“Mercy!” Lady Eveley exclaimed, in meek distress. “They don’t really try to throw you, do they, Louise?”
This caused an uproar. Louise reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “Of course not, dear. They only try to throw teases like Mr. Tulk-Leamington and devils incarnate like Mr. Cutty. Sundown is a lamb; you’ll like him so well that you’ll be sorry when you arrive at the picnic. Besides I’ll ride beside you all the way.”
“Sundown wouldn’t throw a fly,” Mr. Cutty broke in. “Mrs. Eveley has to flick ’em off with her riding crop.”
Groans drowned this sally and Mr. Cutty nearly lost a spoonful of egg as a result of a lunge directed at him by the prospective owlet.
Through the babel, Keble and the older men, having exhausted the immediate possibilities of prize cattle, were discussing the half-completed golf course, oblivious to frivolous issues. Only once did Mr. Windrom seek to intrude, having overheard something about “throwing a fly,” and this sent the younger generation off into a new gale of unhallowed mirth.
Late in the afternoon the picnickers returned in various states of dampness and soreness, but exuding a contentment for which Louise’s vigilance was largely responsible. Dare and Mr. Cutty rowed to a secluded cove to swim; Ernest went to edit his official memoranda; Mrs. Windrom retired to sleep; Lady Eveley racked her head for words to fill up a letter; the old men resorted to billiards; and Girlie challenged Miriam at tennis.
Louise held court in the kitchen, where she had gone to make some special pastries and to wheedle, scold, encourage, bully, sting, and jolly the augmented staff into supreme efforts. She swore that the future of the Empire hinged on the frothiness of the mousse. The cream was not to be whipped a minute before eight; the grapes were not to be dried, but brought in straight from the ice-box in a cold perspiration, and Gertie was for heaven’s sake not to bump into Griggs on her way to the side table, as she had the night before.
When her batter was consigned to the oven she ran out to the greenhouse for flowers, and saw Keble and his sister stretched in deck chairs near the tennis court. She waved her shears and speculated as to the subject of their chat.
The subject, as she might have guessed, was herself.
“Why didn’t you give us an inkling?” Alice was saying. “Here you’ve been married nearly three years, and you’ve kept this spark of the divine fire all to yourself.”