“I am sure I have been hunting after you very often,” said I, which, perhaps, was rather more than I ought to have said; “but it isn’t easy for one who is a stranger to find people in such a crowd.”
“I don’t know that,” said she, with a pretty little toss of her head; “where there’s a will there’s a way. If I hadn’t found friends, I might have been alone all day—and there are three or four of the shows I have never seen, now.”
I began to look as sorry as I could, while I thought what to answer, when the young man who was close to her tried to steal some of the cake; she turned round quickly, and rapped his fingers with the back of her knife, and he pretended to be hurt. She only laughed, and went on cutting up the cake, but she called him Jack, and seemed so intimate with him that it put me out, and I sat down on the other side of the circle, some way off.
“It’s all right,” said the Parson, looking up from the fire; “boils splendidly—give me the tea.”
Miss Lucy handed him a little parcel of tea from her bag, and he put it into the kettle.
“I declare we have forgotten the milk,” said she; “do run and fetch it, Jack—it’s in a bottle under the back seat of the four-wheel.”
I jumped up before Jack, who hardly moved, and ran off to fetch the milk; for which she gave me a pleasant smile when I came back, and I felt better pleased, and enjoyed the tea and cake and bread and butter, and all the talk over it, very much; except that I couldn’t stand this Jack, who was forcing her to notice him every minute, by stealing her teaspoon or her cake, or making some of his foolish remarks.
The sun set splendidly before we had finished, and it began to get a little chilly.
“Well,” said Joe, jumping up, “I’m off to get the horse put to. You’d better be starting, Lu; you won’t be down hill much before dark, now, and there’s no moon—worse luck.”