Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

“Honour and glory! Eh? Why, you and I, Fitzroy, have had a lot of that. Much good it has done us. I have a hook for a hand.”

“And I have a wooden leg,” said Fitzroy, “and that is about all I have to leave my lad, for I don’t suppose they bury a fellow with his wooden leg on. Well, anyhow, that is my boy’s legacy; he can hang it behind the door in the library, and when he has company he can point to it sadly, and say, ‘Heigho, that’s all that is left of poor father!’”

“Yes,” said Lyle; “and he can also tell the story of the forlorn hope you led when you won that wooden toe. No, Fitzroy, honour and glory won’t do, now that the war is over. It was all very well when you and I were boys.”

“Well, there is medicine, the law, and the church, and business, and farming, and what-not.”

“Now, my dear friend, which of those on your list do you think your boy would adopt?”

“Well,” replied Fitzroy, with a smile, “I fear it would be the ‘what-not.’”

“And mine, too. Our lads have too much spirit for anything very tame. There is the blood of the old fighting Fitzroys in your boy’s veins, and the blood of the restless, busy Lyles in Leonard’s. If you hadn’t lost nearly all your estates, and if I were rich, it would be different, wouldn’t it, my friend?”

“Yes, Lyle, yes.”

Fitzroy jumped up immediately afterwards, and stumped round the room several times, a way he had when thinking.

Then he stopped in front of his friend.

“Bother it all, Lyle,” he said; “I think I have it.”

“Well,” quoth Lyle, “let us hear it.”

Then Fitzroy sat down and drew his chair close to Lyle’s.

“We love our boys, don’t we?”

“Rather!”

“And we have only one each?”

“No more.”

“Well, your estate is encumbered?”

“It’s all in a heap.”

“So is mine, but in a few years both may be clear.”

“Yes, please God, unless, you know, my old pike turns his sides up – ha! ha!”

“Well, what I propose is this. Let our lads have their fling for a bit.”

“What! appoint a tutor to each of them, and let them make the grand tour, see a bit of Europe, and then settle down?”

“Bother tutors and your grand tour! How would we have liked at their age to have had tutors hung on to us?”

“Well, Lyle, we might have had tutors, but I’ll be bound we would have been masters.”

“Yes. Well, boys will be boys, and I know nothing would please our lads better than seeing the world; so suppose we say to them, We can afford you a hundred or two a year if you care to go and see a bit of life, and don’t lose yourselves, what do you think they would reply?”

“I don’t know exactly what they would reply, but I know they would jump at the offer, and put us down as model parents. But then, we have their mothers to consult.”

“Well, consult them, but put the matter very straight and clear before their eyes. Explain to our worthy wives that boys cannot always be in leading strings, that the only kind of education a gentleman can have to fit him for the battle of life, is that which he gains from his experience in roughing it and in rubbing shoulders with the wide world.”

“Good; that ought to fetch them.”

“Yes; and we may add that after a young man has seen the world, he is more likely to settle down, and lead a quiet respectable life at home.”

“As a country squire!”

“Oh yes; country squire will do, and we might throw Parliament in, eh? Member for the county – how does that sound?”

Major Lyle laughed.

And Captain Fitzroy laughed.

Then they both rubbed their hands and looked pleased.

“I think,” said Fitzroy, “we have it all cut and dry.”

“There isn’t a doubt of it.”

“Well, then, we’ll order the lads’ dinner in – say in three hours’ time, and you and I will meanwhile have a stroll.”

In about three hours both Leonard and his friend Douglas Fitzroy returned to the inn, as hungry as Highland hunters, and were glad to see the table groaning with good things.

“We’ve had such a day of it, dad,” said Leonard; “though we had no idea of the distance when we started, but I’ve found some of the rarest ferns and mountain flora, and some of the rarest coleoptera in all creation. Haven’t we, Doug?”

“Yes, Leon. Your sister will be delighted.”

“Dear Eff!” said Leonard; “I wish she’d been with us.”

It was a grand walking expedition the two young gentleman and their fathers were on, and it is wonderful how Captain Fitzroy did swing along with that wooden leg of his. He was always in front, whether it was going up hill or down dell. There really seems some advantage, after all, in having a wooden leg, for once an angry adder struck the gallant captain on the “timber toe,” as he called it; and once a bulldog flew at him, and though it rent some portion of his clothing, it could make no impression to signify on that wooden leg, and finally received a kick on the jaw that made it retire to its kennel in astonishment.

After they had dined Captain Fitzroy explained the travelling scheme to the lads, and recommended them to think seriously about it after they had retired to their bedroom, and give their answer in the morning.

I do not think there is any occasion to say what that answer was when the morning came.

Book Two – Chapter Two

At Sea in the “Fairy Queen.”

“Oh! who can tell save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o’er the waters wide,
The exalting sense – the pulse’s maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?”

    Byron.