I thought to myself that if I had been a young man, people like Martyn and the Kendals would not have been given the opportunity of exercising their wit upon my love affairs. But as a matter of fact I knew well enough that if Chris and Nancy really did become engaged, they would probably be told all about the bet, and would find it quite amusing. The servants from Grainges had solemnly laid an enormous tablecloth over the heather, and weighted the corners of it--not with stones, nothing so rural--but with plated ice buckets, full of broken ice. We had lobster, and salmon-mayonnaise, and chicken salad, and galantine, and an immense variety of cold sweets and pastries, and our plates were changed by the servants after each course, and our glasses filled with Moselle, or whisky or lemonade. One felt ungrateful for feeling that it would have been a relief if only the salt had been forgotten, or there hadn’t been enough rolls to go round. Christopher did, in an honest attempt to make the thing less magnificent, suggest sharing a salad plate with his neighbor, but Leeds overheard him, and roared to one of the men servants. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Kendal was sitting on the missing salad plate, which was afterwards found embedded deeply into quite hard ground, but of course the servants produced an extra one without a moment’s hesitation. However, iced Moselle, whether suitable or not to a picnic on the moors, was bound to have its effect, and, anyway, Leeds and Mrs. Leeds undeniably came into the category known to modern slang as “cheery souls.” So that by the time we were all eating cherries and strawberries, the picnic had become a very animated and successful affair. Claire, while Leeds was telling Sallie that he had been through parts of China where no other white man had ever been allowed to set foot, got her opportunity, and gave Alfred Kendal and Mrs. Leeds, and one or two others, an amusing account of an impromptu charade party of the previous summer. The point of the story was her own success in a tragic impersonation, but she brought it in very skilfully. The contrast between her methods, and those of Leeds, was rather amusing. Lady Annabel talked to the Kendals. Puppa and Mumma have lived sufficiently long in the East to understand her point of view. Most of the younger people present were playing bob-cherry, but Christopher, with his hat tipped right over his eyes, was talking to Nancy Fazackerly, and Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter were silent. He was industriously scraping together a small pile of fir needles and dry twigs--one of those mechanical occupations that are generally the sign of complete mental absorption in something else--and she was lighting and smoking one after another of her interminable cigarettes.