“No? Well, then, flirtations compulsory; first, with Miss Milly, Queen of the Day, afterwards with our private Queens of Hearts,” and he chanted,
“The Queen of Hearts she brought some Tarts
Unto a Picnic gay;
The King of Hearts he ate the Tarts
And gave his Heart away.”
It is not very important, but be it hereby known unto thee, O outsider of Kenosha, Stamboul, Fond du Lac, Paris, Natchez under the Hill, London, Lecompton, or Jerusalem! that the Dumplings of Newport is an old stone fort, not are certain apples enclosed in certain unwholesome strata of dough.
Picnics go to the Dumplings as a shad to fresh water in spring, as a moth to a candle, as a swain to a nymph. They go there in boats over the smooth bay, across the strait, where a soft, lulling prolongation of the distant ocean swell reaches the navigator with sweet reminder motion. When picnics arrive at the Dumplings, they stroll about; their better halves are handed over the rocks by their worse halves; they view that crumbling, cheese-shaped object, the fort, and say sweet things of salt water and sunshine. They chat. They romp. Then comes the climax—to eat the picnic. Picnics are properly eaten with the fingers. The idea is to return to Arcadian manners.
Picnics being well known by all the fair and brave, who deserve each other, as so charming and offering such charming opportunities for attaining their deserts, there is no wonder that everyone was delighted with Mrs. Wilkes’s scheme. Miss Millicent, as the heroine of the occasion, gave deep thought to her toilet. She was resolved to be captivating as Miss Millicent, that is for herself; not as Miss Center, that is for her fortune. She had always adorers enough, besides the inevitable Dulger, but he was her thrall and the others she had flirted through. She had been observed to be dissatisfied of late. Was it that she had failed with Sir Comeguys? Or did some other novelty refuse to enter her toils? Or was there some escaped one whom she wished to beguile back again with penitential wiles? Or was she a little ashamed of her exacting, not immoral, cicisbeism with poor Billy? For whatever reason, Miss Milly seemed a little disappointed, and Mrs. Wilkes, not thinking it proper that any of her protégées should be out of spirits, hoped well of the picnic, that it would restore the heiress to amiability. So Mrs. Wilkes shopped extravagantly with Miss Milly and the girls.
Clara and Diana were of course to be of the party. They were really the belles. The men who fell in love with Diana that summer, and some of them were stanch old belle-ringers, say that she was the culmination; that there never was and never will be another like her. And then, some stanchest old member of the pack gives tongue and says “Except Clara,” and the whole pack cry “Except Clara”—Clara not second in order, but only subsequent in thought.
Everybody, in a word, was to be at the picnic. Everybody means thirty or forty people. Good Mrs. Wilkes had a moment’s hesitation about Mrs. Budlong, and privately consulted Peter Skerrett, her Grand Vizier. Peter, with his usual thoughtfulness, pointed out that Miss Arabella couldn’t go without her mother; so Mrs. B. was invited. Mrs. Aquiline, née Retroussée, had recently begun a dead set at Mr. Waddy. She engaged ardently in the project. There would be a band and a boatload of champagne and a sail home by moonlight.