Bob scouted the idea of such a mishap.
"Johnny knows his way about. They'll be along when they feel like it," he predicted easily, and Mrs. Blair turned to the arrangement of supper with a slight anxiety which she dissembled beneath casual cheerfulness.
In her heart she was vexed. Dreadfully noticeable, she thought, that persistent lagging of theirs. She might have expected it of Johnny Byrd—he had a way of making new girls conspicuous—but she had looked for better things from Maria Angelina.
It was too bad. It showed that as soon as you gave those cloistered girls an inch they took an ell.
Outwardly she spoke with praise of her charge. Julia Martin, a youthful aunt of Bob's, was curious about the girl.
"She's the loveliest creature," she declared with facile enthusiasm, as she and Mrs. Blair delved into a hamper that the Martins' chauffeur and butler had shouldered up before the picnickers.
"And so naïvely young—I don't see how her mother dared let her come so far away."
"Oh—her mother wanted her to see America," Mrs. Blair gave back.
"She must be having a wonderful time," pursued the young lady. "She was simply a picture at the dance. . . . Think of giving a mountain climb the night after the dance," she added in a lower voice. "Bob and his mother are perfectly mad. I think they want to kill their guests off—perhaps there's method in their madness. . . . I never saw anything quite like her," she resumed upon Maria Angelina. "I fancy Johnny Byrd hasn't either!"
"Wasn't she pretty?" agreed Mrs. Blair with pleasantness, laying out the spoons. "Yes, it's very interesting for her to have this," she went on, "before she really knows Roman society. . . . She will come out as soon as she returns from America, I suppose. The eldest sister is being married this fall, and the next sister and Maria Angelina are about of an age."