I'll cook them for lunch myself."

"No need, aunt; Martha came down from her indignant perch."

"I'm glad of that," said the lady smiling; "but, one minute, before we
go in the dining-room: there's a beautiful _souvenir_ rosebud over the
window where I cannot reach it. Cut it and bring it in."

"At your peril, sir," said the doctor fiercely. "The last rose of
summer! I will not have it touched."

"Now, my dear Tom, don't be so absurd," cried the lady. "What is the
use of your growing roses to waste--waste--waste themselves all over the
place."

"You hear that, Vane? There's quoting poetry. Waste their sweetness on
the desert air, I suppose you mean, madam?"

"Yes: it's all the same," said the lady. "Thank you, my dear," she
continued, as Vane handed the rose in through the window.

"My poor cut-down bloom," sighed the doctor; but Vane did not hear him,
for he was setting his hat down again in the museum-like hall, close by
the fishing-tackle and curiosities of many lands just as a door was
opened and a fresh, maddening odour of fried ham saluted his nostrils.

"Oh, murder!" cried the lad; and he rushed upstairs, three steps at a
time, to begin washing his hands, thinking the while over his encounter
with his Creole fellow-pupil.

"Glad I didn't fight him," he muttered, as he dried his knuckles, and
looked at them curiously. "Better than having to ask uncle for his
sticking-plaster."

He stopped short, turning and gazing out of the bedroom window, which
looked over the back garden toward the field with their Jersey cows; and
just then a handsome game-cock flapped his bronzed wings and sent forth
his defiant call.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo! indeed," muttered Vane; "and he thinks me a regular
coward. I suppose it will have to come to a set-to some day. I feel
sure I can lick him, and perhaps, after all, he'll lick me."

"Oh, Vane, my dear boy, don't!" cried Mrs Lee, as the lad rushed down
again, his feet finding the steps so rapidly that the wonder was that he
did not go headlong, and a few seconds later, he was in his place at the
dining-room table, tastily arranged with its plate, china, and flowers.

A walk before breakfast is a wonderful thing for the appetite, and Vane
soon began with a sixteen-year-old growing appetite upon the white
bread, home-made golden butter, and the other pleasant products of the
doctor's tiny homestead, including brahma eggs, whose brown shells
suggested that they must ha