Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/69

Rh "That's the fellow I had to thrash. Beside them is Willie, the lad I unfortunately ran over. Come, you must make their acquaintance."

The party rose as the doctor approached. After a few words of introduction, Gwyneth asked, with the ease of a daughter of the best-born—

"May I offer you a cup of tea, sir?"

"Thanks, Miss Elms, I must move amongst our friends."

"Perhaps you will stay and have a cup of tea with us?" suggested Elms to the younger man.

"Thanks, very much." Gwyneth made room for the young man at the end of her form.

"I fear you'll find it rather dull in the country," remarked Travers, with a patronizing air. "No theatres, football-matches, or assembly dances, eh?"

"I dare say we can manage to exist, sir, without such dissipation," answered Gwyneth, quietly pouring out the tea. "I fear you imagine we think of nothing save our 'day out.'"

"I am sure you are a cut above that, Miss Elms; but what will you do with yourself in your spare hours?"

"I suppose we can take our books with us, and that my sewing-machine may go; even my piano, I hope, may not be too bulky for transit."

"You play then?" asked Travers.

"You should hear her sing too, sir," suggested the proud father between his munchings of a big bun.

"Some thinks we don't know nothing," growled Dick Malduke, applying with both hands the drum-stick of a chicken to his mouth. Travers looked at the shock-haired young man as though he would not mind shaking him as his father had done.

"Dick calls himself a 'root and branch' man,"