own, sure, me dear?"

"But we shan't be able to go out, auntie," cried Nellie, in the most broken-hearted way. "We shan't be able to go out!"

"You need not be so disconsolate about that, dearie," said the other smiling. "It may not rain all day; and, if so, you'll be able to get out between the breaks when it holds up. But, there's Sarah ringing the bell, so, children, let us go downstairs now to the parlour; perhaps by the time we have finished breakfast it will have cleared up and be quite fine."

These cheery words, combined possibly with a savoury odour of frizzled bacon and hot coffee that came up appetisingly from below, had the effect, for a while at least, of banishing Bob and Nellie's gloom, and without further ado they accompanied their aunt to the breakfast-room downstairs.

Here, stretched on the hearthrug before the grate, in which a bright cosy little fire was blazing and looking uncommonly cheery, although it was now summer, lay Rover.

Without rising, he lazily greeted them by flopping his heavy tail, albeit he lifted his nose in the air and sniffed, as if in antic.i.p.ation of sharing the coming meal with the welcome guests who so opportunely appeared.

"Well, I declare!" cried Mrs Gilmour, "I hope you make yourself at home, sir?"

Rover only flopped his tail the more furiously at this, his appealing brown eyes saying, as plainly as dog could speak, that he was hungry, and that if she meant to be kind he would prefer actions to words.

After breakfast, as the rain still continued, Bob got grumpy again and Nellie mopey from not being able to go out on the beach as both longed to do.

In this emergency, their aunt suggested that the unhappy children should occupy themselves in sorting and arranging in an old alb.u.m, which she gave them, some of the best bits of seaweed they had collected the previous afternoon, the good lady advising them first to soak the specimens in a bowl of fresh-water, so as to get rid of the salt and sand and other impurities, besides enabling the specimens to be laid flatter in the book for subsequent pressing.

By this means, the time pa.s.sed so pleasantly that Master Bob and Miss Nell were much surprised when Mrs Gilmour, who had meanwhile been busying herself about household matters, came to tell them, anon, that they must clear their things off the parlour-table on account of Sarah wanting to lay luncheon.

"Why, auntie," cried Bob, looking up from the basin in which he was busy washing the last lot of seaweed, "we've hardly begun yet!"

"You've been a long time beginning then, sir," replied Mrs Gilmour.

"Do you know that it is past one o'clock; so that you've been more than three hours at your task? See, too, my dears, the rain has cleared off, and it looks as if it were going to be fine for a bit."

"How nice, aunt Polly!" said Nellie, the neat-handed, carefully lifting up the alb.u.m out of Sarah's way so that she might spread the cloth. "I declare I never thought once of looking out of the window to see if it were still wet. Did you, Bob?"

"No," he answered, "I was too busy helping you, Nell."

"Ah, my dearies," interposed Mrs Gilmour, taking advantage of the opportunity to point a moral, "you see what it is not to be idle and having something to do! If you had not both been so engrossed with your task, you, Master Bob, would have been 'Oh-ing' all over the house and going to each window in turn to see if the rain had stopped, looking like a bear with a sore head; while you, Miss Nell, would probably have shed as many tears as would have floated a jolly-boat, as Captain Dresser would say in his sailor language!"

"Oh, auntie!" exclaimed Bob impetuously, "I never say 'Oh' like that, do I?"

"Sure you've answered the question yourself!" replied Mrs Gilmour, speaking in her racy brogue. "That's just what I should have had to listen to all the morning but for my thinking of that alb.u.m, which I'm glad has amused you both, my dears, so well. Ah, children, children, there's nothing like having something to do. I'll tell you something one of the poets, Cowper I think, has written about this in his homely verse:--

"'An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless as it goes as when it stands!'

"What d'you think of that, me dears, for an ill.u.s.tration of a person without occupation for mind or body--does the cap fit anybody here, eh?"

Bob was silent; but Nellie took the lesson to heart.

"Yes, auntie, I know it's true enough," she replied. "I like those lines; papa taught them to me when I was a tiny little girl. I wonder if he learnt them first from you?"

"No, dearie," said Mrs Gilmour, drawing her towards her with an affectionate caress. "Our father, your grandpapa that was, taught that little verse to us years ago, when your papa and I were of the same age as Bob and yourself; and I have never forgotten them, as you see, dearie. But, sit down now and have your luncheon. Bob, come to the table; Bob! What on earth are you staring so out of the window now for, I wonder? Bob, I say!"

This repet.i.tion of his name in a louder key made the delinquent jump; and he turned round in a hurry.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"TO-MORROW COME NEVER!"

"I really beg your pardon, Aunt Polly, for my inattention!" cried Bob, in a state of great excitement. "It's the Captain!"

"Sure, you don't mean that, my dear," said Mrs Gilmour, equally flurried, rising at once from the seat she had just taken at the head of the table. "Is it him, really?"

"Oh, yes, auntie," replied Bob, returning to his post of observation in the corner of the window. "There he is coming along the terrace, with d.i.c.k at his heels."

"Indeed, now?" said Mrs Gilmour, who had come up to Bob's side. "Let me look for meself. Sure and you're right. It's him and none other, and he's coming along at a grand pace, too!"

"Hurrah!" shouted Bob. "Isn't it jolly, auntie?"

"Very jolly," agreed Mrs Gilmour, more sedately, laughing at Bob's ecstasies, the boy, like most youngsters, being all extremes. "I call it very nice of him, Nell, don't you?"

"Delightful!" chimed in Nellie, catching hold of Rover's fore-paws and making him dance round the room with her in high glee, Rover barking to express his sympathy with her excitement. "How good he is--I mean Captain Dresser; not you, Master Doggy!"

"It is well we know what you do mean," said her aunt smiling, as Nell and Bob, with Rover dashing madly after their heels rushed into the hall to open the door. "Ah, the young flibberty-gibbets!"

In company with the Captain and d.i.c.k, as it still continued fine, all presently sallied down to the sea, where the young holiday-makers were much surprised at the size of the waves, which seemed much bigger on nearer view than they had appeared from the drawing-room windows in the morning.

Now they were so close to the waves that the spray splashed over the little party; and, it being high-water, the incoming tide, aided by the stiff south-easterly wind, which was still blowing half a gale, rolled the billows in upon the sh.o.r.e, dashing them against the sea-wall and rampart at the back of the castle with a mighty din, and breaking them into sheets of foam that flew over the moats and fortifications, reaching to the Common beyond--the spent water, driven back by the rocky embankment, sullenly retiring, a seething sea of soapsuds, as if Davy Jones were having a grand "washing-day."

Much as this sight pleased them, strange and wonderful to their unaccustomed eyes, they were not allowed long to enjoy it; for, the Captain declaring that another squall was coming, presently made them hurry back to the house, laden, however, with sea-wrack and spindrift.

It was the same on the following day and the day after, the gale lasting until the close of the third; when it completed its course and died away as suddenly as it began, winding up with a grand thunderstorm, in which the lightning flashed and the thunder pealed through the heavens in a manner whose like, the Captain affirmed, he had never seen on that coast before.

"No, never, ma'am," cried he, emphasising the a.s.sertion with a thump of his malacca cane that almost made a hole in Mrs Gilmour's best drawing- room carpet. "Not since I first joined the service at Portsmouth here, forty years ago, or more!"