CHAPTER NINE.

UNCLE d.i.c.k'S BOXES.

"I'm afraid we've made your aunt very cross, Nat, my boy," said Uncle Joe, rubbing his hands softly, and looking perplexed and troubled. "Do you think, Nat, that I have been leading you wrong?"

"I hope not, uncle," I said, "and I don't think so, for it has been very nice out here in the toolshed, and we have enjoyed ourselves so."

"Yes, my boy, we have, very much, indeed, but I'm afraid your aunt never forgave us for not putting Humpty Dumpty together again."

"But, uncle," I said, "isn't it unreasonable of Aunt Sophia to expect us to do what all the king's horses and all the king's men could not do?"

He looked at me for a few minutes without speaking, and then he began to smile very slightly, then a little more and a little more, till, instead of looking dreadfully serious, his face was as happy as it could be.

Then he began to laugh very heartily, and I laughed too, till the tears were in our eyes.

"Of--of course it was, Nat," he cried, chuckling and coughing together.

"We couldn't do what all the king's horses and all the king's men didn't manage, Nat, and--yes, my dear, we're coming."

Uncle Joe jumped up and went out of the tool-house, for my aunt's voice could be heard telling us to come in.

"Hush!" he whispered, with a finger on his lips. "Make haste in, Nat, and run up to your room and wash your hands."

I followed him in, and somehow, whenever Doctor Burnett was in the room, my aunt did not seem so cross, especially as her brother took a good deal of notice of me, and kept on asking me questions.

I soon found, to my great delight, that he was going to stay with us till he started for Singapore, a place whose name somehow set me thinking about Chinese people and Indian rajahs, but that was all; the rest was to me one great mystery, and I used to lie in bed of a night and wonder what sort of a place it could be.

Every day our visitor grew less cool and distant in his ways, and at last my aunt said pettishly:

"Well, really, Richard, it is too bad; this is the third morning this week you have kept that boy away from school by saying you wanted him.

How do you expect his education to get on?"

"Get on?" said Doctor Burnett; "why, my dear sister, he is learning the whole time he is with me; I'll be bound to say that he has picked up more geography since he has been with me than he has all the time he has been to school."

"I don't know so much about that," said my aunt snappishly.

"Then I do," he said. "Let the boy alone, he is learning a great deal; and I shall want him more this next week."

"You'd better take him away from school altogether," said my aunt angrily.

"Well, yes," said the doctor quietly; "as it is so near his holidays, he may as well stop away the rest of this half."

"Richard!" cried my aunt as I sat there pinching my legs to keep from looking pleased.

"He will have to work hard at helping me with my collections, which are on the way here, I find, from a letter received this morning. There will be a great deal of copying and labelling, and that will improve his writing, though he does write a fair round hand."

"But it will be neglecting his other studies," cried my aunt.

"But then he will be picking up a good deal of Latin, for I shall explain to him the meaning of the words as he writes them, and, besides, telling him as much as I know of natural history and my travels."

"And what is to become of the boy then?" cried my aunt. "I will not have him turn idler, Richard."

"Well, if you think I have turned idler, Sophy," he said laughing, and showing his white teeth, "all I can say is, that idling over natural history and travelling is very hard work."

"But the boy must not run wild as--"

"I did? There, say it out, Sophy," said her brother. "I don't mind, my dear; some people look upon everything they do not understand as idling."

"I think I understand what is good for that boy," said my aunt shortly.

"Of course you do," said the doctor, "and you think it will do him good to help me a bit, Sophy. Come along, Nat, my boy, we are to have the back-room for the chests, so we must make ready, for they will be here to-morrow."

"Oh, Doctor Burnett," I cried as soon as we were alone.

"Suppose you call me Uncle Richard for the future, my boy," he said.

"By and by, when we get to know each other better, it will be Uncle d.i.c.k. Why not at once, eh?"

"I--I shouldn't like to call you that, sir," I said.

"Why not?"

"I--I hardly know, sir, only that you seem so clever and to know so much."

"Then it shall be Uncle d.i.c.k at once," he said, laughing merrily; "for every day that you are with me, Nat, you will be finding out more and more that I am not so clever as you think."

So from that day it was always Uncle d.i.c.k, and as soon as the great chests arrived we set to work.

I shall never forget those great rough boxes made of foreign wood, nor the intense interest with which I watched them as they were carried in upon the backs of the stout railway vanmen and set carefully in the large back-room.

There were twenty of them altogether, and some were piled upon the others as if they were building stones, till at last the men's book had been signed, the money paid for carriage, and Uncle Joe, Uncle d.i.c.k, and I sat there alone staring at the chests and wondering at their appearance.

For they were battered, and bruised, and chipped away in splinters, so that they looked very old indeed, though, as my uncle told me, there was not one there more than five years old, though they might have been fifty.

Every one had painted upon it in large white letters:

"Dr Burnett, FZS, London," and I wondered what FZS might mean. Then I noticed that the chests were all numbered, and I was longing intensely for them to be opened, when Uncle d.i.c.k, as I suppose I must call him now, made me start by crying out:

"Screw-driver!"

I jumped up and ran to Uncle Joe's tool-box for the big screw-driver, and was back with it in a very short time, Uncle d.i.c.k laughing heartily as he saw my excitement.

"Thank you, Nat, that will do," he said. "It will be nice and handy for me to-morrow morning."

"Ha--ha--ha!" he laughed directly after, as he saw my blank disappointed face. "Did you think I was going to open the cases to-day, Nat?"

"I did hope so, sir," I said stoutly.

"Then I will," he cried, "for your being so frank. Now then, which shall it be?"

"I should begin with number one, sir," I said.