Bluebell Part 21

"Then, I suppose we must not use these wooden ones, my fanciful fairy?"

"Don't be so foolish, Lola!" snapped in Miss Prosody. "You'll spoil your frock; throw them away!"

"We can put them over the platters," said Cecil. "Hand out the edibles, Bluebell. What have you got?"

"Here's a pie, a cake, a tart, croquettes; no knives, about a pound of salt, and some b.u.t.ter in the last stage of dissolution."

"No knives!" cried Miss Prosody. "There 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 sh.o.r.e; but it was thickly wooded, and there was no clear s.p.a.ce; 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 s.e.x 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 through my glove. I'll just touch him up with the red ash of my cigar."

Miss Prosody knew of old that Lilla was incorrigible, and, having no hope of support from Cecil in any attempt to snub her, resolved to discountenance the proceeding by going away, and summoned the children from their tree, who were quite ready for a fresh start. The girls declared it was too hot to move. Lilla continued to puff away lazily, the zest rather gone now there was n.o.body to be shocked at it. Bluebell, mingling her voice with the birds, was singing the "Danube River,"

while Cecil, with shut eyes, lay in her canoe, and gave herself up to the dreamy music, till, aroused by its sudden cessation, she looked up, and saw a boat half checked in its speed, and Major Fane and Jack Vavasour doffing their billy-c.o.c.k hats.

Cecil's return bow was freezing, and Major Fane, who had rested irresolutely a moment on his oars, shot the boat on with vigorous pulls.

She felt half penitent as she saw his discomfited face, but her coldness arose from having become alive to a possible danger.

Colonel Rolleston had lately very frequently asked him to dinner, even when there was no one else, and he always fell to her share to entertain.

Now Major Fane was a very good match in every way,--quite what parents and guardians would approve; so, thought Cecil,--"I can't have any mistakes about that, or it will only settle papa against Bertie."

"Did you summon those two from this vasty deep, Lilla?" cried she. "But, I forgot; I don't think either of them sail under your flag."

"My colours are too rakish and privateerish for Major Fane; and as for Jack, I am afraid he has the bad taste to prefer Bluebells to Lilies."

"If you think him worth your acceptance," said Bluebell "I will make you a present of him."

"He may be yours to keep, my dear, but not to give away. At present I am not 'on for matrimony,' and, to flirt with, I don't know any one better fun than Bertie Du Meresq."

The other girls were both too conscious to reply to this audacious remark, and after awhile they resumed fishing, Lilla's gaudy bait still unsuccessful, though Cecil had landed one or two pike. Bluebell grew tired of rowing steadily to keep her companion's line extended, and persuaded her to wind it up; then Lilla took the sculls, and they fell into conversation.

"Were you at that tobogganing party where Captain Du Meresq hurt his ankle?" asked Bluebell, diligently examining the corolla of a water-lily.

"Why?" was the counter inquiry.

"Because I never heard how it happened."

"How was that?" said Lilla, launching into narrative. At the close of it she said,--"Cecil pulled him through that time. I shouldn't have thought nursing much in her line; but she was very hard hit, you know, and I rather wondered Bertie didn't propose before he left so suddenly. Very likely he did though."

Bluebell's eyes opened in horror at this unpalatable suggestion. "What _are_ you dreaming of, Lilla?" gasped she. "Cecil! why she looks upon him as an uncle or something."

"Oh, Bluebell, you blind little bat, it would be as well if you looked upon him 'as an uncle or something.'"

But the other sat aghast and speechless. Lily glanced at her sympathetically.

"Well, perhaps he mayn't care for Cecil. He has been talking nonsense to you, too, I see, as he has to us all three, for that matter. I feel so angry about it, I have a great mind to tell you all he said to _me_."

"I don't want to hear," said her companion, coldly; "nor do I at all agree with you about Cecil"

"All right," returned the other. "Only remember he can't afford to marry, whatever he may have pretended to you--not but what that subject is about the last it ever occurs to him to enter upon."

Bluebell at first utterly refused to receive this intolerable suggestion into her mind. Lilla must be inventing--in love with him herself, and trying to make mischief. Nothing should induce her to believe it. How irritating she was, too, with that knowing, quizzing expression in her face!

So when Cecil, tired of solitude, proposed coming into their boat, Bluebell eagerly took possession of the canoe, and went off on an independent paddle, ostensibly to look for Miss Prosody.

CHAPTER XVI.

DETECTED.

His pa.s.sion is not, he declares, the mere fever Of a rapturous moment. It knows no control; It will burn in his breast thro' existence for ever, Immutably fixed in the deeps of the soul.

--The Wanderer.

"Why did you shoot on so quick, Major?" said Vavasour, in an injured tone, after the dumb scene before referred to. "We might as well have stayed and discoursed those young women."

Fane growled something about not choosing to intrude.

"I don't suppose they would have minded. That spicy little party, Lily Tremaine, was smoking. I wonder who finds her in cigars?"

"I hate Canadian girls!" said Fane. "And when they pretend to be fast they are more unbearable still."

"Oh, come," said Jack, warmly, for was not Bluebell of that maligned nationality? "they must have used you badly, Major. They are far more unaffected and natural than English girls, who always ride to orders; and as for beauty--"