The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton (hardest books to read .txt) 📕

The sound of the piano closing brought them back to earth. The musicians stepped out on to the balcony.

“Ende vom Lied,” Mr. von Greusen said, as he left the lighted room behind him, “and the end of the evening too, for me. I must be getting home—hullo, Smith! Where did you come from? Am I to have the pleasure of introducing you to Professor and Mrs. Campbell, or has someone stolen a march upon me?”

“I brought him up,” Hugh answered. “He heard Mamma singing and was fascinated like flies and moths and things.”

They laughed as Mr. Smith made his apologies while he joined in the laughter. “You must come again,” Mamma said, “and we will have a concert properly prepared for you. And you will give me all the news from home,” she added, with the wistful note that was so often in her voice, “unless you will come in now, and try our Australian wine?”

But the young man could not stay, and, after a few more words of thanks and a grateful promise to come again at the earliest possible opportunity, he went off with Mr. von Greusen.

“Who is Mr. Smith?” Mollie asked, as they moved bedwards. “Doesn’t anybody know who he is?”

“He is a young man newly out from home, and that is enough for Papa and Mamma,” Hugh answered, with a yawn. “What does it matter who he is so long as he is a nice chap.”

“But suppose he was a bushranger in disguise and—”

“Suppose he is Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Jews,” Hugh interrupted, with another yawn. “I’m going to bed. We shall sleep tonight, with that cool wind. Thank goodness.”

Next morning found them again on the winding road which led up to the vineyards. For three-quarters of the way it ran through the woods of yesterday; then they left the woods behind and emerged on to a bare and shadeless track on the hill-side, and ten minutes later they turned in through the gate of the vineyard Mr. von Greusen had given them permission to “browse” in, as he had expressed it. The English children had never seen a vineyard in their lives, and their expectations were inclined to be romantic and artistic. Large bunches of thin-skinned, bloomy purple grapes, hanging gracefully down from something like a pergola, was the picture they had formed in their minds. Mollie, it is true, had seen grapes growing in the cherry garden, but they had been so surrounded by cherry trees and other exciting objects that they had not left any great impression.

They found the reality somewhat disappointing. Here were acres of straight green lines hardly higher than gooseberry-bushes, and without a single tree to break the monotony or to cast a welcome shade. The bunches of grapes looked inviting enough, hanging among their decorative leaves and tendrils, but they had not been thinned and consequently were smaller than English hothouse grapes, while exposure to wind and dust had removed most of their bloom; but, in spite of their comparatively homely appearance, the children soon found that the fruit tasted sweet and luscious as only freshly gathered, sun-ripened fruit can do.

“This is Mr. von Greusen’s experimental field,” Hugh explained. “He mostly grows different lots for different wines, but here he has all sorts. We like these Ladies’ Fingers; they go off in your mouth with such a nice squelch.”

“What happens if you eat his favourite experiment?” asked Jerry, squelching his way diligently through a bunch of long, slender grapes of a translucent pale-green colour.

“He says, ‘Donnerwetter! What see I?’” Hugh answered; “but he ties a red worsted round his first-class experiments and then we know. He has tied all my new grapes up except the bunch he took home.”

Now that the children were in the vineyard, and heard Hugh talking learnedly of Black Portugals, Verdeilho, Shirez, and other strange-sounding names, they were more reverential towards his new grape, which might be called Hughenne, or even, he generously suggested, either Gordello or Campdonne.

“It has to have a winey sound, you see,” he said, “or it wouldn’t sell. I think ‘Gordello’ sounds rather well myself.”

It did not take very long to satisfy their appetite for grapes. The sun got hotter, their eyes ached with the glare, and they decided to return to the coolness of the woods and gardens lower down. The boys wanted to go exploring; the girls were to be left to collect peaches and melons for the new drink—which might bear the honoured name of Gordello until the famous champagne was put on the market—which would then be ready and cooling in the spring of the Fairy Dell by the time that the explorers were weary of exploring. Thus planned the boys.

“Boys propose, girls dispose,” paraphrased Mollie, as the three pith helmets disappeared, after their owners had condescended to gather a share of the Gordello-destined grapes and carry them part of the way towards the Dell. “If Dick and Jerry want drinks they can jolly well come and make them. I am going to have a rest.”

Prue looked a little shocked, but Grizzel heartily agreed with Mollie. “I shall pull six peaches and one water-melon exactly,” she said. “I am tired and my legs ache, and I can’t be bothered with Hugh and his old Gordello.”

A short walk down the road between the gum trees brought them to the fruit gardens, where Mollie saw peaches that made up by their magnificence for any hothouse elegance lacking in the grapes. Large as apples, soft and downy as velvet, glowing with crimson and gold, they were a perfect revelation of what peaches could be when they tried, and Mollie could hardly bear to wait till they reached the Fairy Dell before devouring one. But Prudence was firm.

“No, Mollie; not after all those grapes while you are hot and tired. Come and get your water-melon, and we’ll go straight to the Dell and rest and eat peaches there. If you ate them now you might die all of a sudden, and that would be so awkward for Grizzel and me.”

Mollie thought it would be more awkward for her, but did not argue. She followed Prue obediently, finding her basket of grapes, plus six peaches and a large water-melon, quite enough to absorb all her energies. If only Gordello were an accomplished fact, she thought, it would be very delightful. If someone else had made it and she could find it “cooling in the spring”, as the boys expected to do, it would be extraordinarily delicious, and the more she thought of it the more delicious it became in her fancy. Poor boys! She was sorry for the disappointment awaiting them. Australians seemed to be a strenuous lot of people; no wonder the Australian soldiers were so brown and chinny.

Her meditations on chinny Australians lasted till they reached the Fairy Dell, the sight of which chased every other thought from her head. Surrounded by she-oaks and native cherry trees a smoothly curved hollow lay at the foot of a rocky declivity, its sides clothed with ferns almost startlingly green amidst the dried-up grass which covered most of the country around. A silvery cascade of water fell down the rock at the far side, its fine spray blown by the wind over the little hollow, looking in the sunlight like the veil of a fairy bride. Mollie recognized the delicate fronds of maidenhair growing in clumps here and there, and the edge of the pool at the bottom of the hollow was fringed with wild forget-me- nots.

The children scrambled down and seated themselves in a shady spot, untying their sunbonnets and holding their hot and dusty faces towards the filmy veil of foam.

“It is heavenly,” Mollie said, with a long sigh, as she sniffed up the cool scent of the damp ferns. “I don’t wonder you call it the Fairy Dell.”

“It is Mamma’s favourite spot, and we often have picnics here,” said Prue, hanging her sunbonnet on a branch of she-oak that spread above them. “There’s the water all ready, you see, and there’s a place up there where we can light our fire. Mamma sketches, and we bring our books or we hunt for wild flowers; it is always a nice place to be in. Now we can eat our fruit.” She produced a knife from her basket and cut a melon in halves. Its delicate pink flesh and black seeds called forth more enthusiastic admiration from Mollie.

“Let us arrange all the things among the ferns,” she suggested, “and gather some forget-me-nots to put beside that pink melon; then the purple grapes; then the peaches—isn’t it pretty, Prue?”

Prue nodded her head; she was speechless with melon, and soon the other two were following her example; and melon was followed by peaches.

Then Grizzel jumped to her feet. “There is a cache here,” she said. “Papa often pops something in for a surprise when he passes this way. I’m going to look; there might be a pencil there, and I want to draw that fruit.”

She soon returned, carrying in her hand a small basket, which yielded up two books, a small sketching-block, and a box of chocolates. “You can have the books,” she announced, “one is From Six to Sixteen, by Mrs. Ewing, and the other is Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, by Jules Verne.”

Mollie, being the guest, got first choice and took Jules Verne, turning the pictures over with much interest as she compared the Nautilus with the submarine of 1920.

“I do think,” she said emphatically, helping herself to a large chocolate-cream with entire disregard of both past and future, “I do think that your father is a perfect peach.”

Grizzel glanced up from her drawing to the still-life study before her. “He is more the shape of a water-melon,” she remarked.

Mollie laughed.

“Be quiet, Grizzel,” Prue said angrily. “How can you speak so disrespectfully of Papa? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I’m not disrespectful,” Grizzel answered indignantly. “I think it is a beautiful shape.”

Mollie laughed again.

“You are disrespectful,” Prue repeated, turning very red. “Papa does the dearest, sweetest things, and all your thanks is to make Mollie laugh at him. It is horrible of you, and I don’t call it very nice of Mollie.”

“I’m not laughing at your father,” Mollie said; “I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. I’m laughing at Grizzel. She is so funny.”

“I’m not funny,” said Grizzel, turning as red as Prudence, “and if you laugh at Papa for being partly the shape of a water-melon, I’ll laugh at your father. Your father is an unripe olive and your mother is a bitter almond,” she added vindictively.

But if she expected Mollie to be insulted she was disappointed, for that young person went off into fits of cackling giggles which she vainly tried to suppress. At last she rose to her feet.

“I’ve got the giggles badly,” she spluttered out. “I get them sometimes. I think I had better go away for a little till I am better. I really am not laughing at your father. I think he is a perfectly lovely father.”

“Then you shouldn’t call names,” said Prue, still very red. “How would you like me to call your father an apricot?”

“I shouldn’t mind in the least,” answered Mollie, giggling worse than ever. “You don’t understand. I’ll go away, and I’ll explain when I am better.”

She seized her sunbonnet, tucked her book under