Mrs. Stamwell said, "Well, I shall take another cup of coffee, at any
rate," and her hardihood raised another laugh.

"That always seems to me the most pitiful thing in the whole Bible,"
said Alice, from her place. "To see the right so clearly, and not to be
strong enough to do it."

"My dear, it happens every day," said Mrs. Brinkley.

"I always felt sorry for that poor fellow, too," said Mavering. "He
seemed to be a good fellow, and it was pretty hard lines for him."

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.

"Oh, read something aloud!" cried another of the young ladies.

"Isn't Browning rather serious for a picnic?" he asked, with a glance at
Alice; he still had a doubt of the effect of the rheumatic uncle's dance
upon her, and would have been glad to give her some other aesthetic
impression of him.

"Oh no!" said Mrs. Brinkley, "nothing is more appropriate to a picnic
than conundrums; they always have them. Choose a good tough one."

"I don't know anything tougher than the 'Legend of Pernik'--or
lovelier," he said, and he began to read, simply, and with a passionate
pleasure in the subtle study, feeling its control over his hearers.

The gentlemen lay smoking about at t