“How solemn you all look!” cried Anna.
“Don’t we!” said Helen. “I have been having a lecture read to me.”
“By whom?”
“Every one here—except Johnny Ludlow. And I am sure I hope he was edified. I wonder when tea is going to be ready!”
“Directly, I should say,” said Anna: “for here comes Mrs. Ness with the cups and saucers.”
I ran forward to help her bring the things. Rednal’s trim wife, a neat, active woman with green eyes and a baby in her arms, was following with plates of bread-and-butter and cake, and the news that the kettle was “on the boil.” Presently the table was spread; and William, who had come back to us, took up the baby’s whistle and blew a blast, prolonged and shrill.
The stragglers heard it, understood it was the signal for their return, and came flocking in. The Squire and Sir John said they had been sitting under the trees and talking: our impression was, they had been sleeping. The young Whitneys appeared in various stages of heat; Tod and Featherston’s nephew smelt of smoke. The first cups of tea had gone round, and Tod was making for Rednal’s cottage with a notice that the bread-and-butter had come to an end, when I saw a delicate little fair-haired face peering at us from amid the trees.
“Halloa!” cried the Squire, catching sight of the face at the same moment. “Who on earth’s that?”
“It’s the child we saw this morning—the gipsy’s child,” exclaimed William Whitney. “Here, you little one! Stop! Come here.”
He only meant to give her a piece of cake: but the child ran off with a scared look and fleet step, and was lost in the trees.