Bob Strong's Holidays.

by John Conroy Hutcheson.

CHAPTER ONE.

DOWN THE LINE.

"Bob!"

The noise of the train, however, drowned Nellie's voice; besides which Master Bob was further prevented from hearing this appeal to him by reason of his head and shoulders being at that precise instant projected out of the window of the railway-carriage, in utter defiance of the Company's bye-laws to the contrary and of his sister's solicitous entreaties to the same effect--poor Nellie, fearing, in her feminine anxiety, that the door would fly open unexpectedly, from the pressure of Bob's person, and precipitate her brother as suddenly out on the line.

"Bob!" she therefore repeated on finding her first summons disregarded, speaking in a louder key and giving a tug to his jacket the better to attract his attention--"I say, Bob!"

"Hullo! What's the row?" shouted back the delinquent, hearing her at last, and wriggling himself in from the window like a snail withdrawing itself into its sh.e.l.l, turning round the while his face, slightly flushed with the exertion, to hers--"Anything wrong, eh?"

Little Miss Nellie had not expected her timid and tentative conversational advances to be taken up in this downright fashion.

Really she was only anxious for some one to sympathise with her and talk about the various objects of interest which came across her notice as they went along; so, Bob's abrupt address, coupled with his gruff tone of voice, fell on her enthusiasm like a wet blanket!

"Nothing's the matter," she replied timidly. "I only wanted to say how nice it is travelling like this."

"You don't mean to say you only called me in to tell me that?" said Bob, almost angrily. "I do think girls are the greatest geese in the world!"

With this dogmatic a.s.sertion, Master Bob shoved himself head and shoulders out of the window again, utterly ignoring poor Nellie's existence, much to her chagrin and dismay.

He was very rude, it must be confessed; but, some allowance should be made for him, all things considered.

In the first place, he was a boy just fresh from the rougher a.s.sociations of school life; and, secondly, his inquiring mind was intently occupied in endeavouring to solve a series of mathematical problems that set all Euclid's laws at defiance, as the train whizzed on its way with a 'piff-paff! pant-pant!' of the great Juggernaut engine, the carriages rattling and jolting as they were dragged along at the tail of the mighty steam demon, swaying to and fro with a rhythmical movement of the wheels, in measured cadence of spondees and dactyls, as if singing to themselves the song of "the Iron Road."

Strange to say, this was a song of which, Bob noticed, the involuntary musicians never completed the second bar.

They re-commenced all over again from the beginning, when they reached some particularly crucial point, where the 'click' or the 'clack' of the ever-echoing 'click-clacking' chorus proved too much for their overworked axles!

Bob, though, was not thinking of this music of the rail, or paying any attention to it, albeit it was distinct and plain to him; as, indeed, it is to all with ears attuned in harmony with this mystery of motion, and who choose to listen to it, just as there are 'sermons in stones,' for those who care to read them!

No, all his energies were bent on finding out how it was that the straight hedgerows and square fields became round, while curving outlines grow straight in a moment, as if ruled with a measure, at the instant of their speeding by them; and, it occurred to him, or probably would have done so if he had given himself time for reflection, that the question of squaring the circle, which has perplexed the philosophers of all ages, was not so very difficult of solution after all--looking at the matter out of the window of a railway-carriage, that is!

Yes, so it really appeared; for, everything seemed 'at sixes and sevens,' the landscape having its middle distances and foreground irretrievably mixed up and its perspective gone mad, the country through which they pa.s.sed resembling in this respect the land of topsy-turvey- dom!

Bob's surprise, and wonder and delight, at all he saw became presently too great for him to remain silent any longer or to keep his thoughts to himself; so, affably forgetting his previous 'snub' to his sister when _she_ had wished to express her feelings, he jerked in his head as suddenly as he had popped it out the moment before.

"I say, Nell, isn't it jolly?" he exclaimed in eager accents. "Just look out with me and see how funny everything seems!"

"Why, that was what I wanted to speak of a little while ago, only you wouldn't listen to me," replied Nellie, more good-humouredly than Bob would have answered under the circ.u.mstances. "It is nice, though, I must say!"

"'Nice' indeed!" replied he indignantly. "It is just like a girl to say that. I call it 'jolly,' nothing more nor less. There's no other word to express what a fellow feels; and I do wonder, Nell, at your putting it so tamely!"

The girl laughed out merrily at this; and her smiling face, wreathed in dimples, expressed as much animation as her brother could have wished.

"Do forgive me, Bob," she cried. "You are quite right. It is 'jolly,'

the fields flying by, the trees all jumping up when you least expect them, the hills coming close, and--everything! I have noticed them all; for, I've been looking out, too, Master Observer, and have eyes like you, old chappie!"

"Ah, but you haven't seen all that I have," said Bob, mollified by Nellie's sympathetic accord. "Look at those little woolly lambs, there, frisking about, with their sedate old mothers standing by, watching the train with wondering eyes--"

"Yes, I see, I see," said she, interrupting him. "What great big eyes they have, to be sure! I declare, too, I can hear them 'baa' above all the noise of the railway!"

Just at that moment, the engine gave a shriek of its steam-whistle, which startled the sheep and lambkins, sending them scuttling over to the other end of the field, in company with a number of skittish heifers and young colts, which kicked up their heels in such a funny way that Bob and Nellie both burst out laughing together in concert, in one burst as it were.

"Hullo, Nellie, look!" presently exclaimed Bob, who was the first to recover himself. "All the horses have not run away. There is one old fellow there, close to the line, who hasn't budged an inch."

"Perhaps he's the veteran of the field?" said Miss Nellie, rather poetically. "He's an old war-horse, maybe, who has heard too many clanging trumpet-calls and guns fired to be upset by the mere noise of an engine, which is only a bugbear to the ignorant."

"Bosh!" cried Bob, who did not believe much in sentiment, 'flummery' he termed it. "Much more likely he's an old cart-horse, and is as well accustomed to the row of the railroad as he is to the plough, and that's the reason he took no notice of us as we dashed by. See, he's only a little dot in the distance now."

They were running along at such a rate that every object which in turn presented itself, first ahead of the train, then alongside and then behind, became speedily but 'a dot in the distance,' to use Bob's words over again; the snugly secluded seats of the county gentry, the scattered villages and spa.r.s.e red-roofed farmhouses, with their outposts of hayricks and herds of cattle and other stock, that one moment appeared and the next disappeared from view behind ma.s.ses of foliage, all dancing a wild Sir Roger de Coverley sort of country dance, 'down the valleys and over the hills,' until poor Nellie's eyes became quite dazed in watching them.

"Come over to the other window, Bob," she cried at length, turning round and getting up from her seat, suiting the action to the words, or at least trying to do so. "Let us cross over, Bob."

But, here a difficulty arose.

An old gentleman, who was the only other occupant of the carriage besides themselves, had dropped asleep over the newspaper which he had been reading, letting this slide down on his knees while he stretched out his legs right across the compartment, thus preventing Nellie from carrying out her intention.

"I can't get by," she whispered to Bob, who had also turned round from his window, and now giggled, grasping the situation. "I can't get by!"

"What, what?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old gentleman, suddenly waking up and clutching hold of his paper, as if afraid that some one was going to take it from him. "What, what did you say?"

Strangely enough, although Bob and his sister had been talking quite loudly before, nothing that they had said had roused their fellow- pa.s.senger until now, when, probably, Nellie's hushed voice led to this very undesirable result--just in the same way as a miller is said to sleep soundly amid all the clatter of the grinding wheels of his mill, his repose being only disturbed when the motion of the machinery stops.

Poor Nellie hardly knew what to say now on the old gentleman, all at once, sitting bolt upright and addressing her so unexpectedly.

"I was only speaking to my brother," she managed to stammer out, after a little hesitating pause; "I am sorry to have awakened you, sir."

"Awakened me, eh?" snorted the old gentleman in a snappish tone. "Pooh, pooh, nonsense, girl! I wasn't a bit asleep. Heard every word you said. What was it you said, eh--what, what?"

Bob and Nellie exchanged a smile at this; for, the old gentleman had not merely nodded previously to their having determined to change windows, but his gold-rimmed spectacles had almost tumbled from his nose, the latter organ also having given audible vent to certain stentorian sounds uncommonly like snoring!

The old gentleman, however, did not appear conscious of all this evidence against his fancied wakefulness; and he blinked out so queerly from a pair of little black beady eyes, half-hidden under a fringe of bushy white eyebrows, which made them look all the blacker from contrast, as he glared over his spectacles at the brother and sister, that Bob's giggle expanded into a fit of irrepressible merriment, although he endeavoured vainly to conceal his want of manners by burying his face in his pocket-handkerchief.

Bob some time afterwards told Nellie in confidence that, just then, the old gentleman so comically resembled 'Blinkie,' a dissipated old tame jackdaw they had at home, in the way he c.o.c.ked his head on one side, with his ruffled hair and all, that he couldn't have helped laughing, if he had died for it!

"Well?" said the old gentleman inquiringly, after a bit, tired apparently of waiting for an answer to his original question as to what Nellie had said as he woke up, gazing still fixedly at her, his beady black eyes twinkling and his bushy eyebrows bristling up like the whiskers of a cat when it is angry. "What did he say, eh?"

"He--he was only speaking to me, sir," stammered poor Nellie, now trembling with fright. "He was only speaking to me, that's all."

"What, what?" jerked out her unappeased questioner. "Who is 'he'?"

"My brother--Bob, sir," said she, still trembling and nervous; "my brother here, sir."

"Bob what?"