This conversation had taken place at one side. Mr. Dexter, however, talking ceremoniously with old Mrs. Bannert, overheard it, and immediately thought of a plan by which it might be made available for his own purposes. The picnic had not given him much satisfaction so far; it had been too languid. With all his effort, he could not quite enter into the continuous indolence of Caryl's. True, he had taken Anne from Heathcote, thus checking for the moment that gentleman's lazy supremacy, at least in one quarter; but there were other quarters, and Heathcote was now occupying the one which Dexter himself coveted most of all, namely, the seat next to Rachel Bannert. Rachel was a widow, and uncomfortably dependent upon her mother-in-law. The elder Mrs. Bannert was sharp-eyed as a hawk, wise as a serpent, and obstinate as a hedge-hog; Rachel as soft-voiced and soft-breasted as a dove; yet the latter intended to have, and did in the end have, the Bannert estate, and in the mean time she "shared her mother-in-law's home." There were varying opinions as to the delights of that home. Dexter, fretted by Heathcote's unbroken conversation with Rachel, and weary of the long inaction of the morning, now proposed that they should all go in search of the orchid; his idea was that at least it would break up existing proximities, and give them all something to do. Lunch had been prolonged to the utmost extent of its vitality, and the participants were in the state of nerveless leaves in Indian summer, ready to float away on the first breeze. They strolled off, therefore, all save the elder ladies, through the wood, led by the delighted Ezra, who had that "God-bless-you-all-my-friends" air with which many worthy people are afflicted. The apparent self-effacement effected by good-breeding, even in the wicked, is certainly more agreeable to an ordinary world than the unconscious egotism of a large class of the good. After a quarter of an hour the woodman's trail they were following turned and went up the mountain-side. No one save Anne and the missionary had the slightest intention of walking two miles to look for a flower, but they were willing to stroll on for a while. They came to the main road, and crossed it, making many objections to its being there, with its commonplace daylight, after the shade, flickering sunbeams, and vague green vistas of the forest. But on this road, in the dust, a travelling harp-player was trudging along, accompanied by a wizened little boy and a still more wizened monkey. "Let us carry them off into the deepest woods, and have a dance," said Isabel. "We will be nymphs and dryades, and all sorts of woodland things."