Everybody decided that the wood was worth the 160 walk. They spent a delicious afternoon lying under the tall straight pines, with the sweet-smelling needles for a bed, watching the delicate and illusive effects of light filtering among the shimmering leaves of birches.
“I feel as if I ought to be picking something!” laughed Katherine, throwing pine cones at Raymonde. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget this strawberry-gathering business. One got to do it automatically.”
“You know the story, don’t you, of the old man who described himself in the census as a picker?” said Miss Barton. “When he was asked to explain, he said: ‘Well, in June I picks strawberries, and then I picks beans, and then I picks hops, then when them’s over I picks pockets, and then I gets copped and sent to quod, and picks oakum!’ I shouldn’t wonder if some of your gipsy friends, Raymonde, could boast of a similar record.”
“I don’t care—they’re top-hole!” declared Raymonde, sticking up for the tribe.
“Who wants tea?” said Miss Lowe. “We’ve asked Miss Nelson and Miss Porter from the camp, and if we don’t hurry back at once, we shall find them waiting for us when we return, and slanging us for being rude. Come along!”
Miss Lowe had casually informed Mrs. Marsden that she expected a few friends to tea, but had not mentioned anything about special preparation, thinking that they would carry the cups and saucers into the garden, and have it under the trees. Little did they know the surprise their enterprising landlady had in store for them. When they arrived at the farm they found her, dressed in 161 her best attire, waiting at the door to receive them, and she proudly ushered them into the sitting-room, where she had spread forth a meal such as might be set before a particularly hungry assemblage of Sunday School scholars.
A large ham, not yet quite cold, adorned one end of the table, and a big apple-pie the other, while down the centre were seven round jam-tarts, each measuring about seven inches in diameter. The cruets had been put in the middle of the table instead of Miss Barton’s bowl of flowers, and there were several substantial platefuls of currant-bread. It was an extremely warm afternoon, and even to school-girl appetites the sight of such plenty at 4 p.m. was appalling. Miss Lowe’s convulsed apologies sent the visitors into explosions.
“Look at the tarts!” choked Miss Barton. “They’re all made with black-currant jam! There’s one apiece for us, counting the apple-pie. And the currant-bread is half an inch thick! Who’ll take a slice of lukewarm ham? Oh, it’s positively painful to laugh so hard! I never saw such a bean-feast in my life!”
“We certainly can’t consume all these!” echoed Miss Lowe. “The children must eat up some of them for supper. It will take days to get through such a larderful! For once they’ll be satiated with jam-tarts. Well, I suppose it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. Still, if the baby comes to an untimely end through acute dyspepsia, I shan’t be in the least surprised.”
Mrs. Marsden seemed determined to entertain her guests, and had yet another surprise in store for them. She beckoned them into a little private 162 parlour of her own, and showed them the paintings of her eldest boy, a youth of eighteen, who, she proudly assured them, had never had a drawing lesson in his life. It was not difficult to believe her, for the specimens were so funny that the spectators could hardly keep their faces straight. Horses with about as much shape as those in a child’s Noah’s ark, figures resembling Dutch dolls in rigidity, flowers daubed on with the crudest colours, and the final effort, a bird’s-eye view of the village, consisting chiefly of tiled roofs and chimney-pots in lurid red and black.