“Ages ago. They surmised that you two must be lost, stolen, or strayed.”
“Then where are they?”
“Making themselves useful. Johnny Ludlow, I wish you’d go after them, and tell them of all things to bring a corkscrew. No one can find ours, and we think it is left behind.”
“Why, here’s the corkscrew, in my pocket,” called out Sir John. “Whatever brings it there? And—— What’s that great thing, moving down to us?”
It was Tod with a wooden stool upon his head, legs upwards. Rednal the gamekeeper lived close by, and it was arranged that we should borrow chairs, and things, from his cottage.
We sat down to dinner at last—and a downright jolly dinner it was. Plenty of good things to eat; cider, lemonade, and champagne to drink: and every one talking together, and bursts of laughter.
“Look at Cattledon!” cried Bill in my ear. “She is as merry as the rest of us.”
So she was. A whole sea of smiles on her thin face. She wore a grey gown as genteel as herself, bands of black velvet round her pinched-in waist and long throat. Cattledon looked like vinegar in general, it’s true; but I don’t say she was bad at heart. Even she could be genial to-day, and the rest of us were off our head with jollity, the Squire’s face and Sir John’s beaming back at one another.
If we had only foreseen how pitifully the day was to end! It makes me think of some verses I once learnt out of a journal—Chambers’s, I believe. They were written by Mrs. Plarr.
“There are twin Genii, who, strong and mighty,
Under their guidance mankind retain;
And the name of the lovely one is Pleasure,
And the name of the loathly one is Pain.
Never divided, where one can enter
Ever the other comes close behind;
And he who in Pleasure his thoughts would centre
Surely Pain in the search shall find!