CHAPTER IX

THE PIC-NIC

WE hold that a pic-nic is not a pic-nic where there are well-arranged tables and powdered footmen to wait. It is merely an uncomfortable out-of-door dinner. A pic-nic should entail a little of the trouble and enterprise of life, gathering sticks, lighting the fire, boiling the pot, buying or stealing the potatoes. It is an excellent training for housekeeping, and affords a favourable opportunity for developing the skill of young ladies in an art that, as servants go, they all seem likely to have to come to sooner or later, namely, waiting on themselves. Moreover, what one cooks oneself is always much better than what anybody else cooks for one, just as the money that a man makes is always a great deal more prized than what comes jingling in of itself.

Our party on this occasion was of the well-supplied order—plenty of everything, and plenty of servants to hand things about. Some brought their butlers, because the butlers chose to come; some brought their footmen to show their new liveries; some their pages to keep them out of mischief. And though there were a few of the usual casualties of moving, such as the salt coalescing with the sugar, and the pickles bursting into the pie, the servants had the rectification of matters, and there was no scrambling for plates, no begging for forks, no two people eating with one spoon. All was orderly and orthodox, plenty of provisions with the usual preponderance of hams, tongues, and chickens. None of the ladies having lunched, no, not even had a bun, there was a very sensible difference between their performances on this occasion and when they come in their gorgeous attire at half-past seven for eight o’clock in the evening, to criticise each other’s dresses, and interrupt the hungry men in the middle of their mouthfuls. So they competed very fairly with the ruder sex in their performances. Presently a battue of corks proceeded from the curtained corner where the warm-water jug for the knives was concealed from public view, and at the glad sound all sorts of glasses were enlisted, from the satisfactory open bell-shaped ones, down to the little narrow froth-catchers, out of which a man gets a taste of the grateful beverage at the bottom. A second salute, if possible more vehement than the first, then set people quite at their ease, and made the shy young gentlemen turn confidently to their partners, instead of looking sheepish, and wondering who was watching them. Captain Languisher looked sweet on Miss Snowball, and Miss Nettleworth hung on Mr. de Breezey’s every word. Our friend, Mr. Bunting, having soon satisfied the requirements of an unripe appetite, proceeded to study the profile of our fair friend, under the favourable auspices of the saucy little hat, so different to the coal-skuttle bonnets of former days, that required a telescope to see to the far end of them. Very fair and beautiful he found her. A high smooth ivory forehead, arched with beautiful light hair, calm pensive blue eyes, with long lashes and regular brows, a straight well-formed nose, with playing dimples hovering round an exquisitely formed mouth, full of regular pearly teeth. The slightest possible flush now suffused her naturally pale face, and gave brightness and animation to the whole. Mr. Bunting looked and looked, till at length

And he most handsomely accorded beauty’s request. “She’s very pretty,” quoth he to himself, as he quaffed off the remains of his third glass of champagne, and held it out for another supply, “very pretty indeed; prettier than Laura Blanc, prettier than Charlotte Hawthorn, and quite as pretty as Lavinia Barnett;” and he felt as if he didn’t care for all his crosses and misfortunes, or for the recapitulation of Biter and Co.’s bill. And now seeing Mrs. Harriman’s piercing little grey eyes fixed intently upon him from the opposite side of the table, he immediately asked her to take a glass of champagne in the hopes of drowning what he knew she could tell, an example that was speedily followed by some one else, who perhaps had similar qualms of conscience, thus drawing off her attention, and enabling Mr. Bunting to resume his “sotto voce” conversation undisturbed.

Amid the interchange of sweets, jellies, and simpers, he proceeded on a sort of Dr. Livingstone-like exploration of our fair friend’s forthcomings, belongings, and intended stayings; a wide and fertile field of research that lasted through all the iced champagne, and saw the company well into the warmer supply.

Mamma meanwhile sat complacently by, occasionally helping her daughter out where her information was defective, and wondering what Mrs. Goldspink would say if she could see her smart beau—a gentleman with a splendid castle, and sixteen thousand a year. “Pro—o—digious!” as Dominie Samson would say. No such catches in the country. At length the last lingering plate-tapper ceased nibbling, the chopped cheese followed the remains of the more substantial viands, and grace being again said, there was a great inundation of pines, melons, grapes, peaches, all the more costly and luxurious produce, for it was a great fruit year, and though it was dear enough to buy, yet the fruiterers gave little or nothing for it—a shilling a dozen for peaches, the same for nectarines, a shilling a pound for grapes, and so on, that it was hardly worth the trouble of packing and sending to them. So those who had gardens could afford to be generous at very small cost. The table was abundantly supplied; the producers and the consumers being speedily distinguished by the abstemiousness of the one, and the vigorous enjoyment of the other. The pines were sliced, the melons divided, the pyramids of grapes reduced amidst hearty mirth, and the languid circulation of the long-necked light claret bottles, varied by an occasional wasp hunt, until the “twang, twang, twang,” of the fiddle tuners outside reminded them that the jumping enjoyment of the evening had yet to commence. At a look then from Mrs. Campbell de Jenkins at Mrs. Ambrose Brown cannon’d off upon Mrs. Bolsterworth, the crinoline bearers rose, and with much ingenuity of steerswomanship, and many apologies, succeeded in effecting a retreat.