"Well, it—it's a cake!" says Brian, who (in spite of the warning just delivered to his friend) is now indulging in wild mirth and can scarcely speak for laughter. "She—Monica—heard we were boycotted, and, thinking we were starving, the dear angel! she brought this up herself to us."
"Desmond, I'm ashamed of you," says Kelly, who has not moved a muscle of his face. "Such an action as hers calls for reverence,—not this unseemly gayety."
"It's not the action I'm laughing at," says Brian, still convulsed; "it's the cake. The action is divine—the cake hot!" Here he sinks upon the garden-seat again, as if exhausted, and dries his eyes.
"I see nothing to laugh at in that, either. It seems an excellent cake, and, as you say, hot," says Mr. Kelly, prodding it meditatively with his finger,—"a merit in a cake of this sort, I should say; and nicely browned, too, as far as I can see. I can see, too, that it is quite the biggest cake I ever made acquaintance with. Another merit! Did she carry it herself all the way?"
"All the way, poor darling! and just because she was afraid we should be hungry." Mr. Desmond's laughter has subsided, and he now looks rather absent. "It quite weighed her down," he says, in a low tone.
"Poor child! I said yesterday, you remember, that I thought her one of the nicest girls I have met. The cake has finished me. I think her now the nicest." He says this with a cheerful conscience. Between girls and widows a deep margin lies.
"But what are we to do with it?" says Brian, regarding the cake, which is now lying upon the garden seat, with a puzzled expression.
"Say a repentant tenant—no, that sounds like tautology—say a remorseful tenant brought it to you."
"That wouldn't do at all."
"Then say you found it in the garden."