We were staying at Whitney Hall. Miss Deveen was there on a visit (Cattledon included, of course), and Sir John wrote over to invite us for a few days to meet her: the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, I and Tod. And, there we were, enjoying ourselves like anything.
It was Sir John himself who proposed the picnic. He called it a gipsy-party: indeed, the word “picnic” had hardly come in then, for this happened many a year ago. The weather was so hot indoors that Sir John thought it might be an agreeable change to live a day in the open air; and lie in the shade and look up at the blue sky through the flickering trees. So the cook was told to provide fowls and ham and pigeon pies, with apple puffs, salads, and creams.
“The large carriage and the four-wheeled chaise shall take the ladies,” observed Sir John, “and I dare say they can make room for me and the Squire amongst them; it’s a short distance, and we shan’t mind a little crowding. You young men can walk.”
So it was ordained. The carriages started, and we after them, William and Henry Whitney disputing as to which was the best route to take: Bill holding out for that by Goose Brook, Harry for that by the river. It ended in our dividing: I went with Bill his way; the rest of the young Whitneys and Tod the other, with Featherston’s nephew; an overgrown young giant of seventeen, about six feet high, who had been told he might come.
Barring the heat, it was a glorious walk: just as it was a glorious day. Passing Goose Brook (a little stream meandering through the trees, with a rustic bridge across it: though why it should bear that name I never knew), we soon came to the coppice end of the wood.
“Now,” said Bill to me, “shall we plunge into the wood at once, and so onwards right through it; or skirt round by the Granary?”
“The wood will be the shadiest,” I answered.
“And pleasantest. I’m not at all sure, though, Johnny, that I shan’t lose my way in it. It has all kinds of bewildering tricks and turnings.”
“Never mind if you do. We can find it again.”
“We should have been safe to meet some of those Leonards had we gone by the Granary,” observed Bill, as we turned into the wood, where just at present the trees were thin, “and they might have been wanting to join us, pushing fellows that they are! I don’t like them.”