! That's where
the old fellows used to dine, isn't it? And had sermons read to them all
the time."

"What a bore!" some one suggested.

"Well, I don't know about that," said Archie. "Sermons always are awful
bores, ain't they? But I don't think I should mind 'em so much if I
might eat my dinner all the time." He stopped with a comical look of
alarm. "I say, we haven't got any parsons here, have we?"

"No," said Fothergill smiling. "We've brought the surgeon, in case of
broken bones, but we've left the chaplain at home. So you may give us
the full benefit of your opinions."

"I thought there wasn't one," Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy,
"because nobody said grace. Or don't you ever say grace at a picnic?"

"I don't think you do," Sissy replied. "Unless it were a very Low Church
picnic perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure."

"Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose," said Archie,
examining the little frond which Edith had given him. "And this is what
you call maiden-hair?"

"What should you call it?"

"A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden--hair, indeed! Why, I can see
some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with
this? _You_ can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's
the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little
ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before,
and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine--oh, don't move your
head!--and looks like a golden glory--"

"Dear me!" said Sissy. "Then I'm afraid it's very rough."

"--And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish."

"Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get."

"Of course it is," said Archie. "But exchange is no robbery, they say.
Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don't you think--remembering that
I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from 'England, home and
beauty,' and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next
voyage--don't you think--"

"I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload
of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence."

"A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do
with it all?"

"Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it."

"There now!" said Archie. "And I could tell you in a moment what I would
do with mine if you gave it me."

"Oh, but I could tell you that."

"Tell me, then."

"You would fold it up carefully