“All right, auntie,” replied Bob, bustling about with great zeal, “I will get it ready in a jiffy. But, where’s the tea?”
“It’s in the teapot, I suppose, my dear; and you’ll find that in the hamper with the teacups. Nellie and I thought we wouldn’t unpack them until they were wanted.”
Nell, who had been sitting between her aunt and the Captain, on hearing her name introduced, at once got up to help Bob; but in spite of every search, neither of them could find the tea.
As in the case of the bread, the “good Sarah” had forgotten it; for, neither in teapot, teacups or elsewhere could the tea be seen!
“Well, ma’am!” exclaimed the Captain on hearing the painful news. “That bates Banagher, as one of your countrymen would say.”
“I’m sure nobody could be more sorry than I am,” pleaded poor Mrs Gilmour, whom this second mishap completely overwhelmed, “I did so long for a cup of tea!”
“Well, well,” said the Captain when he was able to speak, after a series of chuckles that made him almost choke, “the next time that a picnic’s in the wind I’d take care, if I were you, to overhaul your hamper before starting, to see that nothing is forgotten.”
“It’s all ‘that good Sarah,’ auntie,” cried Bob slily; and, then, they all had another laugh, the misfortunes of the day being provocative, somehow or other, of the greatest fun. “Oh that ‘good Sarah’!”
It appeared as if Mrs Gilmour would be the only sufferer in having to go without her tea: but, at this critical point, Hellyer came to the rescue.
“Beg pardon, mum,” said he, stepping up to her with a deferential touch of his forelock; “but I knows the woman in the keeper’s lodge where you comed in, and I thinks as how I could borrow a bit o’ tea from her, if you likes.”