George feels a violent impulse to contradict her, but masters it. Phyl, he says, ask Lizzie to bring a spoon for the gravy. She always forgets it.--Mr. Martin, I’ll tell you the kind of people we are, we never have a carving knife sharp enough to cut with. “Well, George, it’s not our own carving knife. You see, Mr. Martin, we took this house furnished. It’s not like having our own things.” Our own isn’t any better, George’s voice shouts angrily inside his head, but he manages to keep it from coming out. Are we going to the Haunted House for the Picnic? the children ask. Not unless you take your elbows off the table, Phyllis says sharply. Mr. Martin, who looks puzzled, takes his elbows off too. There’s a poor old tumbledown farm, on a sandy cliff, among dark pine trees, Phyllis explains. Someone has told the children that it’s haunted. The word means nothing to them, but they can tell--by the way people say it--that it suggests something interesting. Yes, if it doesn’t rain, George says. He is too experienced a parent ever to make positive promises. This would have been a good day for cold meat and salad, he thinks, sawing away at the joggling-slippery roast. Phyllis sees him thinking it. “I’m sorry to have hot meat on such a warm day, but we’ll need it to-morrow for the sandwiches. There’s some iced tea coming.” “Hot meat to make your inside hot, iced tea to make it cold,” the children exclaim. “Do we have to eat the fat?” They always ask this question. Then Mr. Martin asks it too, which causes amusement. How delightful Mr. Martin is, Phyllis thinks. He has a sort of eagerness to be happy, to enjoy things, to move blithely from one minute to the next. Even George feels it, he looks less cross. But George, as he takes down a tall glass of iced tea in one draught, is making calmly desperate resolves. I haven’t the faintest idea what anything means, he is telling himself, but I’m just going to go on placidly. I’ll go cracked if I keep on worrying. Maybe after lunch I can take a snooze in the garden. One of the little girls wriggles happily on her chair, her pink frock has slipped sideways on her smooth brown shoulder, showing the frilled strap of her shirt. With a gentle twitch George pulls her dress straight and pats the child’s golden nape. She looks at him with innocent affection. That little bare shoulder makes him think of women and their loveliness, and all the torments of unease to which these same poor youngsters must grow up. He concentrates his mind on the blue and white platter, the brown gravy dimpled with clear circles of fat and turning ruddy as the juice of the roast trickles down, the amber tea with slices of lemon. Thank Heaven Time still lies before them all like an ocean. Even he and Phyllis are young, they don’t need to do anything definite about life, not yet. Keep your mind on the small beautiful details, the crackling yield of bread-crust under the knife, the wide hills over the sea, sunset on