Ill 



A PIC NIC. 



Concluded from page 71. 



Mrs. Eglantine (I borrow the eloquent words of her friend, Sir 

 Namby Pamby) " is one of those sensitive beings, the children 

 of impulse, unable to control her sympathies, and varying ever 

 under the varying influences of gleam and shadow." She com- 

 plains of weak health and uncertain spirits. She describes to 

 you her griefs, and she describes to you lier medicines ; neither 

 of them of the vulgar sort. Her all is in the tomb, or rather 

 worse, out of the tomb; for it lies murdered and a-bleaching in 

 the Pyrennees. But she 7?iust do her duty to society. For Mrs. 

 Allington (and who knows and feels these things better?) says 

 so, and tells her she must not bury herself in her loved retirement. 

 Mrs. A. hopes indeed to see her make a second choice. But 

 that is impossible, absolutely impossible. Mrs. Eglantine fulfils, 

 therefore, a generous, painful, task to the public, and permits 

 herself to be led forth before it. She begins the day, languid 

 and lounging, plaintive, and platonic. As it advances her 

 spirits improve. By dinner-time she assumes the attractive, 

 retaining still much of the abstracted, the inconsequent, and the 

 simple. But, during that exhilarating season, her reserve sub- 

 sides, and she becomes very agreeable, and loves her neighbour. 

 After dinner she is exceedingly confidential, and from that time 

 she frankly takes her part in whatever may be the amusement of 

 the evening. 



" There is nae white but hath its black." And this, even Mrs, 

 Allington was doomed to find. Tier pic nic was tending to its 

 close — her schemes all promising to take effect — when something, 

 one of the few things over which she had no control, came to 

 damp the general joy. The time for the fireworks had arrived. 

 They were displayed at a distance from the house, on the opposite 

 bank of a fine piece of water. Fireworks never show so well as 

 when, repeated in that element, they '' float double," as the poet 

 says, "squib and shadow." Water is the real place, where, 

 according to the suggested Eton inscription, the pyrotechnist's 

 " own fireworks are excelled." But another and a greater motive 

 occupied the ample bosom of the hostess, and directed her in the 

 choice of this spot. To this motive Mrs. Eglantine was party, 

 and so indeed was I. By much listening and prying I had 

 discovered, and had in vain tried my best to circumvent, it. It 

 was agreed between Mrs. Allington and her friend that the 



