He looked at Mrs. Poynter, who had been most eager to get a sitting all to herself. She was pretty, and she knew it, and why shouldn't others know it? She was unaware of Mr. Sparks's peculiar talent, certainly, or perhaps she would not have been so desirous of seeing herself or her children—two lovely little beings of six and eight—once again on paper.
"Now I'm ready, if you are!" roared Mr. Sparks from the centre of the lawn.
"One minute!" shouted back Dicky Browne.
He was settling everybody, and pulling out their skirts. This made all the women mad.
"Are you ready?" roared out Sparks again, who was suffocating from his incessant visits beneath the velveteen cloth. It was a very warm day.
"One moment." Dr. Dillwyn had just come in, and where was he to be placed? He made straight for Agatha, and Dicky could not fail to see the significance of the smile with which she greeted him.
"Is there room for me here?" That was his whisper.
"Yes, yes," she said softly, gently. So he laid his hand on the arm of her chair, and stood erect.
There was a moment of awful tension. All were putting on their worst smiles and the most fatally imbecile expression, and Mr. Sparks was about to withdraw the cap, when a lively crash was heard and a smothered shriek.
They all sprang to their feet, and the tableau was spoiled. It was Dicky, of course. As usual, he had chosen the frailest seat in the place as a support for his rather stout frame—this time a milking-stool of delicate proportions; and one of the legs had come off, and now Dicky and it were floundering together on the floor of the veranda, buried in one common ruin.