here must be!" plunging desperately
into the basket.

"That is more untidy than a lily-leaf plate," remarked Lilla.

"No, positively not," said the governess. "How very remiss of Bowers,
particularly as I observe he has provided forks!"

The children looked disappointed. They had been reckoning on the
phenomenon of Miss Prosody, subjugated by hunger, eating pie with her
fingers.

"Here be a knife!" said the boatman, wiping on his trousers the blade of
his clasp-knife.

"Let as put a polish on," said Lilla, laughing at Cecil's face; and,
jumping on to the bank, thrust it several times into the earth. The
children, tired of their cramped position in the boat, wished to dine on
shore; but it was thickly wooded, and there was no clear space; so Freddy
was wedged into a fork of the tree, and Lola swung on another bough,
where they chattered like two pies, handing down a basket on a string
when they required fresh supplies.

Cecil lay on the bear-skin in her canoe, with her hat over her face,
declaring it too hot to eat, but consuming, under protest, a croquette
occasionally tossed in for her sustenance. Miss Prosody, quite genial and
urbane after luncheon, was deep in consultation with the boatman as to
the locality of certain ferns she proposed spudding up for her pet
rockery at "The Maples," where her lighter hours were diurnally spent in
washing and tending her spoils.

"I suppose this is all very sylvan and jolly," said Lilla, handing the
remnants of the refection to the boatman; "yet somehow, candidly, it's
slow."

"Possibly," said Cecil, "it is the absence of the other sex that makes
you find it so?"

"Perhaps," said Lilla, frankly, with furtive enjoyment of Miss Prosody's
stiffening face. "Well, ladies, I should like my little smoke; can I
offer anybody one? You will find them very mild,"--and she drew forth a
neat case of Latakia cigarettes, selected one, and, striking a match on
the heel of her boot, lit it.

"Of course, if you choose to be so unlady-like, we cannot prevent you,"
said the governess, icily.

"Dear me!" said Lilla, innocently, "I never dreamt of your objecting; for
I have heard you tell Colonel Rolleston, when he has been smoking, how
fond you were of it in the open air."

"Colonel Rolleston would most decidedly disapprove of _your_ doing it."

"He does, I believe, of most of my actions; but he is very kind to me all
the same. Look at this wretch of a mosquito actually stinging throug