“First rate!” cried Bartley, climbing to the seat which Mr. Macallister left vacant. “We'll lead the way.”
Those who followed had difficulty in keeping their buggy in sight. Sometimes Bartley stopped long enough for them to come up, and then, after a word or two of gay banter, was off again.
They had taken possession of the picnic grounds, and Mrs. Macallister was disposing shawls for rugs and drapery, while Bartley, who had got the horse out, and tethered where he could graze, was pushing the buggy out of the way by the shafts, when the carryall came up.
“Don't we look quite domestic?” she asked of the arriving company, in her neat English tone, and her rising English inflection. “You know I like this,” she added, singling Halleck out for her remark, and making it as if it were brilliant. “I like being out of doors, don't you know. But there's one thing I don't like: we weren't able to get a drop of champagne at that ridiculous hotel. They told us they were not allowed to keep 'intoxicating liquors.' Now I call that jolly stupid, you know. I don't know whatever we shall do if you haven't brought something.”
“I believe this is a famous spring,” said Halleck.
“How droll you are! Spring, indeed!” cried Mrs. Macallister. “Is that the way you let your brother make game of people, Miss Halleck?” She directed a good deal of her rattle at Olive; she scarcely spoke to Marcia, but she was nevertheless furtively observant of her. Mr. Macallister had his rattle too, which, after trying it unsatisfactorily upon Marcia, he plied almost exclusively for Olive. He made puns; he asked conundrums; he had all the accomplishments which keep people going in a lively, mirthful, colonial society; and he had the idea that he must pay attentions and promote repartee. His wife and he played into each other's hands in their jeux d'esprit; and kept Olive's inquiring Boston mind at work in the vain endeavor to account for and to place them socially. Bartley hung about Mrs. Macallister, and was nearly as obedient as her husband. He felt that the Hallecks disapproved his behavior, and that made him enjoy it; he was almost rudely negligent of Olive.
The composition of the party left Marcia and Halleck necessarily to each other, and she accepted this arrangement in a sort of passive seriousness; but Halleck saw that her thoughts wandered from her talk with him, and that her eyes were always turning with painful anxiety to Bartley. After their lunch, which left them with the whole afternoon before them, Marcia said, in a timid effort to resume her best leadership of the affair, “Bartley, don't you think they would like to see the view from the Devil's Backbone?”
“Would you like to see the view from the Devil's Backbone?” he asked in turn of Mrs. Macallister.
“And what is the Devil's Backbone?” she inquired.
“It's a ridge of rocks on the bluff above here,” said Bartley, nodding his head vaguely towards the bank.