No battle, it is said, is ever fought, and I dare say no game--worth counting--is ever played, exactly as previously planned. One of our company had planned, very secretly, as he thought, a battle; another, almost openly, was already waging hers; while a third was playing a game-- though probably, I admit, fighting, inwardly, her poor weak battle also; and none of the three offered an exception to this rule. The first clear proof of it--which it still gives me a low sort of pleasure to recall--was my prompt discovery, as we gathered around the tea-board, to eat the picnic's remains, that our Flora was out of humor with the Baron. It was plain that the whole day's flood of small experiences had been to her pretty vanity a Tantalus's cup. She was quick to tell, with an irritation, which she genuinely tried to conceal, and with scarcely an ounce of words to a ton of dead-sweet insinuation, what a social failure he had chosen to be. Evidently he had spent every golden hour of sweet spiritual opportunity--I speak from her point of view, or, at least, my notion of it--not in catching and communicating the charm of any scene or incident, nor in thrilling comparisons of sentiment with anyone, nor in any impartation of inspiring knowledge, nor in any mirthful exchange of compliments or gay glances over the salad and sandwiches; but in constantly poking and plodding through thicket and mire and solitarily peering and prying on the under sides of leaves and stems and up and down and all around the bark of every rough-trunked tree. She made the picture amusing, none the less, and to no one more so than to the Baron's wife, whose presence among us at the board was as fragrant, so to speak, as that of a violet among its leaves and sisters. "Ah! Gustaf," she said, with a cadenced gravity more taking than mirth, "sat iss a treat-ment nobody got a right to but me. But tell me, tell se company, vhat new sings have you found? I know you have not hunt' all se day and nussing new found." But the Baron had found nothing new. He told us so with his mouth dripping and his nose in the trough--his plate I should say. You could hear him chew across the room. Suddenly, however, he ceased eating and began to pour forth an account of his day's observation; in response to which M. Fontenette, to my amused mystification, led us all in the interest with which we listened. The Baron forgot his food, and when reminded of it, pushed it away with a grunt and talked on and on, while we almost forgot our own. As we rose to return to the veranda, the Creole still offered him an undivided attention, which the Baron rewarded with his continued discourse. As I gave Fontenette a light for his cigarette I held his eye for a moment with a brightness of face into which I put as significant approval as I dared; for I fancied the same unuttered word was brooding in both our hearts: "A new vay to remoof old stains."