e spoke, he looked around him, and repeated,
"A lucky dog, sir!"

The horn had just blown for supper, three long blasts, and already the
campers were in their places at the long table, with its shining white
cover. Mr. and Mrs. Merryweather, their six children, Bell, Gertrude,
and Kitty, Gerald, Philip, and Willy, the two Montforts, with the
Colonel and his nephew, made a party of twelve, and filled the table
comfortably, though there was still room for more. The room was a long
one, with a vast open fireplace stretching half across one side. At one
end were rows of book-shelves, filled to overflowing; at the other, the
walls were adorned with models for boats, sketches in water-color and
pen and ink, birds' nests, curious fungi, and all manner of odds and
ends. It was certainly a cheerful room, and so Miles Merryweather
thought, as his eyes followed the Colonel's.

"We like it!" he said, simply. "It suits us, the place and the life.
It's good for young and old both, to get away from hurry and bustle, and
live for a time the natural life."

"Nature, sir!" said the Colonel. "Nature! that's it; nothing like it!
When I was a lad, young men were sent abroad, after their school or
college course; the grand tour, Paris, Vienna, that sort of thing: very
good thing in its way, too, monstrous good thing. But before he sees the
world, sir, a lad should know how to live, as you say, the natural life.
Ought to know what a tree is when he sees it; upon my soul, he ought.
Now my milksop--best fellow in the world, I give you my word, except
that little fellow at home there--well, sir! when he came to me, he
didn't know the difference between an oak and an elm, give you my word
he didn't. Remember one day--he heard me giving directions to Giuseppe
about cutting some ashes--clump of them in the field below the house,
needed thinning out--and he wanted to know how ashes could be cut;
thought I meant those in the fireplace, sir. Monstrous! Well, I taught
him a little, and you and your young folks have taught him a great deal.
H'm! I don't know that he is now more disgracefully ignorant than
nine-tenths of the young men of his age. Set of noodles! I'll tell you
what, Merryweather! You ought to have a kind of summer school here: get
other boys, a dozen, two dozen; teach 'em to see with their eyes, and
all the rest of it. I knew a boy once who thought a bat was a bird, give
you my word I did. And another who thought oysters grew on bushes.