default of anything better, I feel I shall eat you."
In truth, I am in great haste to allay the pangs of hunger, feeling as if our last meal had been consumed about a week or ten days ago.
"Yes, I'm hungry too," says Miss Kingsley, as though surprised at herself, though she is, in fact, that most charming of all things, a lovely girl with an honest appetite. I regard her with increasing admiration. She is gowned in a pretty blue serge that fits her lissome figure to perfection, and her eyes are lustrous and gleaming.
Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red,
is slightly parted as she smiles on our "melancholy Jaques," the forlorn Brooke, with a sweetness that should have melted a heart of stone.
It melts Brooke, certainly, to deeper love, but fails to lift him from his slough of despond. He is so deeply embedded in its mud that not even Beauty's self has power to raise him.
He regards her with gloomy appreciation. To him it seems
That, as of light the summer sunnë sheen
Passeth the star, right so over measúre
She fairer is than any creatúre.
"Yes, luncheon by all means," says Carrie briskly, and soon we are seated at that pleasantest of all meals, now pleasanter than ever because of its being an al fresco arrangement. But we are not allowed to enjoy it properly. The imminent fear of an outbreak between the youths, the many warm reminders that but a treacherous peace is reigning, the badly-subdued rancor that bursts out in tiny but deadly flashes now and then, all combine to destroy with ruthless force our vain endeavors to be innocently mirthful. Once I make a praiseworthy, if mistaken, effort to promote good-fellowship all round, but, Jones having openly declined to see it, and Brooke having "gorgonized me from head to foot with a stony British stare," I give it up, and subside into dull silence and the pie on my left. Perhaps, indeed, to be more correct, the pie subsides into me. It little matters: all is gloom.
The luncheon is irreproachable, the pâtés beyond praise, the wine very good, there is not so much as one grain of salt in the cream, or a suspicion of sugar on the chicken, yet, nevertheless, these young men damp all our spirits and crush our rising wit. As a rule, I am an excessively meek member of that meekest of all classes called husbands,—there is hardly ever a moment when a child might not in safety play with me,—but yet I can be roused. Just now, seeing the havoc these miserable young men are making of our day, I wax indignant, and permit my temper to get the better of me.
As we all rise from our impromptu table, I step aside to where Carrie is standing alone and make my assault upon her.
"Now how do you like your young men?" I whisper to her, with true bitterness of soul.
"They are not my young men," returns she, with dignity, surveying me from a moral height that dwarfs my material inches and shatters my nerves. "If they were, I should know at once how to reduce them to order and show them how to conduct themselves."
There is a hidden warning in these words I am not slow to mark,—a warning I feel I shall do well not to despise. So, conjuring up the weak shadow of a smile, I tell her I quite agree with her, and relapse into my usual submission. She is graciously pleased to accept my change of mood, and instantly gives way to her own grievance on the same subject.
"It is really too bad," she says. "I do all I can for them, and they are worse than prize-fighters. I'm sure I don't see what is to be the end of it all."
"Jones will be the end of it," say I, in a deep, mysterious tone. "You mark my words, she means to have Jones. It is my secret conviction that she likes him best."
"Nonsense! It is Mr. Brooke, you mean," says Carrie. "He is most devoted to her, and she never repels his attentions. He is most persistent in the way he follows her about, and—and all that sort of thing."
