moment I might have been knocking all the skin off my knuckles
against Distin's face, if I hadn't backed out--like a coward," he added,
after a pause.

"Oh, never mind," said the others.

"But I do mind," cried the lad. "I want to be friends with everyone. I
hate fighting and quarrelling, and yet I'm always getting into
hot-water."

"Better go and get your hands in now--with soap," said Macey, staring at
the soil-marks.

"Pooh! a rinse in the water-cress stream would take that off. Never
mind Distin: come home, you two."

"No, not this morning," said Gilmore.

"I won't ask you to taste the mushrooms: honour bright."

"Wouldn't come if you did," said Macey, with a merry laugh on his
handsome face. "Old Distie would never forgive us if we came home with
you now."

"No," said Gilmore; "he'd keep us awake half the night preaching at you.
Oh! here's old Syme."

"Ah, gentlemen, good-morning," said a plump, florid clergyman with
glittering glasses. "That's right, walk before breakfast. Good for
stamina. Must be breakfast time though. What have you got there, Lee?"

"Fungi, sir."

"Hum! ha!" said the rector bending over the basket. "Which? Fungi,
soft as you pronounce it, or Fungi--Funghi, hard, eh?"

"Uncle says soft, sir," said Vane.

"Hum--ha--yes," said the rector, poking at one of the vegetable growths
with the forefinger of his gloved hand. "He ought to know. But,
_vulgo_, toadstools. You're not going to eat those, are you?"

"Yes, sir. Will you try a few?"

"Eh? Try a few, Lee? Thanks, no. Too much respect for my gastric
region. And look here; hadn't you better try experiments on Jamby's
donkey? It's very old."

"Wouldn't be any good, sir. Nothing would hurt him," said Vane,
laughing.

"Hum! ha! Suppose not. Well, don't poison one of my pupils--yourself.
Breakfast, gentlemen, breakfast. The matutinal coffee and one of
Brader's rolls, not like the London French, but passably good; and there
is some cold stuffed chine."

"Cold stuffed chine!" said Vane, as he walked in the other direction.
"Why, these will be twice as good--if Martha will cook 'em. Nasty
prejudiced old thing!"

Ten minutes later he reached a gate where the remains of a fine old
avenue leading up to a low mossy-looking stone house, built many
generations back; and as he neared it, a pleasant odour, suggestive of
breakfast, saluted his nostrils, and he went round and entered the
kitchen, to be encountered d