Alice looked round at him with deepening gravity.
“Confound those fellows!” said the photographer, glancing at his hastily developed plate. “They moved.”
XVII.
The picnic party gathered itself up after the lunch, and while some of the men, emulous of Mavering's public spirit, helped some of the ladies to pack the dishes and baskets away under the wagon seats, others threw a corked bottle into the water, and threw stones at it. A few of the ladies joined them, but nobody hit the bottle, which was finally left bobbing about on the tide.
Mrs. Brinkley addressed the defeated group, of whom her husband was one, as they came up the beach toward the wagons. “Do you think that display was calculated to inspire the lower middle classes with respectful envy?”
Her husband made himself spokesman for the rest: “No; but you can't tell how they'd have felt if we'd hit it.”
They all now climbed to a higher level, grassy and smooth, on the bluff, from which there was a particular view; and Mavering came, carrying the wraps of Mrs. Pasmer and Alice, with which he associated his overcoat. A book fell out of one of the pockets when he threw it down.
Miss Anderson picked the volume up. “Browning! He reads Browning! Superior young man!”
“Oh, don't say that!” pleaded Mavering.