“Oh! Lord Lackington, your most obedient. Too happy to be honored by your presence at any time. Just returned, I conclude?”
“Yes, only this moment,” said the Viscount, sighing weariedly. “These picnics are stupid inventions; they fatigue and they exhaust. They give little pleasure at the time, and none whatever to look back upon.”
“Your Lordship's picture is rather a dreary one,” said Dunn, smiling.
“Perfectly correct, I assure you; I went simply to oblige some country folks of yours. The O'Reillys,—nice little girls,—very natural, very pretty creatures; but the thing is a bore. I never knew any one who enjoyed it except the gentleman who gets tipsy, and he has an awful retribution in the next day's headache,—the terrible headache of iced rum punch.”
Dunn laughed, because he saw that his Lordship expected as much; and the Viscount resumed,—
“I am vexed, besides, at the loss of time; I wanted to have my morning with you here.”
Dunn bowed graciously, but did not speak.
“We have so much to talk over—so many things to arrange—that I am quite provoked at having thrown away a day; and you, too, are possibly pressed for time?”
He nodded in assent.
“You can give me to-morrow, however?”