“And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain,”
quoted Geoffrey, dragging her into a perpendicular position.
“Come along down to the river and see if there are any trout rising.”
“There are none to rise.”
“There must be, it’s just their supper-time. Well, anything is better than squatting in the hay for the delectation of the insect world; come and look for a bees’-nest down in the bottom of the meadow.”
The hunt for the bees’-nest was fruitless. Alice, for one, brought neither zeal nor energy to the task. As they dawdled slowly homewards, Geoffrey suddenly said, as if struck by a brilliant idea:
“By Jove! next Tuesday the grouse shooting commences, the glorious twelfth! I don’t know how I’m to break the news to you, Alice; but on Monday we must part. Old Macfarlane has asked me this year, thank the kind fates, and his moors and his shooting are simply—supreme. He asked Rex too, and was awfully keen about getting him, knowing him to be such a good gun—the old boy takes no end of pride out of his big bags—and only fancy,” standing in the pathway, and declaiming, with one waving arm, “he is not going. Did you ever know such a duffer? Imagine his refusing the primest shooting north o’ Tweed! And for what? He gives no reason, and I can’t even hazard a guess. It certainly can’t be on your account,” contemplating his cousin with a cool, deliberate, speculative stare.
“If the question baffles your acute imagination, of course it is utterly beyond mine,” returned Alice, with an emphatic shake of her lovely head and a perceptible increase of colour. “See, Geoff,” she added eagerly, “the others are all going through the wood. We may as well go too; I want some moss and ferns for the dinner-table.”
Having joined the rest of the party, a general search for ferns commenced, and they were gradually moving homewards, when a masterly manœuvre of Geoffrey’s left Alice and Reginald to bring up the rear alone—a most unpremeditated tête-à-tête.