“I can’t say but I’m disappointed in the olives, Thomas,” she remarked. “They ain’t much to keep the sun off you!”
“They wouldn’t look bad along a brookside in Essex!” returned her husband. “Here they do seem a bit out of place!”
“Well, but, poor things! how are they to help it—with only a trayful of earth under their feet! If you planted a priest on a terrace he would soon be as thin as they!”
They had just passed a very stout priest, in a low broad hat, and cassock, and she laughed merrily at her small joke. They were an English country parson and his wife, abroad for the first time in their now middle-aged lives, and happy as children just out of school. Incapable of disliking anybody, there was no unkindness in Mrs. Porson’s laughter.
“I don’t see,” she resumed, “how they ever can have a picnic in such a country!”
“Why not?”
“There’s no place to sit down!”
“Here’s a whole hill-side!”
“But so hard!” she answered. “There’s not an inch of turf or grass in any direction!”
The pair—equally plump, and equally good-natured—laughed together.