Just before they started, Mrs. Macomber came out of the house carrying a small package which she brought round and entrusted to Joe's care. She was wearing a stiffly starched apron and her hair had been plastered down and her face scrubbed so that the deep rings in the flabby flesh below her eyes were thereby accentuated. Very pointedly she looked at Joe and very definitely she spoke:
"You'll see that they get back at a decent hour? And don't let 'em go in the water." It might have been the tone with which she exhorted Mr. Macomber. At any rate, Miss Penny pursed her lips and looked at Joe and then significantly at Miss Ardle, and ever after that made highly cryptic remarks half aloud, to herself, to the general effect that some folks' families always were so good to them and how unhappy it was to be an orphan.
They went to a hot, stuffy little grove by the side of a disconsolate stream where mosquitoes hummed and tiny gnat creatures were vulgarly familiar. Joe carried the baskets down a steep and rocky path to the very edge of the brook, scratching his face with stinging briars and tough, elastic little switches from ubiquitous bushes. The two young men in the back seat ostentatiously assisted the ladies in the descent with much demonstration and much unnecessary pawing. Joe sat down and waited for Myrtle, who was coming with Hawkins, a look of resignation on his face.
When at length she finally arrived she paid him no attention in spite of the fact that he had not seen her for over a whole day. Later on she gave him some directions in the arranging of the lunch and the building of the fire, in a strictly impersonal tone, very much the same as she had used with her mother. Joe was a bit puzzled, but he complied.
They went straight to the business of the lunch. Everything was spread out on a white tablecloth, Mrs. Macomber's second best. There was a baffling variety of sandwiches, olive and peanut-butter, lettuce and cucumber—quite soggy and dangerous—devilled ham, thin bread and butter, and a small pile whose filling was made up chiefly of discarded chicken scraps. There was a highly indigestible chocolate cake sodden enough to serve as a boat's anchor, a great quantity of jumbo pickles, and a dozen bottles of near beer. This last Mr. Glotch welcomed with a stentorian shout ably echoed by Mr. Trumpeter, each of whom fell to and consumed a bottle with much assumption of inebriety. After dissembling complete disintegration and coma, Mr. Glotch raised his head from the ground and mourned, "Oh, boy! The guy that named this juice sure was a bum judge of distance." "You said it," echoed Mr. Trumpeter, and they were rewarded by a series of titters from the ladies which encouraged them into still further excesses.
Joe felt weary. He was fortunately deaf to much of what went on about him, being concerned in the baffling mystery of Myrtle's behaviour. Was she provoked at him? Surely not. Was Hawkins, perhaps an erstwhile rival, putting in a bid for first honours? She was paying no attention to Hawkins whatever. Had he been talking too much with Miss Ardle or the coy Miss Penny? Perhaps all she needed was waking up.
They had demolished the lunch and were sitting about the wreckage in mournful speculation of its vanished glories; Myrtle was seated between the two comedians; Joe between the two ladies; Hawkins some distance in the background, on a rock. With no warning whatever Joe sprang to his feet, strode over to the lovely Myrtle in her filmy white dress, and picked her bodily from the ground.
"Let's go swimming," he shouted before a single member of the crowd could give utterance.
He carried her in a couple of strides to the edge of the little stream and there held her threateningly over the bank. The two young men shouted approval and Myrtle began to squirm. At first she demanded coyly to be set down, and then with more sharpness in her tone. Joe looked into her eyes. They were unfathomable. Her peach-bloom cheeks were quite pink. But there were a few tiny wrinkles about her mouth that he had never seen before. Made her look older, somehow. He softened, for the lovely burden was becoming delightfully heavy.
"Think I'd better not?" he addressed the crowd.