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Let's have a picnic there to-morrow, take our lunch and stay all day. Mother, you must come. Don't say you've promised to make calls." "I can go perfectly well," said Mrs. Thayne. "Only there is Roger's appointment with the dentist in the afternoon. He'll have to keep that, but there will be plenty of time for the picnic if we start early."
As he rounded an outlying rock he came full on Roger Thayne. Sprawled flat on the sloping cliff, Roger was watching so intently the doings of a spider that he did not look up until a shadow fell squarely across the web. "That you, Roger?" said Max. "Alone? Where are Win and the girls?" "I don't know," replied Roger, flushing uncomfortably. "That is, I don't know where the girls are."
Thayne felt for her watch, remembered that she did not bring it and looked at Estelle. "Will you tell me the time?" she asked. "Win's hands are full with his palette and block." "Certainly," said Estelle. "It's just two." As she replaced her watch, a sudden look of interest crossed Mrs. Thayne's face. "What a curious chain you have, Estelle," she remarked. "Is it an old one?
I've seen 'em, dead, dull-lookin' round stones that'll crack open, chock full o' red garnits as an egg is o' meat." "Geodes!" cried Dakie Thayne. Jim Holden turned round and looked at him as if he thought he had got hold of some new-fashioned expletive, possibly a pretty hard one. They came down, now, on the other side of the Cliff, and struck the ford.
"The name seemed familiar, too; only he called himself 'Dakie. I remember perfectly now. Old Jacob Thayne, the Chicago millionaire. He married pretty little Mrs. Ingleside, the Illinois Representative's widow, that first winter I was in Washington. Why, Dakie must be a dollar prince!" He was just Dakie Thayne, though, for all that.
Dakie Thayne rushed about in a sort of general satisfaction which would not let him be quiet anywhere. Outsiders looked with a kind of new, half-jealous respect on these privileged few who had so suddenly become the "General's party." Sin Saxon whispered to Leslie Goldthwaite: "It's neither his nor mine, honeysuckle; it's yours, Henny-penny and all the rest of it, as Mrs. Linceford said."
"Won't do what?" asked Cadet Thayne, obtusely. "Suit," replied Olivia, concisely, looking straight forward without any air at all.
The naval men use it in summer." "Do they sleep here?" asked Win. "Down in the chapel, sir." "I'd stay here," said Win. "Say, how much would you rent this room for?" "Three and six a week, sir, with the platform thrown in," replied their small guide so gravely that they all looked to see whether he was really in earnest. "That's cheap enough, considering the view," said Mrs. Thayne, smiling.
From somewhere in the blue above fell a rain of happy music, so liquid and so sweet that it scarcely seemed to come from any earthly bird. "Where is it?" asked Frances excitedly, peering into the air and dropping on her knees the better to look up. Mrs. Thayne did the same and both stared into the sky, trying to detect the tiny spot of feathered joy, the source of all this melody.
Aldrich was expatiating to the boys upon the roughness of the trip. "Why, of course I will! You don't need to ask," replied Estelle affectionately. "You and Edith have been taking your meals with the children during my absence. Please keep on doing it. Let us all be one family for the rest of our stay." "It is lovely of you to want us, Mrs. Thayne," said Estelle, her face flushing.
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