"Will you cover me with leaves, if I am lost, Bobbie?" said Mr.
Audley; but as soon as she found that his attention was gained, she returned to the charge.
"Please, did it come from your own home? and what is it, really?"
"Why, Bobbie, I am hardly prepared to say whether it is a Hamburg or a Houdan, or a more unambitious Dorking. Cannot you eat in comfort without being certified?"
"The species will be enough for her without the varieties," said her father. "You have given us a new experience, you see, Audley, and we may make a curious study of contrasts--not of Audley and myself Mother dear, but of the two Underwoods who seem to be in this place together to-day."
"Who is it?" was of course the cry, and the inquiry was in Mrs.
Underwood"s eyes, though it did not pa.s.s her quiet lips. It was to her that he answered, "Yes, my dear--Tom; I have little doubt that it is he. He was a very rich man when last I heard of him."
"Is that the man at Vale Leston?" whispered Alda to Felix.
"Oh, I hope he is not coming here to insult us."
"Bosh!" said Felix; "that man"s name is Fulbert. Listen, if you want to hear."
"Twenty years ago," continued Mr. Underwood, "I thought myself a prodigiously fine fellow--with my arms full of prizes at Harrow, and my Trinity scholarship--and could just, in the plenitude of my presumption, extend a little conceited patronage to that unlucky dunce, Tom Underwood, the lag of every form, and thankful for a high stool at old Kedge"s. And now my children view a cold fowl as an unprecedented monster, while his might, I imagine, revel in "pates de foie gras."
"O Papa, but we like you so much better as you are!" cried Geraldine.
"Eh, Cherry!" said Mr. Underwood, "what say you? Shouldn"t you like me better if I were buying that king beech tree, and all the rest of it?"
Cherry edged nearer, mastered his hand, and looked up in his face with a whole soul of negation in her wistful eyes. "No, no, no--just as you are," she whispered.
Some mood of curiosity had come over him, and he turned an interrogative look elsewhere.
Alda spoke. "Of course, it would be horrid not to be a clergyman; but it is a great shame."
"No," said Wilmet, "it can"t be a shame for this cousin Tom to have earned a fortune fairly--if he has; but"--and she pressed her hands tightly together as she looked at the thin worn faces of her parents- --"one can"t help wishing. Why do things always go hard and wrong?"
and the tears dimmed her bright eyes.
"Because--they _don"t_," said her father, with a half-serious quaintness that vexed her, and forced her to turn away to let the tear drop.
Clement said, in his calm voice, "How can you be all so repining and foolish!"
And Mr. Underwood, almost in lazy mischief, pursued his experiment.
"Eh, Felix, you are the party most concerned--what say you?"
"Most concerned?" Felix looked up surprised, then recollected himself. "I don"t care," he said, with an appearance of gruff sullenness; but his father could not content himself without continuing in a semi-teazing tone, "Don"t care--eh? "Why this Centry Underwood once belonged to our family--that"s the reason Tom is after it. If I had not scouted old Kedge, you would be prancing about here, a Harrovian, counting the partridges."
"Don"t!" broke in Felix, with a growl.
"Never fear, Fee"" cried Edgar, with his hand on his brother"s shoulder; if one man got on in life, another may. If one only was grown up and had the start----" and his blue eyes sparkled.
"I did not know Care"s clutch had been so tight," sighed Mr.
Underwood, half to himself, half to his wife. It is not safe, my gentle Enid, to try such experiments. Eh!" rousing himself, what"s that? Have the mob there a right to any sentiments?"
"Only," cried Clement, shouting with laughter, Lance thought you were wanted to hold a high stool for Jack Ketch."
"For a green goose!" shouted Lance, indignantly.
"Oh! cried Robina, in the tone of one who had made a scientific discovery, "did the goose have a high stool to lay the golden eggs?"
"A most pertinent question, Bobbie, and much more reasonable than mine," said Mr Underwood; while his colleague gravely answered, "Yes, Bobbie, golden eggs are almost always laid by geese on high stools."
"I"ve got a picture of one! It has got a long neck and long legs, quoth Bobbie.
"It is only a flamingo, you little goose yourself," cried Clement.
"Here is the golden egg of the present," said Mr. Underwood, replenishing the boy"s plate with that delicious pie. "What"s that beverage, Wilmet? Any horrible brew of your own?"
"No, it is out of Mr. Audley"s hamper."
"The universal hamper. It is like the fairy gifts that produced unlimited eatables. I dreaded cowslip wine or periwinkle broth."
"No, no, Papa," sighed Alda, "we only once made cowslip tea at Vale Leston."
"Vale Leston is prohibited for the day.--Master Felix Chester Underwood, your good health; and the same to the new Underwood of Centry Underwood."
"Shall we see him, Papa?" asked Alda.
"If either party desires the gratification, no doubt it will come about."
"Shall not you call on him, Papa?"
"Certainly not before he comes. Mother, some of the wonderful bottle- --ay, you covetous miser of a woman, or I"ll make a libation of it all. Audley, it must have wrung your father"s butler"s heart to have thrown away this port on a picnic. What did you tell him to delude him?"
"Only what was true--that I was to meet a gentleman who was a judge of the article."
"For shame!" he answered, laughing. "What right had you to know that I knew the taste of Cape from Roriz?"
But his evident enjoyment of the "good creature" was no small pleasure to the provider, though it was almost choking to meet the glistening glance of Mrs. Underwood"s grateful eyes, knowing, as she did, that there were three more such bottles in the straw at the bottom of the hamper. And when baby Angela had clasped her fat hands, and, as "youngest at the board," "inclined the head and p.r.o.nounced the solemn word," her father added, "Gratias Deo, and Grazie a lei. We must renew our childhood"s training, dear Mary--make our bow and curtesy, and say "Thank you for our good dinner.""
"Thank Felix for our pleasant day," said Mr. Audley. "Come, boys, have a swing! there"s a branch too good not to be used; and Ful has already hung himself up like a two-toed sloth."
Then began the real festivity--the swinging, the flower and fern hunting, the drawing, the racing and shouting, the merry calls and exchange of gay foolish talk and raillery.
Mr. Underwood lay back on a slope of moss, with a plaid beneath him, and a cushion under his head, and said that the Elysian fields must have been a prevision of this beech-wood. Mrs. Underwood, with Felix and Wilmet, tied up the plates, knives, and forks, and then the mother, taking Angela with her, went to negotiate kettle-boiling at the cottage. Geraldine would fain have sketched, but the glory and the beauty, and the very la.s.situde of delight and novelty, made her eyes swim with a delicious mist; and Edgar, who had begun when she did, threw down his pencil as soon as he saw Felix at liberty, and the two boys rushed away into the wood for a good tearing scramble and climb, like creatures intoxicated with the freedom of the greenwood.
After a time they came back, dropping armfuls of loose-strife, meadow-sweet, blue vetch, and honey-suckle over delighted Cherry; and falling down by her side, coats off, all gasp and laughter, and breathless narrative of exploits and adventures, which somehow died away into the sleepiness due to their previous five-mile walk. Felix went quite off, lying flat on his back, with his head on Cherry"s little spreading lilac cotton frock, and his mouth wide open, much tempting Edgar to pop in a pebble; and this being prevented by tender Cherry in vehement dumb show, Edgar consoled himself by a decidedly uncomplimentary caricature of him as Giant Blunderbore (a name derived from Fee, Fa, Fum) gaping for hasty pudding.
"That"s a horrid shame!" remonstrated Geraldine. "Dear old Fee, when the whole treat is owing to him!"
"It is a tidy little lark for a Blunderbore to have thought of," said Edgar. "Tis a good sort of giant after all, poor fellow!"
"Poor!" said Cherry indignantly. "Oh, you mean what Papa said--that he is the greatest loser of us all. I wonder what made him talk in that way? He never did before."
"I am sorry for _him_," said Edgar, indicating his brother. "He is famous stuff for a landlord and member of parliament--plenty of wits and brains--only he wants to be put on a shelf to be got at. Wherever he is, he"ll go on there! Now, a start is all I want! Give me my one step--and then--O Gerald, some day I"ll lift you all up!"