during which the project was discussed, and one morning during breakfast the baronet broke out with, “I don’t want to get rid of you boys, but I lie awake of a night now, thinking of you going on such an expedition with the doctor, then growl and grumble at myself with envy.”

“Then you really mean us to go, father?”

“Mean it, yes. But it comes hard that you two should have father and uncle who is ready to lay down the money—the bank notes to pay for it all, and here am I going to be left at home longing for letters that can only possibly come at very long intervals.”

“Oh, father, but we shall write regularly,” cried Mark.

“Of course!” said Sir James sarcastically. “Sit down at the end of a day’s tramp, when you are tired out, at a comfortable library table, with a light of a shaded lamp, and write me a good long letter? Rubbish, sir! You will neither of you be in the humour for writing right away there in some forest.”

“Oh, of course, uncle,” cried Dean, “we shan’t have a chance to sit down at a table to write, but we shall take each of us a writing case.”

“Humph! Will you? I doubt it, boy; and even if you did you wouldn’t be able to get at it when you were in the humour to write; and then if you did scrawl something with a pencil on a scrap of paper, where would you post your letter? In some hollow tree, or tuck it in a bladder and send it floating down a river with a direction scratched on a tin label? Bah! The doctor will take you right away into some wilds, and I shall get no letter for months, and months, and months.”

“Oh, father,” said Mark sadly, “I never thought of that! It would be hard, dad; and it seems selfish. It’s all over. I shan’t go.”

“Oh!” said Sir James, trying to frown very severely, and forcing a very peculiar husky cough. “Dear, dear, how tiresome!” he cried. “Haven’t got a lozenge in your pocket, have you, Dean?”

“No, uncle. Shall I get you a glass of water?”

“No, sir,” almost shouted his uncle. “You know I hate cold water. Dear, dear! Barking like this, just as if something has gone the wrong way!” And the baronet pulled out a big silk handkerchief and began blowing his nose violently. “Ah, that’s better now. Can’t be cold coming on. Ah, much better now.”

Then next moment he had clapped his hand smartly down on Mark’s shoulder, and the doctor noticed that he kept it there, while there was an artificial ring in his voice as he continued, “Oh, you won’t go, sir, won’t you?”

“No, father,” cried the boy firmly, and he gave his prisoned shoulder a hitch as if to free himself from the pressure, which immediately grew tighter.

“Oh, that’s it, is it, sir? Now that I have made up my mind to it and am going to start you all off with a first class equipment, you tell me you are going to play the disobedient young dog, and plump out in a most insolent way—you heard him doctor?—that you won’t go!”

“Oh, I must say on his behalf, Sir James,” cried the doctor, “that he did not strike me as being insolent.”

“Then you could not have been listening, sir, attentively,” retorted Sir James. “I look upon it as disobedient and undutiful and—and cowardly.”

“Oh, father! cowardly!” cried Mark, making another unsuccessful attempt to set his shoulder free. “How could it be cowardly?”

“Why, sir, if there’s any selfishness in it you want to shuffle it off your shoulders on to mine.”

“Oh, no, father; don’t say that.”

“But I have said it, sir,” cried Sir James.

“But he doesn’t mean it, Mark,” cried Dean.

“What, sir! What! What! What’s that, sir? How dare you!” thundered Sir James. “Are you going to be insolent and disobedient too?”

“Excuse me, Sir James,” said the doctor. “Let me say a few words.”

“No, sir,” cried Sir James fiercely, “not one word! This is my affair. I never interfere with you over your teaching of my boys.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir James.”

“No, don’t,” cried the baronet. “I beg yours. I am very much put out, doctor—very angry—very angry indeed. I always am when I am opposed in anything which I consider to be right. I oughtn’t to have spoken to you as I did, so pray leave this to me or I may forget myself and say words to you, my good old friend, for which I shall be sorry afterwards.”

The doctor bowed his head.

“I say, uncle,” cried Dean.

“Well, sir, and pray what do you say?” snapped out Sir James.

“I was only going to say don’t be cross with us, uncle.”

“I am not cross, sir—cross, indeed!—only angry and hurt at this opposition. Well, sir, what were you going to say?”

“Only, nunkey—”

“Nunkey, sir! Bah!” That bah! was a regular bark. “You know how I hate that silly, childish word.”

“That you don’t,” thought the boy. “You know you always like it when you are not out of temper.”

“Well, there, sir; go on.”

“I was going to say, uncle, that I know how it can all be managed.”

“Yes, sir, of course! Like all stupid people you want to put your spoke in the wheel and stir everything up and make the mess worse than it was before.—I say, doctor,”—and there was a peculiar twinkle in Sir James’s eye—“that’s what you would call a mixed metaphor, isn’t it?”

“Well, Sir James,” said the doctor, smiling, “it does sound something like it.”

“Sound!” said Sir James, who was cooling fast. “It would look very much like it in print. Now, Dean, fire away. How were you going to put it right?”

“You come too, uncle.”

“Come too!” cried the boy’s uncle, growing fierce again. “How can I come too, sir? Why, sir, I should want a Sam Weller, like poor old Pickwick at Dingley Dell, when he could not go to the partridge shooting. Do you think I want to go in a wheelbarrow with someone to push me, in a country where there are no roads? Bah! Pish! Tush! Rrrrr–r–r–rubbish! Here, doctor, did you ever hear such a piece of lunacy in your life?”

“Well, I don’t know, Sir James. Lunacy?”

“Yes, sir; lunacy. Now, look here, doctor, don’t you begin apologising for these boys and taking their part, because if you do, sir, we are no longer friends.”

“Well, Sir James, it has always been an understood thing between us that I was to be quite independent and have liberty to express my opinion in matters connected with you and your boys.”

“There, I knew it! You are going over to their side!” raged out Sir James. “And I know how it will be: I shall be so upset that I shall have a fearful fit of the gout after this, and be obliged to have in that doctor with his wretched mixtures for the next fortnight. Well, sir, I must listen to you, I suppose.”

“Yes, Sir James, I think you had better,” said the doctor, smiling; and he glanced at Mark.

“Well, go on, then,” cried Sir James.

“Oh, I say, father, don’t,” cried Mark sharply.

“Don’t what, sir?” pretty well roared his father.

“I don’t mind a nip or two, but you did give it to me then. It was like a vice.”

“Pooh, boy, pooh! You are not a baby, are you?”

“No, father, but—” began Mark, wriggling his shoulder.

“Hold your tongue, sir, and don’t interrupt the doctor. Now, doctor, what were you going to say?”

“I was going to say, Sir James, that I fully believe that a fit of the gout must be very painful—”

“Oh, you think so, do you?”

“Yes, Sir James, and I think also that you are not troubled with many. Of course we are not going to imitate Mr Pickwick, and a wheelbarrow is quite out of the question.”

“Now, look here, sir,” cried Sir James angrily—but somehow there was a want of reality in his tones—“don’t you begin to suggest impossibilities. I think I