Elizabeth had thrown herself down close beside me. Next to her the slim Colonel had sat down. Opposite to me, holding out bread and butter on a large burdock leaf, was Captain Holiday.
The quartette of us devoured our tea together with an enjoyment which was, as Captain Holiday presently said through a mouthful, barely decent!
"Why?" demanded Colonel Fielding, with that misleading diffidence of his. "Why shouldn't we—er—enjoy this? I—I may tell you that this"—he drank more tea, reached for another hunk of bread and butter, and looked sideways at Elizabeth—"this is going to represent one of the meals of my life!"
I said, rather tritely, "That's because you worked so hard for it!"
"Oh—er—no. I don't think I like anything I've deserved," said this young man, with (outward) mildness. Much faith I put in that as he began on his fourth hunk, eating by tiny mouthfuls as he must have been taught in the nursery. "Anything one's earned makes one feel—er—one doesn't want it any more. At least, I feel like that——"
"Not often, my dear chap," put in his friend, Captain Holiday, brusquely. "If you were dependent upon what you earned or deserved—by gad, you would be fairly destitute!"
Now it always amuses me the way in which men will show warm regard for a special chum by insulting him in public. But Elizabeth, over her white japanned mug of tea, shot a really furious glance at the man who had dared to say this thing to her idol!
Colonel Fielding just laughed through those eyelashes, nodded good-naturedly at his friend, and took up the conversation again as he lounged on the grass.
Hoping for Elizabeth's sake that what he said might tell something about him, I prepared to listen to every word of it!