A College Girl. Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
flourishes and headlines, which Dan’s big fingers alone had the power to produce. Now he leaned an elbow on the desk, turned round on his chair, and tilted that eloquent chin in scorn.
“Picnic? Not much. Hate ’em like poison! You don’t want me!”
“We do want you! We shouldn’t have asked you if we didn’t. Don’t be unsociable, Dan. It’s an extra special occasion, and it would be so much jollier to be complete. The boys will behave better if you’re there.”
Dan’s chin tilted still an inch higher. That was of course, but—
“I hate a family crowd!” he pronounced tersely. “If there were only one or two, it wouldn’t be so bad. Usual programme, I suppose—pick flowers and eat biscuits? Not much in my line—thank you all the same. Hope you’ll have a good time!”
“We’re going to have a real lunch—chickens and all sorts of good things, and walk to Oxholm across the fields. It will be much more exciting than the old picnics have been.”
“It might easily be that! No, thank you, I’m off. Some other day—”
“But we want you, Dan! I want you to come.”
“But I don’t, you see. There’s the difference. Sorry to disoblige.”
Darsie regarded him silently, considered the point whether wrath or pathos would be the most powerful weapon, decided rapidly in favour of pathos, and sank with a sigh on to an opposite chair.
“Very well. I quite understand. We wanted you especially because this may be the last, the very last time that one of us girls has any fun this summer, so of course it feels important. But you are so much older—it’s natural that you shouldn’t care. I think you’ve been very nice to be as much with us as you have been … Dan!”
“Yes!”
“Hannah says it will be me! That Aunt Maria is sure to choose me when she comes. Do you think she will?”
“Ten to one, I should say.”
“Oh, but why? Why? How can you be so sure?”
Dan’s dark eyes surveyed the alert little head, poised on the stem of the graceful throat, his thin lips lengthened in the long, straight line which showed that he was trying not to smile.
“Because—er, you appear to me the sort of girl that an erratic old fossil would naturally prefer!”
“Ah–h!”—Darsie’s dejection was deep—“Daniel, how cruel!” It was a comforting retaliation to address her tormentor by the name he so cordially disliked, but she remembered her rôle, and looked dejected rather than irate. “I suppose that’s true. I need discipline, and she would naturally choose the worst of the three. No one wants to be disciplined instead of having a good time, but it may be good for me in the end. All the time you are at sea, happy and free, I shall be being disciplined for my good … Wednesday may be my last, my very last, glad day …”
“Bah! Rubbish!” snapped Dan, but he looked at the curly head, and felt a pang of distaste. The idea of Darsie Garnett sobered and disciplined out of recognition was distinctly unpleasant. He wriggled in his chair, and said tentatively: “It will take more than one old lady to tame you, young woman! You’ll have lots of fun yet—perhaps more than if you’d stayed at home.”
Darsie smiled with angelic resignation.
“Perhaps so, but it won’t be the same kind of fun. New friends can never be like old. If she chooses me, I must go, because of my duty to father and the rest, but it’s going to hurt! I feel,”—she waved her arms dramatically in the air—“like a flower that is being torn out by the roots! I shall not live long in a strange soil … Well, goodbye, Dan; I won’t bother you any more! Thank you very much for all you’ve done for me in the past.”
Done! Dan searched his memory, found therein inscribed a number of snubs, rebuffs, and teasings, but nothing worthy of the thanks so sweetly offered.
He felt a stirring of reproach. Darsie was a decent kid—an amusing kid; if she went away she would leave behind her a decided blank. Looking back over the years, Darsie seemed to have played the leading part in the historic exploits of the family. She was growing into quite a big kid now. He glanced at her again quickly, furtively, and drummed with his fingers on the desk—hardly a kid at all, almost grown up!
“Oh, that’s all right; don’t worry about that,” he mumbled vaguely. “What a grandiloquent kid you are! I hope you’ll have a better time than you think, if you do go to visit your aunt.”
“Thanks so much; I hope I may; and if at any time—any time—I can do anything to help you, or give you the least—the very least—pleasure, please let me know, Dan! I can understand now how one feels when one leaves home and faces the world!” said Darsie poignantly. “G–goodbye!”
“Bye,” said Dan coolly. He leaned back in his chair, still thudding with his fingers on the desk. Darsie had reached the door and held it open in her hands before he spoke again. “What time did you say that blessed old picnic is to start?”
“Wednesday. Ten o’clock,” said Darsie, and, like a true daughter of Eve, spoke not one more word, but shut the door and left him to his thoughts.
“Dan’s coming! You’re not to say a word till the time, but he is!” she announced to her sisters that evening; but when they questioned and cross-questioned concerning the means whereby the miracle had been wrought, she steadfastly refused to satisfy their curiosity. That was not their concern. An inherent loyalty to Dan forbade that she should make public the wiles by which he had been beguiled.
Chapter Five.
Left Behind!
Wednesday dawned bright and fair; it had not seemed possible that it could be wet, and the party of twelve, with their baskets and hampers, drove economically and gaily to the ferry in a three-horse omnibus, so ostentatiously treating it as their own vehicle that the few alien passengers sat abashed, and plainly felt themselves de trop. Darsie’s prophecy had been fulfilled, for Dan appeared at the starting-point, somewhat grim and sulky of demeanour, but obviously on picnic bent. He was the only member of the party whose hands were free of basket or bundle, and when the omnibus trundled into sight he walked forward to meet it and swung himself up to a place on top as though anxious to convince beholders that he had no connection with the noisy crowd at the corner, whereupon the two mothers smiled at each other in amused reminiscent fashion.
The girls were dressed in white; the boys wore flannel trousers with school blazers and caps. Clemence had put on a veil to protect her complexion; plain Hannah’s sailor hat left yards of forehead bleakly exposed. Darsie wore her little Kodak swung across her shoulder in jaunty military fashion. She invariably carried a camera on such occasions, and never by any chance used it to take any photographs; the programme was so unalterable that it had ceased to attract any attention among her companions.
The omnibus conveyed the party to the ferry, from whence an hourly boat puffed several miles up the river to where the village of Earley stood on the opposite bank. It was an ancient and by no means luxurious barque, impregnated from bow to stern with a hot, oily, funnelly smell from which it was impossible to escape, and as travellers to Earley were almost invariably on pleasure bent, the usual satellites were in attendance. There was an old man in a long coat who had played the same ballads on the same old concertina with the same incredibly dirty fingers for as long as memory could recall; there was an old woman with a clean apron and a tray of gingerbread biscuits slung pendant from her shoulders, who presented them to you for three a penny, and exclaimed, “Bless yer little ’art!” when you paid for them yourself, because mother said