Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/242

Rh manner in faulty test-tubes, sublimated in cracked flasks, fused on discarded charcoal with home-made blow-pipes. Pounded, washed, filtered—a hundred times, a thousand times; painfully, toilsomely, tirelessly.

"What is it?" I asked. I could not walk away in dignity now and ignore the thing; it had got past that. Nor could I now send Bobbie to play in the garden.

"Chloride of x as yet," he replied. "Of course, it may all be a mistake really. You see, I had no spectroscope; that is why I sent to Sir Walter Bent."

"Oh, we can soon settle that," I exclaimed cheerfully. Why should I not identify myself even at the eleventh hour? "Let us go up to the laboratory."

Bobbie did not get up.

"Thank you, uncle," he said politely, "but I would rather not. You see"—he paused a moment, then decided to go on—"you see, a touch, a thoughtless frisk"

He did not finish and I turned to leave the room. I had nothing to say. What was there for me to say? Simply nothing.

"Oh, I am a cad!" cried Bobbie suddenly, before I had reached the door. "Do forgive me, uncle; please do."

"My dear lad" I expostulated, looking back.

"I should like to tell you, uncle, please," he went on, a little wildly for the self-contained youth of the last few weeks. "When father came back from here, a year ago, he told us what a splendid laboratory you had built, and as much as he could remember about the things you had—everything that one could possibly need, he said. I got him to tell me over and over again, and for a year I longed and longed"—"and prayed," I think he said, but his voice went very low—"to be able to come here. I had the most wonderful dreams often of being here and