Bob Strong's Holidays Part 17

Captain, as the retriever darted ahead in a great hurry. "That your dog, sir?"

"No," replied the old sailor, "not exactly--why?"

"Because, if he is, he'll have to have a ticket the same as the rest,"

said the man. "Dogs is half-price, like children."

"Oh, I didn't know," cried the Captain apologetically, as he put his hand in his pocket and paid Rover's fare, adding in a low voice to Mrs Gilmour, while they were ascending the steps from the landing-stage to the pier above, "I do believe that rascal thought I meant to cheat him and smuggle the dog through without paying, the fellow looked at me so suspiciously."

"Perhaps he did," replied she laughing. "You know you are a very suspicious-looking gentleman."

"Humph!" he chuckled. "I think Rover intended to do him, though. He squeezed himself past my legs very artfully!"

"He did, the naughty dog," said Nellie, who, with Bob, had been much amused by the little incident. "He's always doing it in London at the railway-stations whenever we go by the underground line; and papa says he wants to cheat the company. He comes after us sometimes, and jumps into the railway-carriage where we are, when we think him miles away and safe at home! Did you ever hear of such a thing, aunt Polly?"

"No, dearie," she answered as they all stepped out briskly along the rather shaky suspension bridge connecting the pier with the sh.o.r.e, which oscillated under their feet in a way that made Mrs Gilmour anxious to get off it as quickly as she could to firm ground. "Rover is a clever fellow, sure!"

"He's a very artful dog!" observed the Captain, whereat Rover wagged his tail, as if he understood what he said and appreciated the compliment--"a very artful dog!"

Arrived on sh.o.r.e, presently, the children were in ecstasies at all they saw; for, by only crossing the roadway opposite the land end of the shaky bridge, they at once found themselves within the outlying shrubbery and brushwood of Priory Park, which the kindly proprietor freely threw open for years to the public, without post or paling interfering with their enjoyment, until the vandalism and vulgarity of some c.o.c.kney excursionists, who wrought untold destruction to the property, led to the rescinding of this privilege!

Although touching the sea, the waters of which lapped its turf at high tide, when once within the park, it seemed to Bob and Nellie as if they were miles away already in the heart of the country; so that, accustomed as they had been only to town life, it may be imagined how great the change was to them in every way.

As for runaway d.i.c.k from Guildford, who had been familiarised to rustic scenes from his earliest infancy, he could see no beauty in the various objects that each instant delighted the little Londoners' eyes and ears; for, like the hero of Wordsworth's verse, "the primrose by the river's brim" was but a primrose and nothing more to him!

To Bob and Nellie, however, the scene around, with its salient features, disclosed a new world.

There were great, nodding, ox-eyed daisies that popped up pertly on either side, staring at them from amidst wastes of wild hyacinths and forget-me-nots that were bluer than Nellie's witching eyes.

Pink and white convolvulus hung in festoons across the bracken-bordered little winding pathways that led here and there through mazes of shrubbery and undergrowth, under the arched wilderness of greenery above.

Rippling rivulets trickling down from nowhere and wandering whither their erratic wills directed, their soft, murmuring voices chiming in with the gayer carols of the birds.

Amongst these could be distinguished the harmonious notes of some not altogether unknown to them, the trill of the lark on high, the whistle of the blackbird in the hidden covert, the "pretty d.i.c.k" of the thrush, and the "c.h.i.n.k, c.h.i.n.k!" of the robin and coo of the dove, mingled with the sweet but subdued song of the yellow-hammer and sharp staccato accompaniment of the untiring chaffinch; while, all the time, a colony of asthmatic old rooks in the taller trees of the park cawed their part in the concert in a deep ba.s.s key at regular intervals, "Caw, caw, caw!"

Bob and Nellie were so delighted and unsparing of their admiration of everything they saw and heard, that d.i.c.k fell to wondering at the pleasure they took in things which he held of little account.

If unappreciative, however, d.i.c.k was of some service in telling Nellie the names of the princ.i.p.al wild-flowers; while he rose high in Bob's estimation by his lore in the matter of birds' nests, of which the ex- runaway from the country, naturally, could speak as an expert.

Touching the feathered tribe generally, he was able to tell them off at a glance, with the habits and characteristics of each, as readily as Bob could repeat the Multiplication Table--more so, indeed, if the strict truth be insisted on, without stretching a point!

"That be a throosh," he would say; and, "t'other, over there's, a chaffy. He ain't up to much now; but wait till he be moulted and he'll coom out foine! I've heard tell folks in furrin' parts vallies 'em greatly, though we in Guildford think nowt of they. I'd rayther a lark mysen, Master Bob."

"Ah!" exclaimed Nellie, who had previously been shocked by d.i.c.k's lack of sentiment, much pleased now at this expression of a better taste--"you do like their singing then!"

"Lawks no, miss," replied the unprincipled boy. "Larks is foine roasted!"

Nellie was horrified.

"You don't mean to say, d.i.c.k," she cried, "that--that you actually eat them?"

"Aye, miss," he replied, without an atom of shame, "we doos. They be rare tasty birds!"

She gave him up after this, going along by herself in silence.

"This is jolly!" exclaimed Bob presently, when, after getting a little way within the park and ascending the rise leading up from the sh.o.r.e to an open plateau above, he saw a sort of fairy dell below, at the foot of a gra.s.sy slope, the green surface of which was speckled over with daisies and b.u.t.tercups. "Come along, Nell!"

Down the tempting incline he at once raced, with Nellie and Rover at his heels; and, diving beneath a jungle of blackberry-bushes at the bottom, matted together with ropes of ivy that had fallen from a withered oak, whose dry and sapless gnarled old trunk still stood proudly erect in the midst of the ma.s.s of luxuriant vegetation with which it was surrounded, Nellie heard him after a bit call out from the leafy enclosure in which he had quickly found himself--"Oh, I say, I see such a pretty fern!"

There was silence then for a moment or so, as if Bob was trying to secure the object that had taken his fancy, the quietude being broken by his giving vent to a prolonged "O-o-oh!"

"What's the matter?" cried Nellie, who had stopped without the briary tangle into which her brother had plunged, noticing that his accents of delight suddenly changed to those of pain. "Are you hurt?"

"I've scratched my face," he said ruefully, emerging from the blackberry-brake with streaks of blood across his forehead and his nose looking as if it had been in the wars. "Some beastly thorns did it."

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nellie, in sympathy and surprise; "I'm so sorry!"

"It is 'oh,' and it hurts too!" retorted he, dabbing his face tenderly with his pocket-handkerchief. "However, I shall get that fern I was after, though, in spite of all the p.r.i.c.kles and thorns in the world!"

So saying, in he dashed again, stooping under the th.o.r.n.y network, and came out ere long with a beautiful specimen of the shuttlec.o.c.k fern, which elicited as expressive an "Oh" from Nellie as the sight of his scratched face had just previously done--an "Oh" of admiration and delight. But, as with Bob, her joyful exclamation was quickly followed by an expression of woe.

As she stepped forward to inspect the fern more closely, she put her foot on a rotten branch of the oak-tree, which had become broken off from its parent stem and lay stretched across the dell, forming a sort of frail bridge over the p.r.i.c.kly chasm below up to the higher ground on which she stood.

Alas! the decayed wood gave way under her weight, slight as that was, and Nellie, uttering a wild shriek of terror, disappeared from Bob's astonished gaze.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

IN A SAD PLIGHT!

The Captain, who had remained on the plateau above, in company with Mrs Gilmour and d.i.c.k--the latter still in charge of the precious hamper-- p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at the sound of poor Nellie's scream and Bob's expressive cry of alarm.

"Hullo!" he sang out in his sailor fashion-- "I wonder what's the row now? By Jove, I thought it wouldn't be long before those two young persons got into mischief when we left them alone together."

"I hope to goodness they haven't come to any harm," said Mrs Gilmour dolefully. "Sure and will you go and say what's happened?"

"Sure an' I'm just a-going, ma'am," replied the Captain, keeping up his good-humoured mimicry of her accent so as to rea.s.sure her; adding, as he scrambled down the slope cautiously with the aid of his trusty malacca cane-- "You needn't be alarmed, ma'am, 'at all at all,' for I don't believe anything very serious has occurred, as children's calls for a.s.sistance generally mean nothing in the end. They are like, as your countryman said when he shaved his pig, 'all cry and little wool!'"

He chuckled to himself as he went on down the declivity, turning round first, however, to see whether Mrs Gilmour appreciated the allusion to "poor Pat"; while d.i.c.k, leaving the hamper behind, followed, in case his a.s.sistance might also be needed in the emergency.

Arrived at the bottom of the dell the old sailor found it impossible at first to tell what had happened; for, Bob was trying to force his way through the brushwood brake, and Rover barking madly. Nellie was nowhere to be seen, although her voice could be heard proceeding from somewhere near at hand, calling for help still, but in a weaker voice.

"Where are you?" shouted the Captain. "Sing out, can't you!"

"Here," came the reply in the girl's faint treble; "I'm here!"

"Where's 'here'?" said he, puzzled. "I can't see anything of you!"

"I've tumbled into a pit," cried Nellie piteously, in m.u.f.fled tones that sounded as if coming from underground. "Do take me out, please!