Kate unpacked the baskets with a melancholy air. It was useless, of course, to preserve an appearance of anger towards the offenders, but a bad quarter of an hour was undoubtedly in store for her with their mother.
Hugh was optimistic. He declared that the whooping cough microbe meeting the fresh air microbe on such a fighting ground as a mountain gully would be “laid out in one act.”
[p253]
He stretched himself along a seat and indulged in a smoke after his exertions, while Kate and Florence and Effie made all ready for lunch.
Dora and Beatrice had gone to sit in the “Lovers’ Nook” and try to feel romantic. Kate had rejected their offers of assistance in her work.
“Why did you send away my little girls?” said Hugh lazily,—“I don’t mean bad little girls like those,” he looked at the shamelessly cheerful Florence and Effie, who were gathering ferns for the tables, “but my good little girls.”
“Silly little things,” said Kate, “they get on my nerves frightfully. I wanted to keep my faculties clear for my work.”
“Ah,” said Hugh, looking at his pipe, “they strike you that way, do they, K? They seem rather charming to me to-day. Perhaps apart—one cannot have both unfortunately—perhaps one at a time, K, they might seem to have more—er sense, eh?”
His hat was over his eyes, Kate could only see his mouth.
“Oh, my little me,” said the woman’s heart, “the boy is serious!”
She cut up a lettuce before she could trust herself to speak and even ate a few shreds in her agitation.