---- ----"

"Did anybody--"

"Ever?" asked Ralph, laughing.

"Such inconsistency!" said Fanny.

"Not a bit of it!"

"Not inconsistent!"

"Why, no."

"Explain why not, if you please, sir! I wonder if--"

"That cloud does not threaten a storm, and whether I am not hungry?"
said Ralph, finishing Miss Fanny's sentence, putting the album in his
pocket, and attacking the baskets.

"Come, my dear cousin, let us, after partaking of mental food, assault
the material! By Jove! what a horn of plenty!"

And Ralph, in the midst of cries exclamatory, and no little laughter,
emptied the contents of the basket on the velvet sward, variegated by
the sunlight through the boughs, and fit for kings.

The lunch commenced.

CHAPTER XLI.

USE OF COATS IN A STORM.

It was a very picturesque group seated that day beneath the golden
trees; and the difference in the appearance of each member of the
party made the effect more complete.

Redbud, with her mild, tender eyes, and gentle smile and sylvan
costume, was the representative of the fine shepherdesses of former
time, and wanted but a crook to worthily fill Marlow's ideal; for she
had not quite

"A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,--"

her slender waist was encircled by a crimson ribbon, quite as prettily
embroidered as the zone of the old poet's fancy, and against her snowy
neck the coral necklace which she wore was clearly outlined, rising
and falling tranquilly, like May-buds woven by child-hands into a
bright wreath, and launched on the surface of some limpid stream.

And Fanny--gay, mischievous Fanny, with her mad-cap countenance, and
midnight eyes, and rippling, raven curls--Fanny looked like a young
duchess taking her pleasure, for the sake of contrast, in the
woods--far from ancestral halls, and laughing at the follies of the
court. Her hair trained back--as Redbud's was--in the fashion called
_La Pompadour_; her red-heeled rosetted shoes--her silken gown--all
this was plainly the costume of a courtly maiden. Redbud was the
country; Fanny, town.

Between Verty and Ralph, we need not say, the difference was as
marked.

The one wild, primitive, picturesque, with the beauty of the woods.

The other richly dressed, with powdered hair and silk stockings.

This was the group which sat and laughed beneath the fine old tulip
trees, and gazed with delight upon the splendid landscape, and were
happy. Youth was theirs, and