“I’m not sure I’m going.”
“I am. A picnic without you wouldn’t be a picnic. With you, it’s pretty likely to be all sorts of a one.”
“Alec, I wish you wouldn’t.” Blue Bonnet’s face was very serious.
“You can’t always have your own way, Miss Ashe.”
“Your grandfather expects you to ride.”
“I’ll go for a turn this morning. Any more objections up your sleeve? It’s a good bit of a pull up there, anyhow.”
“As if that was your real reason!” Blue Bonnet smiled across at him very gratefully.
Alec swung himself down from the railing to the ground. “Half-past two, then; by the way, you’re all to come back to our house to supper.”
There was nothing sober about Blue Bonnet’s smile this time. She went back to her dusting with fairly good grace, doing it so much more carefully than usual that when Miss Lucinda made her customary tour of inspection, there was not a great deal to be gone over.
“Sometimes, Elizabeth,” her aunt said, “I have hopes of making a housewife of you, in the end.”