“You have your work—you have been absorbed in your work.”
“Have I? I’m afraid that is not altogether true!”
Margot glanced up surprised, met the dark eyes fixed full upon her, and looked hurriedly away.
“I have been finding it increasingly difficult to be absorbed,” he continued dreamily. “I have heard you all laughing and talking together downstairs, and my thoughts have wandered. Once you sang... Do you remember that wet afternoon when you sang? I did not seem able to write at all that afternoon.”
The basket was full of fruit by now; Margot lifted it by one handle; George Elgood lifted it by the other. They walked down the sunlit garden into the house.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Picnic.
Every one agreed that there never had been such a picnic, that it was impossible that such a picnic would ever occur again. In those northern regions it is a rare joy to find a day that is a very incarnation of summer; hot, yet not too hot; bright, yet not glaringly oppressive; a day when even the old and ailing feel it a joy to be alive, and the young and strong unconsciously break into song, and find it impossible to curtail their footsteps to a staid walking-pace.