Lady Dysart faltered for a moment before this ingenious falsehood, but soon recovered herself.
“I don’t care whether it was you or the pump that whooped, it does not alter the fact of your superfluity at a picnic.”
“I think Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins wanted him to stoke,” said Pamela from the luncheon basket.
“I have no doubt they do, but they shall not have him,” said Lady Dysart with the blandness of entire decision, though her eyes wavered from her daughter’s face to her son’s; “they’re very glad indeed to save their own clothes and spoil his.”
“Well, then, I’ll go with Lambert,” said Garry rebelliously.
“You will do nothing of the sort!” exclaimed Lady Dysart, “whatever I may do about allowing you to go with Captain Cursiter, nothing shall induce me to sanction any plan that involves your going in that most dangerous yacht. Christopher himself says she is over-sparred.” Lady Dysart had no idea of the meaning of the accusation, but she felt the term to be good and telling. “Now, Pamela, will you promise me to stay with Captain Cursiter all the time?”
“Oh, yes, I will,” said Pamela, laughing; “but you know in your heart that he would much rather have Garry.”
“I don’t care what my heart knows,” replied Lady Dysart magnificently, “I know what my mouth says, and that is that you must neither of you stir out of the steam-launch.”
At this descent of his mother into the pit so artfully dug for her, Garry withdrew to attire himself for the position of stoker, and Pamela discreetly changed the conversation.
It seemed a long time to Max and Dinah before their fate was decided, but after some last moments of anguish on the pier they found themselves, the one coiled determinedly on Pamela’s lap, and the other smirking in the bow in Garry’s arms, as Mr. Hawkins sculled the second relay of the Bruff party out to the launch. The first relay, consisting of Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond, was already on its way down the lake in Mr. Lambert’s 5-ton boat, with every inch of canvas set to catch the light and shifty breeze that blew petulantly down from the mountains, and ruffled the glitter of the lake with dark blue smears. The air quivered hotly over the great stones on the shore, drawing out the strong aromatic smell of the damp weeds and the bog-myrtle, and Lady Dysart stood on the end of the pier, and wrung her hands as she thought of Pamela’s complexion.