Exercise, Lydia grimly reflected, they were certainly having in abundance. She and Beatrice held either handle of the large picnic hamper containing the Senthovens’ contribution to the entertainment, and as it swung and rattled between them, Lydia made increased efforts to accommodate her steps to Beatrice’s unfaltering stride.
“I s’pose,” presently remarked Beatrice, with that aggressive accent that to a Senthoven merely represented the absence of affectation, “you’ll be saying presently that we’ve walked you off your legs. I never knew such a kid! Here, slack off a bit, Dot—she can’t keep up.”
“I can,” said Lydia.
She had no breath left with which to make a long speech.
Both the elder girls burst out laughing.
“Come on then.”
It was a scarlet-faced Lydia, with labouring chest, that eventually dropped on to the selected spot of Wimbledon Common, but she at least had the satisfaction of hearing her own name given in reply to Bob’s derisive inquiry as to which of them had set the pace.
Yet another proof of the profound wisdom of Grandpapa who had said, “There’s no such thing as can’t.”
Grandpapa’s theory, however, was less well exemplified in the impromptu cricket match that presently sprang up, in the sort of inevitable way in which a game that comprised the use of muscles and a ball invariably did spring up whenever the Senthovens were gathered together.
“I don’t play cricket,” Lydia haughtily observed to the least muscular-looking of the Swaine girls.