CHAPTER VII.—WHEREIN SYMPTOMS OF HARRY’S COURTSHIP BEGIN TO APPEAR ON A STORMY HORIZON.
The humours of a picnic have been too often described to need repetition; suffice it to say, that the picnic in question was decidedly a favourable specimen of its class. Of course everybody voted it to be the summit of human felicity, to sit in an uncomfortable position upon something never intended for a seat, beside a table-cloth spread upon the grass, which, being elastic and uneven, caused everything that should have remained perpendicular to assume a horizontal attitude. Of course, when the inevitable frog hopped across the table-cloth, and, losing its presence of mind on finding itself so unexpectedly launched into fashionable life, sought refuge in the pigeon-pie, the ladies screamed little picturesque screams, which were increased twentyfold when Tom Hazlehurst fished it out with a table-spoon, and surreptitiously immersed it in the jug of beer, which liquid he artfully incited Mr. Crane to pour out, thereby landing the frog, decidedly inebriated and most uncomfortably sticky, upon the elaborately embroidered shirt-front of Horace D’Almayne. Of course the salt and the sugar had fraternized, and the cayenne had elicited new and striking effects by mingling indiscriminately with things in general, and the sweets in particular; and of course all these shocking disasters irritated the few and delighted the many, and added immensely to the liveliness and hilarity of the party.
“Tom, you’re drinking too much champagne!” exclaimed an elderly maiden sister of Mr. Hazlehurst, decidedly like a hippopotamus in face and figure. “Mr. D’Almayne, may I trouble you to hand me his glass, the boy will make himself poorly.”
Thus appealed to, D’Almayne languidly extended his arm in the necessary direction, but the Etonian was not to be so easily despoiled of his beverage.
“Mille pardons, mounseer!” he exclaimed, mimicking the affected half-foreign accent with which the exquisite Horace usually spoke; “mais c’est tout à fait—out of the question; ne souhaitez-vous pas que vous pouvez l’obtenir?—don’t you wish you may get it? Equally obliged to you, but I’d rather do my own drinking myself. Why, my dear Aunt Betsy, how dreadfully ungrateful of you, just when I was going to propose your health, too! Silence, gentlemen, for a toast! Come, Governor (to his father, who, delighted with the young pickle’s ready wit, was vainly endeavouring to preserve an appearance of majestic disapproval), fill up; D’Almayne, my boy, no heeltaps; are you all charged? ‘My Aunt Betsy, and the rest of her lovely sex!—hip! hip! hip! hurrah!’” So saying, and with a knowing wink at Coverdale, who, if the truth must be told, encouraged him in his inclination to be impertinent to D’Almayne, Master Tom tossed down his glass of champagne amidst a general chorus of laughter. And thus the déjeûner passed off to all appearance merrily enough; though in two, if not more, of the company a smiling exterior hid an aching heart.
“Have you seen the rabbit warren yet, Mr. Coverdale? Do come, there are such a lot of the beggars jumping about! I found my way there before luncheon, and it won’t take long,” exclaimed Tom Hazlehurst, grasping Harry’s arm imploringly.
“It strikes me I shall be considered especially rude if I again absent myself,” was the reply.
“Who by?—the women?” inquired Tom, scornfully. “Never mind them—poor, weak-minded, fickle things; there is nothing I consider a greater nuisance than to have a pack of silly girls dangling about one, that won’t leave a fellow alone; there, you needn’t toss your head and turn up your nose about it, Emily, beneficent Nature’s done that for you sufficiently already. Now will you come, Mr. Coverdale? there are some black rabbits among them, such rum shavers!”
“Are there!” exclaimed Harry, eagerly. “I wonder whether I could contrive to buy a few couples of them; I want to get some black rabbits at the park excessively: come along, for our time is growing short, I expect.” And as he spoke, Coverdale strode off, entirely forgetful of the pretty Emily, with whom, on the strength of her juvenility, he had considered he might safely allow himself to laugh and talk, and to whom he had, therefore, been unconsciously rendering himself very agreeable.
The warren was further than he had expected it would be, and the black rabbits were so long before they chose to show themselves, that Harry began to grew sceptical as to their existence; even when they did appear, a gamekeeper had to be routed out, and terms for the transfer of ten couples to Coverdale Park agreed upon; so that by the time Tom and his companion rejoined the pleasure-seekers, there were but few left to rejoin. These few consisted of the old maiden aunt; a time-honoured female friend of the same—older, uglier, still more like a hippopotamus, and with a double portion of the vinegar of inhuman unkindness in her nature; and, lastly, a plain young lady, the daughter of nobody in particular, who lived with the time-honoured friend as companion, in a state of chronic martyrdom, for which perpetual sacrifice she received thirty pounds a-year, and permission to cry herself to sleep every night, in misty wonderment why so sad a creature as she was, should ever have been born into the world. Besides this uncomfortable trio, who composed the cargo of a brougham, and were rather a tight fit, there remained Mr. Crane and Alice, who, it seemed, were waiting for the phaeton, which had not yet made its appearance.