ver
wide meadows and troubled mill waters, yellow barn-roofs and weather-gray
old farm-walls, two grassy mounds threw their slopes to the margin of the
stream. Here the bull-dogs held revel. The hollow between the slopes was
crowned by a bending birch, which rose three-stemmed from the root, and
hung a noiseless green shower over the basin of green it shadowed.
Beneath it the interminable growl sounded pleasantly; softly shot the
sparkle of the twisting water, and you might dream things half-fulfilled.
Knots of fern were about, but the tops of the mounds were firm grass,
evidently well rolled, and with an eye to airy feet. Olympus one eminence
was called, Parnassus the other. Olympus a little overlooked Parnassus,
but Parnassus was broader and altogether better adapted for the games of
the Muses. Round the edges of both there was a well-trimmed bush of
laurel, obscuring only the feet of the dancers from the observing gods.
For on Olympus the elders reclined. Great efforts had occasionally been
made to dispossess and unseat them, and their security depended mainly on
a hump in the middle of the mound which defied the dance.

Watteau-like groups were already couched in the shade. There were ladies
of all sorts: town-bred and country-bred: farmers' daughters and
daughters of peers: for this pic-nic, as Lady Jocelyn, disgusting the
Countess, would call it, was in reality a 'fete champetre', given
annually, to which the fair offspring of the superior tenants were
invited the brothers and fathers coming to fetch them in the evening. It
struck the eye of the Countess de Saldar that Olympus would be a fitting
throne for her, and a point whence her shafts might fly without fear of a
return. Like another illustrious General at Salamanca, she directed a
detachment to take possession of the height. Courtly Sir John Loring ran
up at once, and gave the diplomatist an opportunity to thank her
flatteringly for gaining them two minutes to themselves. Sir John waved
his handkerchief in triumph, welcoming them under an awning where carpets
and cushions were spread, and whence the Countess could eye the field.
She was dressed ravishingly; slightly in a foreign style, the bodice
being peaked at the waist, as was then the Portuguese persuasion. The
neck, too, was deliciously veiled with fine lace--and thoroughly veiled,
for it was a feature the Countess did not care to expose to the vulgar
daylight. Off her gentle shoulders, as it were some f