When Finchhanger was reached, there was no time wasted in walking about, though the day, which had begun by being doubtful, was turning out fine. The dinner was the great event of the day, and till it was accomplished successfully—nay, triumphantly, it was not to be thought that any of the picnic party could care for anything else. Oliver, while he cast a regretful glance on the fleeting lights and shades on wood and water which his companions were overlooking, admitted the reasonableness of the principle when a picnic without servants was in question. He was thankful at least for the absence of false assumption. He laboured to fall in with the requirements of the moment. He put himself in the experienced hands of Jack Dadd, with the intention of acting under him in the capacity of an amateur waiter, in spite of Oliver’s peculiar disqualifications for that onerous office, and though he had the mortification to receive regularly, after the discharge of every two out of three commissions entrusted to him, a plain dismissal, though it was couched in tones of jovial mockery and recalled the next moment. ‘Get along with you, Constable, you are only in a man’s way. Was that the style in which you handled plates and knives at your University spreads? You must have been a rare blessing to the crockery shops. I’m blowed if I know how you escaped losing half your cutlery, or carving your own hands and feet. You had better attempt to carry them with your toes, or in your teeth at once. My good feller, you ought to have stuck to your books. You ain’t fit for the ordinary business of life.’ No fault could be found either with Fan’s qualifications or behaviour—in so far as rendering every assistance with a fine capacity and expertness which were in broad contrast to Oliver’s helpless, hopeless _gaucheries_. If she had only not been so much in earnest in her work! ‘Drat it!’ Jack Dadd broke out aside to ’Liza and ’Mily Polley, who were languishing and romping over the tasks assigned them, not showing a tithe of the power to become excellent table-maids which Fan displayed. ‘I can’t stand Fan Constable, though she’ll have everything put out in apple-pie order before we can say Jack Robinson. I wish she would sit down. Ain’t she going about setting us an example how to mind our businesses, as if we were all in shop or at Sunday-school? I’ll throw a dish at her head before I’ve done,’—an extreme expression of feeling which delighted his hearers immensely. But as Fan was very much in earnest at all times, Oliver could hardly complain of her conduct in this instance, and certainly he could not call her aside and reproach her for devoting herself for the rest of the day to a girl far more delicate than ’Liza Polley, who had come out in her anxiety not to lose the excursion when she was quite unfit for the fatigue.