“_Amen,_ my Lady--amen, I'm sure; but when the worst happens that can happen, you will please to remember you have Mary Forest still!” CHAPTER IV. AN UNCHEERFUL PICNIC. |BY the time Lady Lisgard returned to the Abbey, notwithstanding that the sleek bays had devoured the road with all the haste of which their condition permitted, it was long past the breakfast-hour, and her absence from that meal provoked no little comment from the members of her family. Nobody was able to allay their curiosity as to what could have taken mamma to Dalwynch, but Miss Aynton did her best to stimulate it. “She has gone upon Mary Forest's account,” said she--“that is all I can tell you. I never knew any one take such trouble about her maids as dear Lady Lisgard.” “Yes, Rose,” replied Letty warmly; “but it is not every maid who has lived with her mistress thirty years. I believe Mary would lay down her very life for dear mamma, and indeed for any of us. Whenever I read those stupid letters in the papers about there being no good old servants to be seen now a days, I long to send the editor a list of our people at the Abbey. Mary, indeed, is quite a new acquisition in comparison with Wiggins and the gardener; but then she is almost faultless. I have heard mamma say that there has never been a word between them.” “Not between them, indeed, Letty,” returned Miss Aynton laughing; “for Mistress Forest has all the talk to herself.” Sir Richard smiled grimly, for Mary had been in his bad books ever since her attachment to “that vagabond Derrick.” “Good, Miss Rose!” cried Walter--“very good. I wish I could say as much for this so-called new-laid egg. Why should eggs be of different degrees of freshness? Why not all fresh? Why are they ever permitted to accumulate?” “My egg is very good,” observed Sir Richard sententiously; “how is yours, Miss Aynton?” and he laid an emphasis upon the name, in tacit reproof to his brother for having been so familiar as to say “Miss Rose.” “Well, Sir Richard, I am London-bred, you know, and therefore your country eggs, by comparison, are excellent.” “I wish I could think,” said the baronet with stateliness, “that in other matters we equally gained by contrast with Town, in your opinion.” “I believe London is the place to get everything good,” remarked Walter sharply. “We are going to-day, Miss Aynton,” continued the baronet, without noticing the interruption, “to offer you something which really cannot be got in town, and which hitherto the state of the weather has forbidden even here”---- “Ah, for shame, Richard!” interrupted Letty, holding up her hands. “Now, that was to be a surprise for Rose.--It's a picnic, my dear. I daresay now you scarcely know _what_ that is.”