“What fun! what fun! We will paddle to your kingdom. If only—if only it wasn’t for the tea-things.”
“But you can carry the tea-things on your back.”
“Why, yes! so I can. Or the servants could.”
“Harcourt—no servants. This is my picnic, and my wood. I’m going to settle everything. I didn’t tell you: I’ve got all the food. I’ve been in the village with Mr. Ford.”
“In the village—?”
“Yes, We got biscuits and oranges and half a pound of tea. That’s all you’ll have. He carried them up. And he’ll carry them over the stream. I want you just to lend me some tea-things—not the best ones. I’ll take care of them. That’s all.”
“Dear creature. …”
“Evelyn,” said Mrs. Worters, “how much did you and Jack pay for that tea?”
“For the half-pound, tenpence.”
Mrs. Worters received the announcement in gloomy silence.
“Mother!” cried Mr. Worters. “Why, I forgot! How could we go paddling with mother?”
“Oh, but, Mrs. Worters, we could carry you over.”
“Thank you, dearest child. I am sure you could.”
“Alas! alas! Evelyn. Mother is laughing at us. She would sooner die than be carried. And alas! there are my sisters, and Mrs. Osgood: she has a cold, tiresome woman. No: we shall have to go round by the bridge.”
“But some of us—” began Ford. His guardian cut him short with a quick look.
So we went round—a procession of eight. Miss Beaumont led us. She was full of fun—at least so I thought at the time, but when I reviewed her speeches afterwards I could not find in them anything amusing. It was all this kind of thing: “Single file! Pretend you’re in church and don’t talk. Mr. Ford, turn out your toes. Harcourt—at the bridge throw to the Naiad a pinch of tea. She has a headache. She has had a headache for nineteen hundred years.” All that she said was quite stupid. I cannot think why I liked it at the time.
As we approached the copse she said, “Mr. Inskip, sing, and we’ll sing after you: Áh yoù silly àss góds lìve in woóds.” I cleared my throat and gave out the abominable phrase, and we all chanted it as if it were a litany. There was something attractive about Miss Beaumont. I was not surprised that Harcourt had picked her out of “Ireland” and had brought her home, without money, without connections, almost without antecedents, to be his bride. It was daring of him, but he knew himself to be a daring fellow. She brought him nothing; but that he could afford, he had so vast a surplus of spiritual and commercial goods. “In time,” I heard him tell his mother, “in time Evelyn will repay me a thousandfold.” Meanwhile there was something attractive about her. If it were my place to like people, I could have liked her very much.
“Stop singing!” she cried. We had entered the wood. “Welcome, all of you.” We bowed. Ford, who had not been laughing, bowed down to the ground. “And now be seated. Mrs. Worters—will you sit there—against that tree with a green trunk? It will show up your beautiful dress.”
“Very well, dear, I will,” said Mrs. Worters.
“Anna—there. Mr. Inskip next to her. Then Ruth and Mrs. Osgood. Oh, Harcourt—do sit a little forward, so that you’ll hide the house. I don’t want to see the house at all.”
“I won’t!” laughed her lover, “I want my back against a tree, too.”
“Miss Beaumont,” asked Ford, “where shall I sit?” He was standing at attention, like a soldier.
“Oh, look at all these Worters!” she cried, “and one little Ford in the middle of them!” For she was at that state of civilization which appreciates a pun.
“Shall I stand, Miss Beaumont? Shall I hide the house from you if I stand?”
“Sit down, Jack, you baby!” cried his guardian, breaking in with needless asperity. “Sit down!”
“He may just as well stand if he will,” said she. “Just pull back your soft hat, Mr. Ford. Like a halo. Now you hide even the smoke from the chimneys. And it makes you look beautiful.”
“Evelyn! Evelyn! You are too hard on the boy. You’ll tire him. He’s one of those bookworms. He’s not strong. Let him sit down.”
“Aren’t you strong?” she asked.
“I am strong!” he cried. It is quite true. Ford has no right to be strong, but he is. He never did his dumbbells or played in his school fifteen. But the muscles came. He thinks they came while he was reading Pindar.
“Then you may just as well stand, if you will.”
“Evelyn! Evelyn! childish, selfish maiden! If poor Jack gets tired I will take his place. Why don’t you want to see the house? Eh?”
Mrs. Worters and the Miss Worters moved uneasily. They saw that their Harcourt was not quite pleased. Theirs not to question why. It was for Evelyn to remove his displeasure, and they glanced at her.
“Well, why don’t you want to see your future home? I must say—though I practically planned the house myself—that it looks very well from here. I like the gables. Miss! Answer me!”
I felt for Miss Beaumont. A homemade gable is an awful thing, and Harcourt’s mansion looked like a cottage with the dropsy. But what would she say?
She said nothing.
“Well?”
It was as if he had never spoken. She was as merry, as smiling, as pretty as ever, and she said nothing. She had not realized that a question requires an answer.
For us the situation was intolerable. I had to save it by making a tactful reference to the view, which, I said, reminded me a little of the country near Veii. It did not—indeed it could not, for I have never been near Veii. But it is part of my system to make classical allusions. And at all events I saved the situation.
Miss Beaumont was serious and rational at once. She asked me the date of Veii. I made a suitable answer.
“I do like the classics,” she informed us. “They are so natural. Just writing down things.”
“Ye‑es,” said
