Before they parted for the evening, George communicated to his father the great fact of Miss Todd's picnic as settled for the next day; and Sir Lionel expressed himself as willing to make one of the party if Miss Todd could be induced to extend to him the light of her countenance. On this head young Bertram, though his own acquaintance had certainly been short, thought that he might take on himself to answer. People soon get intimate with each other at such places as Jerusalem. When you have been up the Great Pyramid with a lady, the chances are you know more about her than you would do from a year's acquaintance fostered by a dozen London parties; and a journey up the Nile with a man may be considered quite equal to three years spent together at the same college,--that is, if the fellow-travellers be young. After a certain age, men never become really intimate, let their relations with each other be ever so close. "There will be a Miss Baker there, sir, who says she knows you; and a Miss Waddington, a very fine girl, who at any rate knows my name." "What! Caroline Waddington?" "Yes, Caroline Waddington." "She is a ward of your uncle." "So Miss Baker tells me; but I never heard my uncle mention them. Indeed, he never mentions anything." "It will be very desirable that you should know Miss Waddington. There is no saying what your uncle may do with his money. Yes, I'll go to the picnic; only I hope the place is not distant." So that matter was settled. CHAPTER IX. MISS TODD'S PICNIC. That matter of obtaining permission for Sir Lionel to join the picnic was not found difficult of arrangement. Good-looking, pleasant-mannered Sir Lionels, who bear the Queen's commission, and have pleasant military ways with them, are welcome enough at such parties as these, even though they be sixty years of age. When George mentioned the matter to Miss Todd, that lady declared herself delighted. She had heard, she said, of the distinguished arrival at the hotel, but she had been almost afraid to ask such a man as Sir Lionel to join their foolish little party. Then Miss Baker, who in this affair bore the next authority to Miss Todd, declared that she had intended to ask him, taking upon herself the freedom of an old acquaintance; and so that matter was arranged. The party was not to be a large one. There was Miss Todd, the compounder of it, a maiden lady, fat, fair, and perhaps almost forty; a jolly jovial lady, intent on seeing the world, and indifferent to many of its prejudices and formal restraints. "If she threw herself in Sir Lionel's way, people would of course say that she wanted to marry him; but she did not care a straw what people said; if she found Sir Lionel agreeable, she would throw herself in his way." So she told Miss Baker--with perhaps more courage than the occasion required.