tly beside the young gentleman.

Not that he controlled the picnic. It was spread out in front of
her, bewitching, intimate, in its suggestion of you--and--I; two
shiny plates, two knives, two forks, two fringed and glossy napkins.
A dark red bottle was propped upright between two stones, a pile of
thin, triangular sandwiches balanced daintily on some cool lettuce
leaves, and a fascinating object that glistened mysteriously in the
sun, held the platter of honor in the middle.

"The Honorable Mr. Puck," suggested the young man, in the tone of
one continuing an interrupted conversation, "is figuring out how the
chicken got into the jelly without busting it--am I not right?"

Brother grinned, and Caroline moved a little nearer. Miss Honey
stared at the young lady's fluted skirts and glistening yellow waves
of hair, at the sweeping plume in her hat, and her tiny high-heeled
buckled slippers.

"I am obliged to admit," the young man went on, slicing into the
quivering aspic, "that I don't know myself. I never could find out.
Perhaps the young person in the--the not-too-long skirts, waved her
wand over the bird and he jumped in and the hole closed up?" He
slipped a section of the bird in question upon the lady's plate and
held the red bottle over her cup.

"There was hard-boiled eggs stuck on those jelly things at our
wedding," Brother remarked, "on the outside, all around. But they
were bigger than yours."

"I don't doubt it for a moment," the young man assured him politely.
"Have you been married long, may I ask? And which of these ladies--"

"Brother doesn't mean that _he_ was married," Miss Honey explained,
"it was his oldest sister. She married a lawyer. I was flower girl."

"Ima fow guh," murmured the General, thrusting out a fat and
unexpected hand and snatching from a hitherto unperceived box a tiny
cake encased in green frosting.

"Oh, dear, it's got the pistache!" said the yellow-haired lady
disgustedly.

Miss Honey fled after the General, who, though he was obliged to
wear whalebone braces in his shoes on account of youth and a
waddling and undeveloped gait, scattered over the ground with the
elusive clumsiness of a young duckling. Brother blushed, but scorned
to desert his troop.

"He's awfully little, you know--he doesn't mean to steal," he
explained.

"Twenty-two months," Caroline added, "and he does go so fast." She
smiled doubtfully at the lady, who selected a cake covered with
chocolate and lo