"Not since then? Why, you must almost forget what a picnic means. Shall I refresh your memory? It means salted pies, and sugared fowl, and indescribable jellies and warm fluids, and your knees in your mouth, and flies. I don't myself know anything more enjoyable than a picnic."
"Dear me, how I pity you! Whose picnics have you been at, may I ask?" inquire I with scorn. "To-morrow, I promise you, you shall see a very different specimen."
To-morrow comes to us as fine as though bespoken. Lady Blanche, walking into the breakfast-room in the most charming of morning robes, addresses herself to my husband.
"Well, most noble, what are your plans for to-day?" she asks, with a pretty show of animation.
Though I am in the room, and she knows it, she takes no notice of me whatever—does not even trouble herself so far as to bestow upon me the courtesy of a "good-morning." She looks up at Marmaduke, and smiles at him, and awaits his answer as though he alone were to be consulted. Evidently in her opinion the mistress of the house is of no importance a—mere nonentity in fact; the master is everything.
It occurs to me that she might be even gracious enough to smile in my direction, but she confines her attentions entirely to Marmaduke.
Has any one else in the room noticed her insolence. There is rather a hush I fancy, as I move composedly to my seat and alter the cups and saucers into more regular rows, I wonder curiously whether Marmaduke has remarked her breach of etiquette. Not he! What man ever saw anything wrong where a pretty woman is the transgressor, more especially when that pretty woman's blandishments are directed towards him? He gives back her smile placidly, and then speaks,—-
"I believe we have decided on a picnic."
"The picnic, of course. But where? That is the question."
"Anywhere you like; I am yours to command."