Josey
sat on one side with her hands folded. She's good at that! She never
does anything herself but reap all the glory of other people's
successes. The very worst of these picnics is, that a few do all of
the work, and the many all the enjoying. Now, you--_you_ haven't had
much of a time, have you?"

She had not, but no girl in her right mind is going to confess, out
and out, that she hasn't had a good time, even in the Inferno.

"Rather slow, perhaps," answered Mell, putting it as mildly on a
strained case, as the case would bear, "but there's nobody to blame
for it, but myself. If I wasn't such a fool in some respects, I might
have had a--a perfectly gorgeous time. _You_ would have given me all
the good time a girl need to look for."

"But you wouldn't let me!"

"Well, you see," explained Mell, warming with her subject, "I had
promised Miss Josey--"

"Never promise her anything again!"

"I don't think I will! But, as I was saying, I promised her to come
and take Miss Rutland's place--to come for that very purpose, and when
I make a promise, however hard, I'm going to keep it."

"Bravo for you! Not every girl does that."

"Every high-principled girl does." Her tones were severely
uncompromising.

"_Ought to_, you mean," rejoined her companion, with an incredulous
laugh.

"No--_does!_"

Light words, lightly spoken, lightly gone! Alas! How these bubbles of
talk, subtle as air, come back home after a time, to twit us with
scorn, to taunt us with falsity, to impute wrong unto us, to arraign,
to accuse, to denounce, to condemn out of our own lips.

"Here we are," said Mell's companion, still laughing at the idea of a
young woman thinking it necessary to hold tight to her word. "Here we
are. Now sit right down here and rest your head comfortably against
this tree. I'll be back in a twinkling."

So he was, with a plate in his hand filled with edibles, and a bottle
of sparkling wine.

"Eat," commanded this eminently practical young man; "eat and drink.
That's all you need now to fetch you round completely."

This settled the question, and settled it most judiciously and
satisfactorily. The solid food proved a balm of comfort to that
desolate goneness within her, which Mell had wrongly ascribed as due
entirely to the volcanic derangement of her heart; and the strong wine
sped through her veins a draught of health, a cordial to the mind, a
rosy elixir of life.

Mell began to take some interest in her com