“Well, Sir Richard, I am London-bred, you know, and therefore your country eggs, by comparison, are excellent.”
“I wish I could think,” said the baronet with stateliness, “that in other matters we equally gained by contrast with Town, in your opinion.”
“I believe London is the place to get everything good,” remarked Walter sharply.
“We are going to-day, Miss Aynton,” continued the baronet, without noticing the interruption, “to offer you something which really cannot be got in town, and which hitherto the state of the weather has forbidden even here”——
“Ah, for shame, Richard!” interrupted Letty, holding up her hands. “Now, that was to be a surprise for Rose.—It's a picnic, my dear. I daresay now you scarcely know what that is.”
“I can tell you, then,” ejaculated Walter with acidity: “it's packing up all the things you would have in the ordinary course at luncheon in a comfortable manner—except the bread, or something equally necessary, which is always left behind—and carrying them about six miles to the top of an unprotected hill—in this particular case, to a tower without a roof to it—there to be eaten without tables or chairs, and in positions the most likely to produce indigestion that the human body can adapt itself to.”
“I have always been told that being in a bad humour is the most certain thing to cause what you eat to disagree with you,” observed Letty demurely.—“Never mind what Walter says. I am sure you will be delighted, dear Rose; we are going to Belcomb, a sort of shooting-box belonging to us, about five miles away, and built by grandpapa.”
“Commonly termed 'Lisgard's Folly,'” added Master Walter.
“Not by his descendants, however, I should hope, with one exception,” observed Sir Richard haughtily.—“I will thank you, Walter, not to cut my newspaper.”
Master Walter had seized the paper-knife as though it had been a more deadly weapon, and was engaged in disembowelling one of a multiplicity of newspapers which had just arrived by post.