• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1636 0

of church-going. They knew this hat well, and at the worst it usually meant a choir practice; but taken in connection with a blue serge skirt and the packing of a luncheon basket, they almost ventured to hope it portended a picnic on the lake. They adored picnics. In the first place, the outdoor dogs were always left at home, which alone would have imparted a delicious flavour to any entertainment, and in the second, all dietary rules were remitted for the occasion, and they were permitted to raven unchecked upon chicken bones, fat slices of ham, and luscious leavings of cream when the packing-up time came. There was, however, mingled with this enchanting prospect, the fear that they might be left behind, and from the sounding of the first note of preparation they had never let Pamela out of their sight. Whenever her step was heard through the long passages there had gone with it the scurrying gallop of the two little waiters on providence, and when her arrangements had culminated in the luncheon basket their agitation had become so poignant that a growling game of play under the table, got up merely to pass the time, turned into an acrimonious squabble, and caused their ejection to the hall-door steps by Lady Dysart. Now, sitting outside the door, they listened with trembling to the discussion that was going on in the hall, and with the self-consciousness of dogs were convinced that it was all about themselves.

“No, I cannot allow Garry to go,” declaimed Lady Dysart, her eyes raised to the ceiling as if to show her remoteness from all human entreaty; “he is not over the whooping-cough; I heard him whooping this morning in his bedroom.”

The person mentioned ceased from a game of fives with a tennis-ball that threatened momentarily to break the windows, and said indignantly, “Oh, I say, mother, that was only the men in the yard pumping. That old pump makes a row just like whooping-cough.”

Lady Dysart faltered for a moment before this ingenious falsehood, but soon recovered herself.

“I don’t care whether it was you or the pump that whooped, it does not alter the fact of your superfluity at a picnic.”

“I think Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins wanted him to stoke,” said Pamela from the luncheon basket.

“I have no doubt they do, but they shall not have him,” said Lady Dysart with the blandness of entire decision, though her eyes wavered from her daughter’s face to her son’s; “they’re very glad indeed to save their own clothes and spoil his.”

“Well, then, I’ll go with Lambert,” said Garry rebelliously.

“You will do nothing of the sort!” exclaimed Lady Dysart, “Whatever I may do about allowing you to go with Captain Cursiter, nothing shall induce me to sanction any plan that involves your going in that most dangerous yacht. Christopher himself says she is over-sparred.” Lady Dysart had no idea of the meaning of the accusation, but she felt the term to be good and telling. “Now, Pamela, will you promise me to stay with Captain Cursiter all the time?”

“Oh, yes, I will,” said Pamela laughing; “but you know in your heart that he would much rather have Garry.”

“I don’t care what my heart knows,” replied Lady Dysart magnificently, “I know what my mouth says, and that is that you must neither of you stir out of the steam-launch.”

At this descent of his mother into the pit so artfully digged for her, Garry withdrew to attire himself for the position of stoker, and Pamela discreetly changed the conversation.

It seemed a long time to Max and Dinah before their fate was decided, but after some last moments of anguish on the pier they found themselves, the one coiled determinedly on Pamela’s lap, and the other smirking in the bow in Garry’s arms, as Mr. Hawkins sculled the second relay of the Bruff party out to the launch. The first relay, consisting of Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond, was already on its way down the lake in Mr. Lambert’s 5-ton boat, with every inch of canvas set to catch the light and shifty breeze that blew petulantly down from the mountains, and ruffled the glitter of the lake with dark blue smears. The air