ugh her voice was a trifle lowered. 'If
it were the British Museum now, or Westminster Abbey.'

'Or the Alps,' chimed in a quieter voice, 'or the Ufizzi.'

'Now, Mr. Dutton, that's not what I want. Our people aren't ready for
that, but what they have let it be real. Miss Mary, don't you see what
I mean?'

'Rather better than Miss Egremont herself,' said Mr. Dutton.

'Well,' said the vicar, interposing in the wordy war, 'Mrs. Greenleaf's
children have scarlatina, so we can't go to Horton Bishop. The choice
seems to be between South Beach and Monks Horton.'

'That's no harm,' cried Nuttie; 'Mrs. Greenleaf is so patronising!'

'And both that and South Beach are so stale,' said the youth.

'As if the dear sea could ever be stale,' cried the young girl.

'I thought Monks Horton was forbidden ground,' said Miss Mary.

'So it was with the last regime', said the vicar; 'but now the new
people are come I expect great things from them. I hear they are very
friendly.'

'I expect nothing from them,' said Nuttie so sententiously that all her
hearers laughed and asked 'her exquisite reason,' as Mr. Dutton put it.

'Lady Kirkaldy and a whole lot of them came into the School of Art.'

'And didn't appreciate "Head of Antinous by Miss Ursula Egremont,"' was
the cry that interrupted her, but she went on with dignity
unruffled--'Anything so foolish and inane as their whole talk and all
their observations I never heard. "I don't like this style," one of
them said. "Such ugly useless things! I never see anything pretty and
neatly finished such as we used to do."' The girl gave it in a tone of
mimicry of the nonchalant voice, adding, with fresh imitation, "'And
another did not approve of drawing from the life--models might be such
strange people."'

'My ears were not equally open to their profanities,' said Miss Mary.
'I confess that I was struck by the good breeding and courtesy of the
leader of the party, who, I think, was Lady Kirkaldy herself.'

'I saw! I thought she was patronising you, and my blood boiled!' cried
Nuttie.

'Will boiling blood endure a picnic in the park of so much ignorance,
folly, and patronage?' asked Mr. Dutton.

'Oh, indeed, Mr. Dutton, Nuttie never said that,' exclaimed gentle Mrs.
Egremont.

'Whether it is fully worth the doing is the question,' said the vicar.

'Grass and shade do not despise,' said Miss Mary.

'There surely must be some ecclesiastical remains,' said the young man.