“Twelve wires at—at? How many words, sir?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “they wouldn’t have cost so much only I took a fancy to drop into poetry with them. And in spite of precedents the operator declined to do it as a friend.”
“Just a minute,” said Kate, “half of those wires are doomed to be wasted. Your executive ability is a thing to marvel at, I grant you, but you overlooked the little fact that Lomax-cum-Whooping-Cough may not foregather round a tablecloth with Gowan-plus-Perfect-Health.”
Hugh certainly looked nonplussed at this.
“It would be a moral impossibility for one of the parties unaided by the other to eat all this,” pursued Kate.
“My good woman,” said Hugh, “go and put the perishables in the ice-chest. My master mind will soon deal with the difficulty.”
So Kate moved backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the verandah and [p236] Hugh tilted his chair and took out a cigar to help meet the situation.
“Well?” said Kate when only a heap of fine ash remained.
“Quite well,” said Hugh. “Both parties shall attend and not the ghost of a whoop shall be exchanged. I ordered two large sociables,—the drivers will have instructions not to approach nearer than thirty feet within each other. A whoop microbe would hardly travel thirty feet.”
“Well,” said Kate, “as far as that is concerned I don’t see that Edith need have any anxiety. She might pass a wagonette with scarlet fever convalescents herself any day. But what about the actual picnic? Muffie defines this word as eating nice things down a gully. Could we comfortably pass sandwiches to each other there at a distance of thirty feet?”