the first place the young gentleman blushed violently at being addressed; in the second, he spoke in a very hoarse and weak tone, his voice being not yet established. Unable to think of anything further to say, he turned for aid to the maiden of thirty-five, between whom and himself there was a tender feeling, as appeared openly later in the day. She set him on his intellectual pins by commencing a conversation on the wooden-spoon exhibition.
"What is the wooden-spoon?" asked Lillie.
"It is a burlesque honor in college," answered the youth. "It used to be given to the stupidest fellow in the graduating class. Now it's given to the jolliest fellow—most popular fellow—smartest fellow, that doesn't take a real honor."
"Allow me to ask, sir, are you a candidate?" inquired the Lieutenant-Colonel.
Miss Ravenel cringed at this unprovoked and not very brilliant brutality. The collegian merely stammered "No, sir," and blushed immoderately. He was too much puzzled by the other's impassable stare to comprehend the sneer at once; but he studied it much during the day, and that night writhed over the memory of it till towards morning. Both Carter and the lady of thirty-five ought to have been ashamed of themselves for taking unfair advantage of the simplicity and sensitiveness of this lad; but the feminine sinner had at least this excuse, that it was the angelic spirit of love, and not the demoniac spirit of scorn, which prompted her conduct. Perceiving that her boy was being abused, she inveigled him into a corner of the vehicle, where they could talk together without interruption. The conversation of lovers is not usually interesting to outsiders except as a subject of laughter; it is frequently stale and flat to a degree which seems incomprehensible when you consider the strong feelings of the interlocutors. This is the ordinary sort of thing, at least in New Boston:—
Lady. (smiling) Did you go out yesterday?
Gent. (smiling) Yes.
Lady. Where?
Gent. Only down to the post-office.
Lady. Many people in the streets?
Gent. Not very many.
And all the while the two persons are not thinking of the walk, nor of the post-office, nor of the people in the streets, nor of anything of which they speak. They are thinking of each other; they are prattling merely to be near each other; they are so full of each other that they cannot talk of foreign subjects interestingly; and so the babble has a meaning which the unsympathetic bye-stander does not comprehend.
After circulating through the city to pick up the various invited ones, the omnibus was joined by a second omnibus and two or three family rockaways. The little fleet of vehicles then sailed into the country, and at the end of an hour's voyage came to anchor under the lee of a wooded cliff called the Eagle's Nest, which was the projected site of the pic-nic. Up the long slope which formed the back of the cliff, a number of baskets and demijohns were carried by the youthful beaux of the party with a child-like zeal which older gallants might not have exhibited. Carter's weighty hamper was taken care of by a couple of juniors, who jumped to the task on learning that it belonged to a United States army officer. He offered repeatedly to relieve them, but they would not suffer it. In a roundabout and inarticulate manner they were exhibiting the fervent patriotism of the time, as well as that perpetual worship which young men pay to their superiors in age and knowledge of the world. And oh! how was virtue rewarded when the basket was opened and its contents displayed! It was not for the roast chicken that the two frolicsome juniors cared: the companion baskets around were crammed with edibles of all manner of flesh and fowl; it was the sight of six bottles of champagne which made their eyes rejoice. But with a holy horror equal to their wicked joy did all the matrons of the party, and indeed more than half of the younger people, stare. Carter's champagne was the only spirit of a vinous or ardent nature present. And when he produced two bunches of segars from his pockets and proceeded to distribute them, the moral excitation reached its height. Immediately there were opposing partisans in the pic-nic: those who meant to take a glass of champagne and smoke a segar, if it were only for the wicked fun of the thing; and those who meant, not only that they would not smoke nor drink themselves, but that nobody else should. These last formed little groups and discussed the affair with conscientious bitterness. But what to do? The atrocity puzzled them by its very novelty. The memory of woman did not go back to the time when an aristocratic New Boston pic-nic had been so desecrated. I say the memory of woman advisedly and upon arithmetical calculation; for in this party the age of the males averaged at least five years less than that of the females.
"Why don't you stop it, Mrs. Whitewood?" said the maiden of thirty-five, with girlish enthusiasm. "You are the oldest person here." (Mrs. Whitewood did not look particularly flattered by this statement.) "You have a perfect right to order anything." (Mrs. Whitewood looked as if she would like to order the young lady to let her alone.) "If I were you, I would step out there and say, Gentlemen, this must be stopped."
Mrs. Whitewood might have replied, Why don't you say it yourself?—you are old enough. But she did not; such sarcastic observations never occurred to her good-natured soul; nor, had she been endowed with thousands of similar conceits, would she have dared utter one. It was impossible to rub her up to the business of confronting and putting down the adherents of the champagne basket. She did think of speaking to Lieutenant-Colonel Carter privately about it, but before she could decide in what terms to address him, the last bottle had been cracked, and then of course it was useless to say anything. So in much horror of spirit and with many self-reproaches for her weakness, she gazed helplessly upon what she considered a scene of wicked revelry. In fact there was a good deal of jollity and racket. The six bottles of champagne made a pretty strong dose for the unaccustomed heads of the dozen lads and three or four young ladies who finished them. Carter himself, cloyed with the surfeit of yesterday, took almost nothing, to the wonder, and even, I suspect, to the disappointment of the temperance party. But he made himself dreadfully obnoxious by urging his Sillery upon every one, including the Whitewoods and the maiden of thirty-five. The latter declined the proffered glass with an air of virtuous indignation which struck him as uncivil, more particularly as it evoked a triumphant smile from the adherents of lemonade. With a cruelty without parallel, and for which I shall not attempt to excuse him, he immediately offered the bumper to the young gentleman on whose arm the lady leaned, with the observation, "Madam, I hope you will allow your son to take a little."
The unhappy couple walked away in a speechless condition. The two juniors heretofore mentioned burst into hysterical gulphs of laughter, and then pretended that it was a simultaneous attack of coughing. There were no more attempts to put down the audacious army gentleman, and he was accorded that elbow-room which we all grant to a bull in a china-shop. He was himself somewhat shocked by the sensation which he had produced.
"What an awful row!" he whispered to Colburne. "I have plunged this nursery into a state of civil war. When you said pic-nic, how could I suppose that it was a Sabbath-school excursion? By the way, it isn't Sunday, is it? Do you always do it this way in New Boston? But you are not immaculate. You do some things here which would draw down the frown of society in other places. Look at those couples—a young fellow and a girl—strolling off by themselves among the thickets. Some of them have been out of sight for half an hour. I should think it would make talk. I should think Mrs. Whitewood, who seems to be matron in chief, would stop it. I tell you, it wouldn't do in New York or Philadelphia, or any such place, except among the lower classes. You don't catch our young Louisianienne making a dryad of herself. I heard one of these lads ask her to take a walk in the grove on top of the hill, and I saw her decline with a blush which certainly expressed astonishment, and, I think, indignation. Now how the devil can these old girls, who have lived long enough to be able to put two and two together, be so dem'd inconsistent? After regarding me with horror for offering them a glass of champagne, they will commit imprudences which make them appear as if they had drunk a bottle of it. And yet, just look. I have too much delicacy to ask one of those young ones to stroll off with me in the bushes.—Won't
