The matter was the "Jesuit creepers" and the hen combined, which had sent all the party into a little fit of laughter, from which Mr. Heathcote could not recover.
"I don't see anything to double you up like a jack-knife," said Mr. Ketchum, in allusion to his guest's way of stooping over and having the laughs, as it were, shaken out of him by a superior force, while he got out at intervals,—
"Jest—creep—High—such a fellow!" in staccato jerks that made every one else laugh from sympathy.
"I call 'em that because Mother Schmidt made them for me so that I could steal a march on my mother-in-law, and she's a Catholic and knew how to do it. Talking of Catholics and what Washington calls the 'Peskypalians,' who is going to church to-day?"
"I am going to walk over to Dale with Bijou Brown and her father," said
Ethel.
"That isn't as nice a church as ours. We will take the others into Kalsing, eh, husband?" said Mabel; "that is, if they will come."
"I will go to the scaffold with Mrs. Ketchum," protested Sir Robert gallantly. "What do you youngsters say?"
"Ramsay and I thought we would walk over to that little village on the crest of a hill that one can see from my window," said Mr. Heathcote.
"You had much better go to church, —much better. But of course your soul is your own," said Sir Robert.
"You won't have much body left when you get back: it is a good twenty miles," remarked Mr. Ketchum.