"Leave Olly to me, please. I am a perfect child-tamer, and guarantee to exorcise his seven evil spirits in less than no time. Meanwhile, sit you down and rest."
"Oh, I don't need rest. If you'll undertake Olly I'll help put back the lunch things. Picnics are quite like the Biblical feasts: five loaves and two fishes somehow always make twelve basketfuls to take up."
"And you are always a true disciple at the feast, Miss Phebe, intent only upon ministering to others."
Phebe laughed her own peculiarly light-hearted, gay laugh. "That is a much prettier way of putting it than Gerald's. She says I make myself maid-of-all-work."
"Miss Gerald, of course, doesn't approve of such service."
"But you do. So I needn't mind her blame."
"But I shall blame too, Miss Phebe, when you overdo yourself. I don't see why others' recreation need be all work for you. Let each take his share of both the pleasure and the toil."
"But you see this is my share, Mr. Halloway, because I can't help in any better way. I don't know enough to entertain people's guests just by talking to them, as Gerald does. You forget how dull I am."
"So I do," said Denham, gravely. "I forget it all the time. Indeed, the forgetfulness has quite become chronic. Now I'll find Olly, and we'll all go at the dishes together and make a game of it."
Certainly Denham Halloway must have possessed some secret charm in his management of children, for by the time Gerald turned her boat to the shore, he stood at the bank to meet them, with Olly by his side, as amiable a little fellow as any Sunday-school-book hero ever born.