“Hullo!” he said casually. “I thought you were playing in the tennis tournament this afternoon.” “I was knocked out first round,” trying to speak as casually as he, but with a sudden inflection of regret she could not wholly stifle. “Were you?” in some surprise; “that’s a new experience for you!” “I am out of practice.” “Don’t you play in London?” “No.” “Why not?” rolling himself a cigarette. “I have no opportunity.” “You must miss it a good deal.” She was silent. “I suppose you’ll be going back soon?” going on with his cigarette with a resolutely cold, impassive air. “Yes! I haven’t much more than a week left.” She fidgeted restlessly. This impassivity was too maddening. “You won’t like that?” It was because the mere thought nearly made her cry, that she replied jauntily: “Oh! I don’t mind much. I’m getting used to London now.” Still he would not look up. “Shepherd’s Bush is hardly London,” a little cruelly. “Anything is London that is not Omeath,” she retorted. He smiled a little to himself. “I thought you had just implied that you rather liked London.” “I said I didn’t mind going back. I don’t; Mother and Eileen will be there.” She flashed one of her old glances at him, but he was still too much occupied to look up. It made her vaguely angry. There was no necessity to treat her as if she were a wooden post. She cast about in her mind for a bone of contention, and at just that moment Lawrence finished rolling his cigarette, struck a match, and lit it. “Well, I must be off,” in the same careless tone. “See you at the picnic, I suppose,”—and almost before she could reply he had pulled away, and gone without once looking at her. Paddy rowed to the shore, feeling that she wanted to hit some one. “He’s growing as dull as ditch-water!” she exclaimed snappishly, as she tied up her boat. CHAPTER XXXV The Picnic. A few days later came the great picnic up the mountain. The Blakes gave the picnic, and the guests numbered about seventy, half of them proceeding to the climbing-place upon bicycles and the other half driving. The weather was not very promising from the first, but it was too large an undertaking to put off, and they accordingly started out. Paddy went in the Mastermans’ carriage with the two aunts. As they drove along she wished, a little unaccountably, that Ted Masterman was one of the party. “After all,” she mused, “he was better than no one, and it was so very tame without Jack. Really, there was no one in the least adventuresome or enterprising.” Then she fell to wondering what line Lawrence would take, and whether, perhaps, to-day, he would rise to a quarrel. Once more she hoped he would.