"It is wonderful for you to be able to climb that way," said our courtly host. "I have never seen a young lady so agile."
"But I shall have to learn to climb in shoes," sighed our movie star. "Douglas Fairbanks can."
CHAPTER XI
THE PICNIC
When a crowd of young people get together there is sure to be a picnic if there is a spark of life in them. There were many sparks of life in this crowd, enough to supply many picnics.
We had been at Maxton ten days when the picnic came off, and we had had ten days of unalloyed fun. Of course, we had many gags on each other and jokes that were only jokes because we were on a house-party together. Those jokes if told would sound very flat, indeed. I believe there is no bore so great as the person who has been off with a crowd for a fortnight and comes back and tries to bring to life all the silly jokes that were perpetrated. They may have been brilliant and witty at the time, but it takes the setting and the circumstance to make them appear so to someone not blessed with an invitation to said house-party.
Mr. Tucker had come and gone and come again when we decided to go on the picnic. His faithful Henry Ford could bring him to Price's Landing in about one-fourth of the time it took if one trusted to the deliberate meanderings of the steamboat. He was a favorite with all of the party, young and old, and his arrival was hailed with delight. Miss Maria put on her best and filmiest lace cap for his benefit, and to her delight, that wonderful man noticed it and talked to her about old lace with a knowledge that astounded her.
He told me afterwards he found lace a topic which always interested old ladies, so he had deliberately made it his business to find out about lace and be prepared to converse on the subject. He also had some general knowledge of crochet stitches, and knew how much yarn it took to knit a sweater. It was too ludicrous to see him solemnly talking fancy work with some ancient dame. Tweedles and I have been sent off into hysterics when we have found him bending over a rainbow afghan, with some old lady eagerly asking his advice as to the depth of the border or something else equally feminine. He seldom went home, after a week-end spent at some resort, that he did not have a commission to match embroidery silk for some lady who had calculated wrong, or send back a bale of wool for some energetic person who had suddenly decided to knit socks for the poor Belgians or a sweater for a long-suffering male relative. Certainly Zebedee's interest and knowledge on the subject of lace caps would have won Miss Maria's affections had they not already been his.