“Why,” I said, “a picnic? Eat in the woods and—and get things, and sit on the grass. Don’t you think they’re fun?”
“I never was to one,” she answered, but I saw how she was watching me almost breathlessly.
“Come on, then,” I insisted carelessly.
“Honest?” she said. “Me?”
When she understood, I remember how she walked beside me, looking at me as if she might at any moment find out her mistake.
Delia, waiting impatiently at our gate with her own basket,—somehow I never waited at the gates of others, but it was always they who waited at mine,—bade me hurry, stared at Mary Elizabeth, and serenely turned her back on her.
“This,” I said, “is Mary Elizabeth. I asked her to go to our picnic. She’s going. I’ve got enough lunch. This is Delia.”
I suppose that they looked at each other furtively—so much of the stupidity of being a knight with one’s visor lowered yet hangs upon us—and then Delia plucked me, visibly, by the sleeve and addressed me, audibly, in the ear.
“What’d you go and do that for?” said she. And I who, at an early age, resented being
