“Thank you, Mr Brathwaite,” said Lilian, with a quiet little laugh. “That’s one at me.”
“Oh, no; really not. It’s different with you, you see, and—and—Hang it! I’d better clear out of this; it’s getting too warm for me,” cried Jim, in mock helplessness.
“Well, I think you had,” laughed his mother. And he and young Garrett wandered off.
Soon the ramblers began to drop in, hot and tired, but in high spirits. Luncheon was ready laid out.
“Oh, Ethel, you ought to have come with us! It’s lovely down there!” cried Gertie Wray, who, with Armitage, was the first to arrive.
“Yes? What have you been doing to yourself?”
Following the direction of her glance, Gertie put both hands to her hat. Her mischief-loving cavalier had amused himself by sticking the ends of several pieces of long grass into it, and these were standing out a yard above her head, nodding like plumes. There was a laugh at her expense.
“Oh, you horrid tease!” she cried, crushing them up and throwing them at him.
“What? Why, ’pon my word it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it; it was Claverton.”
“Was it?” repeated she, indignantly. “It was you. Mr Claverton never plays practical jokes, and you—”