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264 rience that though eating one's luncheon on the grass is a picturesque thing to look at, it is by no means a comfortable thing to do: one's back has an awkward trick of curving outwards, and one's knees of encroaching on one's chin. Then the eating—whether is it better to bend two-double over the plate on the damask, or permit it to reverse itself and its contents on our slippery laps? In spite of these drawbacks, however, the grateful shadow, gay voices, welcome champagne cup, and the right companion, make the hour a pleasant one. If only these pleasant hours that come so rarely to us mortals would abide with us, not hurry so fleetly away!

"I think you must have snubbed St. John pretty well," says Paul; "he left you so precipitately just now."

"He is so stupid," I say, looking across at him; "and as I am not clever myself, I like to be with amusing people; do not you?"

"Indeed I do; but I don't think the cleverest people are the most amusing. They go too deep. It is the nonsense talkers who are most companionable; just as you will laugh heartily at a book that you keep on saying to yourself over and over again is the silliest stuff imaginable."

"Then there is some hope for me, is there not?"

The servants come and go, merry jests are born and die, the sunbeams flicker jubilantly down on our uncovered heads, the butterflies flutter idly by, the gnats swarm above us, there is a sleepiness in the air, a sense of comfort in our bodies.

"What have you been thinking about all this time?" asks Paul.

"You will laugh if I tell you," I say, "but just then I was ruminating about bread sauce. Partridges grew and so did bread, but the man who wedded the two must have been a clever fellow, must he not?"