“Was that what made you give me such a cool reception?” he asked, with cynical good-nature. “Well, you're mistaken; I don't suppose I mind the Hallecks any more than they do me. I'll tell you why I stayed. Some people dropped down on Witherby, who were a little out of his line,--fashionable people that he had asked to let him know if they ever came to Boston; and when they did come and let him know, he didn't know what to do about it, and he called on me to help him out. I've been almost boarding with Witherby for the last three days; and I've been barouching round all over the moral vineyard with his friends: out to Mount Auburn and the Washington Elm, and Bunker Hill, and Brookline, and the Art Museum, and Lexington; we've been down the harbor, and we haven't left a monumental stone unturned. They were going north, and they came down here with me; and I got them to stop over a day for the picnic.” “You got them to stop over for the picnic? Why, I don't want anybody but ourselves, Bartley! This spoils everything.” “The Hallecks are not ourselves,” said Bartley. “And these are jolly people; they'll help to make it go off.” “Who are they?” asked Marcia, with provisional self-control. “Oh, some people that Witherby met in Portland at Willett's, who used to have the logging-camp out here.” “That Montreal woman!” cried Marcia, with fatal divination. Bartley laughed. “Yes, Mrs. Macallister and her husband. She's a regular case. She'll amuse you.” Marcia's passionate eyes blazed. “She shall never come to my picnic in the world!” “No?” Bartley looked at her in a certain way. “She shall come to mine, then. There will be two picnics. The more the merrier.” Marcia gasped, as if she felt the clutch in which her husband had her tightening on her heart. She said that she could only carry her point against him at the cost of disgraceful division before the Hallecks, for which he would not care in the least. She moved her head a little from side to side, like one that breathes a stifling air. “Oh, let her come,” she said quietly, at last. “Now you're talking business,” said Bartley. “I haven't forgotten the little snub Mrs. Macallister gave me, and you'll see me pay her off.” Marcia made no answer, but went downstairs to put what face she could upon the matter to Olive, whom she had left alone in the parlor, while she ran up with Bartley immediately upon his arrival to demand an explanation of him. In her wrathful haste she had forgotten to kiss him, and she now remembered that he had not looked at the baby, which she had all the time had in her arms. The picnic was to be in a pretty glen three or four miles north of the village, where there was shade on a bit of level green, and a spring bubbling out of a fern-hung bluff: from which you looked down the glen over a stretch of the river. Marcia had planned that they were to drive thither in a four-seated carryall, but the addition of Bartley's guests disarranged this.