"Mrs. Kirby," advised Trixie, with more than her usual empressement, "suck a pebble!"
Mrs. Kirby wept, thinking she had been insulted.
Somebody asked if they were going to boil the water themselves, or get it from the farm. And Lulu cried that it was ever so much more fun doing everything themselves. Unmoved by the prospect of fun, Jim Collins said: "I plump for the farm; less bother. I hate bother."
"But nobody is to unpack the parcels except Auntie Em and me," Trixie shouted hilariously, her hat wildly askew. "Tea is to be a great surprise."
"It will be," Kathleen assented; "unless someone takes the kettle down to the farm, to find out if they'll boil it for us. Go on, Gareth——" Her unspoken comment was: "You haven't done much yet...."
Reluctantly he took up the kettle, and strolled slowly towards the farm. He had no desire to be more closely associated with the picnic "fun." He was not enjoying the picnic ... had wanted to be left alone that afternoon, to lounge and muse in peace in a corner of the harbour ... heavy blue-black shadow cast by a jut of stone wall ... uneven flight of steps, and water lap-lapping coldly at their base, leaving ever another step bare and glistening as the tide receded.... Why wasn't he there, instead of inextricably attached to this meandering bleating flock of people, with their red moist faces, and hats of crude disharmony with the woodland.... Impossible to detach himself from them. ("It's no fun unless we all stick together!")... Pestering flies and ants and midges.... Mrs. Kirby and Mrs. Worley and Miss Frazer sitting in ungraceful attitudes on the grass, and screaming to the males of the party to witness their sense of the pastoral.... Gareth could hear them as he returned from the farm.... With acute distaste he noticed how unmercifully the sun-shafts struck crude high lights upon the human nose.
"They won't."
"Won't what?"
"Boil the water for us." Gareth sat down, with the air of one who has accomplished his best.
"Nonsense. Why?"