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 it was a pity to spoil your lunch. Deary me! one _would_ have to
be old to have one's appetite--and a picnic appetite at that!--spoiled
by three gingerbread biscuits! The sail to Earley would have been shorn
of one of its chief joys without these sticky sweets. The absence of
the clean, smiling old woman would have been resented as a positive
crime.

The ferry at Earley was an old-fashioned affair, sloping over the muddy
shore to a little white pay-house with a clanky turnpike on either side.
Once past these turnpikes, the visitor found himself in the midst of
things with delightful suddenness. A wide green stretch of grass lay
along the river bank, bordered by shady trees. To the right stood a
stone hotel with gardens of brilliant flower-beds, and an array of
white-covered tables dotted down the length of the veranda. Grand and
luxurious visitors took their meals in the hotel, but such a possibility
of splendour had never dawned upon the minds of the Garnetts or their
friends--as well might a wayfarer in Hyde Park think of asking for a cup
of tea at Buckingham Palace! To-day a young girl stood in the porch of
the hotel and gazed at the procession as it passed. She was arrayed in
a white serge coat and skirt, and wore a white sailor hat with a blue
band. "Exactly like yours!" said Lavender easily, but Clemence shook
her head in sad denial. _Her_ coat and skirt had been bought ready-made
at a sale, was an inch too short in the waist, and cockled at the seams;
her hat was last year's shape, while the girl in the porch had
just--_the_--very--latest and most perfect specimen of both.

"Horrid thing, lunching in hotels in clothes like that! Some people
have all the luck!" said Clemence grudgingly, as she moved the heavy
basket from one hand to the other to screen it from the gaze of the
aristocratic eyes; and the girl in the porch spied it all the same, and
sighed to herself wistfully: "They are going picnicking--all those boys
and girls! Oh, how lovely to be them. How I _wish_ I wer