'I hope we haven't kept you long?' said Bessie.
'Not more than a quarter of an hour,' answered Urania, meekly; 'but that seems rather long in a broiling sun. You always have such insufferably hot weather on your birthdays, Bessie.'
'It will be cool enough on the hills by-and-by,' said Bess, apologetically.
'I daresay there will be a cold wind,' returned Urania, who wore an unmistakable air of discontent. 'There generally is on these unnatural September days.'
'One would think you bore a grudge against the month of September because I was born in it,' retorted Bessie. And then, remembering her obligations, she hastened to add, 'How can I thank you sufficiently for that exquisite scent-case? It is far too lovely.'
'I am very glad you like it. One hardly knows what to choose.'
Miss Rylance had taken her seat in the landau by this time, and they were bowling along the smooth high road at that gentle jog-trot pace affected by a country gentleman's coachman.
The day was heavenly; the wind due south; a day on which life—mere sensual existence—is a delight. The landscape still wore its richest summer beauty—not a leaf had fallen. They were going upward, to the hilly region between Kingthorpe and Winchester, to a spot where there was a table-shaped edifice of stones, supposed to be of Druidic origin.
The young Wendovers were profoundly indifferent to the Druids, and to that hypothetical race who lived ages before the Druids, and have broken out all over the earth in stony excrescences, as yet vaguely classified. That three-legged granite table, whose origin was lost in the remoteness of past time, seemed to the young Wendovers a thing that had been created expressly for their amusement, to be climbed upon or crawled under as the fancy moved them. It was a capital rallying-point for a picnic or a gipsy tea-drinking.
'We are to have no grown-ups to-day,' said Reginald, looking down from his place beside the coachman. 'The pater and mater are away, and Aunt Betsy has a headache; so we can have things all our own way.'