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He was quite startled, therefore, when his master, suddenly leaning forward over his desk, said one morning: "I suppose you and David still want to fill the museum?" "Oh, yes," he replied, "of course we do!" "Well, then," said Dr Budge, "I want to go to the chalk-pit beyond Rumborough to-morrow, and if you were both to go with me we might find something that would do for it."
This being graciously given she printed the words, "For the Mandarin" in large letters on a piece of paper, pasted it on the front, and set the house up on the school-room mantel-piece that it might be constantly before the general eye. It was about a week after this that the children one day persuaded Miss Grey to go home across Rumborough Common after a walk.
The pickaxe weighed heavily on Ambrose's shoulder, and David had quite as much as he could do to trudge along with two spades and a sack. It was a relief when they came suddenly out of the gloomy shadows of the lane on to the broad expanse of Rumborough Common. There it lay stretched out before them, with a rough cart track across the middle of it. A lonely, cheerless-looking place!
"Well," he said, "we don't know whether they would or not, because we can't ask them now." "They wouldn't," repeated David decidedly. "Mother would like the museum to be full," continued Ambrose; "we know that. And we can't get things anywhere else. She never said we were not to go to Rumborough alone." David sat cross-legged on the floor beside his tool-box in an attitude of the deepest thought.
Ambrose became suddenly grave. What was a broken window compared with his and David's disobedience in the matter of Rumborough Common? Each day the possession of that little crock with its gold pieces weighed upon his mind more heavily.
He and David both possessed garden spades, which would be useful; but the ground on Rumborough Common was hard and chalky, and he felt sure that they would require a pickaxe as well. Andrew had one, but he was surly about lending his tools, and there was no chance of getting at them, for he kept them carefully locked up, and never left any lying about in the garden.
I shall bring home the things and put my name on all the labels, because they'll all belong to me. It'll scarcely be your museum at all." David's face fell. A vision rose before him of Ambrose returning from Rumborough laden with antiquities, and writing his name large upon each. He, David, would have no right to any of them.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Hush-sh-ush!" said Ambrose, holding up a warning finger; "it's time to start. Rumborough, you know." Thoroughly wakened by these words David was out of bed in an instant, and the two boys, creeping stealthily about the room, quickly huddled on their clothes.
Directly he got into the room he saw by all the great books his father had open on the table, and by the frown on his brow, that he was deeply engrossed. He looked up, certainly, and seemed to listen, but he was evidently very far-away from anything connected with Rumborough Common. Gathering, however, that he was asked to go somewhere, he looked back at his papers and shook his head.
It was a small earthenware crock of quaint shape with two very tiny handles or ears, and so incrusted with mould that only here and there you could see that it was of a deep-red colour. The top was covered by a lid. Ambrose laid it on the grass between himself and David, and both the boys surveyed it with awe. They had really made a discovery in Rumborough Camp!
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