I closed my eyes. You know, I wonder sometimes what it is that makes a picnic so pleasant. Because all the important things, the eating and the sleeping, one can do anywhere.
IV.—IN THE WET
Myra gazed out of the window upon the driving rain and shook her head at the weather.
"Ugh!" she said. "Ugly!"
"Beast," I added, in order that there should be no doubt about what we thought. "Utter and deliberate beast."
We had arranged for a particularly pleasant day. We were to have sailed across to the mouth of the—I always forget its name, and then up the river to the famous old castle of-of-no, it's gone again; but anyhow, there was to have been a bathe in the river, and lunch, and a little exploration in the dinghy, and a lesson in the Morse code from Simpson, and tea in the woods with a real fire, and in the cool of the evening a ripping run home before the wind. But now the only thing that seemed certain was the cool of the evening.
"We'll light a fire and do something indoors," said Dahlia.
"This is an extraordinary house," said Archie. "There isn't a single book in it, except a lot of Strand Magazines for 1907. That must have been a very wet year."
"We can play games, dear."
"True, darling. Let's do a charade."