When Kilian said, "What can I do for you. Miss Pauline?" I could not help saying, "Take me home."
"Home!" cried Kilian. "Here is somebody talking about going home. Why, Miss Pauline, I am just beginning to enjoy myself! only look, it is but four o'clock."
"Oh, let us stay and go home by moonlight," cried Mary Leighton, in a little rapture.
"Would it not be heavenly!" said Henrietta.
"How about tea?" said Charlotte. "We shall be hungry before moonlight, and there isn't anything left to eat."
"How material!" cried Kilian, who had eaten an enormous dinner.
"We shall all get cold," said Sophie, who loved to be comfortable, "and the children are beginning to be very cross."
"Small blame to them," muttered a dissatisfied man in my ear, who had singled me out as a companion in discontent, and had pursued me with his contempt for pastoral entertainments, and for this entertainment in especial.
"Well, let the people that want to stay, stay; but let us go home," I said, hastily.
"That is so like you, Pauline," exclaimed Mary Leighton, in a voice that stung me like nettles.
"It is very like common-sense," I said, "if that's like me."
"Let dogs delight," said Kilian, "I have a compromise to offer. If we go home by the bridge we pass the little Brink hotel, where they give capital teas. We can stop there, rest, get tea, have a dance in the 'ball-room,' sixteen by twenty, and go home by moonlight, filling the souls of Miss Leighton and Henrietta with bliss."
A chorus of ecstasy followed this; Sophie herself was satisfied with the plan, and exulted in the prospect of washing her face, and lying down on a bed for half an hour, though only at a little country inn. Even this low form of civilized life was tempting, after seven hours spent in communion with nature on hard rocks.
Great alacrity was shown in getting ready and in getting off. I could not speak to any one, not even the dissatisfied man, but walked away by myself and tried to let no one see what I was feeling. After all was ready, I got into the carriage beside one of the Miss Lowders, and the dissatisfied man sat opposite. He wore canvas shoes and a corduroy suit, and sleeve-buttons and studs that were all bugs and bees. I think I could make a drawing of the sleeve-button on the arm with which he held the umbrella over us; there were five different forms of insect-life represented on it, but I remember them all.