Chapter 4. After The Picnic

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_ CHAPTER IV. AFTER THE PICNIC

"AND what comes next on the programme?" asked the Chief.

"Coma, I should say," replied Colonel Ferrers. "After that watermelon, I see nothing else for it. It's my avowed belief that my nephew there could not stir if his life depended on it; it stands to reason. The boy has eaten more than his own weight. Monstrous!"

"What a frightful calumny!" cried Jack, laughing. "Really, Uncle Tom, you cannot expect me to sit still under that."

He rose lightly to his feet, and grasping a branch of the tree above his head, drew himself up, and after kicking his long legs several times in the air, finally twisted them round the branch, and in another moment had disappeared in the shadowy depths of the great hemlock.

"Oh! I say!" his voice floated down. "This is a great tree to climb. You'd better come up, Uncle Tom, if you feel the slightest symptoms of coma."

The other lads did not wait to be invited, but flung themselves at the tree, and were soon lost to sight, though not to sound. Colonel Ferrers turned to his hostess with a frown which tried hard not to turn into a smile.

"Now, did you ever hear of such impudence as that?" he asked. "These young fellows of to-day are the most impudent scoundrels I ever came across. Time was, though, when we could have climbed a tree with the best of them; eh, Merryweather?"

"I have no doubt you could now, Colonel," said his host, "if you were put to it; but I confess it is more comfortable under a tree than in it, nowadays, especially after a Gargantuan feast like this."

It had indeed been a great picnic. The boys, while on a tramp, had discovered a grove of pines and hemlocks, huge old trees, which had unaccountably escaped the woodman's axe. The pines shot up straight and tall for a hundred feet and more, their trunks seamed and scarred, their clouds of dusky green plumes tossing far overhead; the hemlocks were no less massive in girth, but they were twisted into all manner of grotesque shapes, and their feathery branches hung low, making a dense canopy over the heads of the picnickers. Here, under one of these hemlocks, the cloth had been laid, and decorated with ferns and hemlock tassels. Then the baskets were unpacked, and the campers feasted as only dwellers in the open air can feast. Ham and pasty, sandwiches and rolls, jam and doughnuts--nothing seemed to come amiss; and they finished off with a watermelon of such mighty proportions that it took all the united energies of the boys to dispose of it.

But it was finally disposed of, and now came the hour that is apt to be a little difficult at picnics; the hour between the feast and the going home.

"I have a new game," said Mrs. Merryweather. "Perhaps you would like to try it presently; but first, Colonel Ferrers, while the boys are skylarking, or rather tree-larking, up there, I want to hear the story you were telling Miles on the drive over. I could not hear very well on the back seat, and besides, I was making up my game. It was some adventure of yours when you were a boy."

"Capital story!" said Mr. Merryweather. "Do tell it, Colonel; I want to hear it again."

The Colonel smiled, and puffed meditatively at his cigar.

"Story of the barrel, eh?" he said. "Upon my word, now, I think it is pretty hard to make me tell that story before all these young people. What do you say, Gertrude? you don't want to hear about your old friend's being a young fool, do you?"

"Oh! Colonel Ferrers," said Gertrude; "a story that makes your eyes twinkle so must be one that we all want to hear. Do begin, please!"

And all the girls, who had been putting away the table-cloth and "tidying-up" generally, gathered about the Colonel in an eager group.

"Well! well!" he said, glancing from one bright face to another. "After all, what are we old fogies for, but to point a moral and adorn a tale? Listen, then. This happened when I was a young jackanapes of about my nephew's age; I knew everything in the world then, you understand, and nobody else knew much of anything. That was my belief, as it is the belief of most young men."

"Uncle," said a voice from above, "there are three young men up here who are prepared to drop things on your head if you slander their generation."

"Slander your generation, sir?" cried the Colonel, "by likening it to my own? Of all the monstrous insolence I ever heard--you may be thankful, sir, that I name yours in the same breath with it. Be good enough to hold your tongue, sir, and attend to your business, which is that of listening to me. Well, my dear madam, at the period of which I speak, I was in the office of my uncle, Marmaduke Ferrers, India merchant, importer of tea, silks, that sort of thing. Learning the trade, you understand; though, as I say, I was not aware that there was anything in particular to learn. This is one of the lessons I did learn. One day I was sent to the warehouse to count some barrels, and see them stowed away in the vault where they belonged. They were a special thing, barrels of minerals for some collection museum, I forget what. Out of our own line, but we had undertaken to store and keep them for a time. The vault was directly under the warehouse, which was some way from the office. So! I went down and found no one there; The men were at their dinner, you understand. They may have been a little in a hurry, may have started a few minutes before the bell rang; I don't know how it was. At any rate, I was in a towering passion; thought the whole business was going to the dogs for want of discipline, wanted to dismiss every man in the warehouse. Men who had been there before I was born, and knew more about tea than I was likely to know in my lifetime. Well, sir, it came into my ass's head that I would give these men a lesson, show them that there was some one in the place that meant to have things done when he wanted them done. I would stow those barrels myself. I was strong as a bull, you remember--I beg ten thousand pardons! you and your husband were infants when this happened; not out of long clothes, I am positive. But I was uncommonly strong, and thought Milo and Hercules would have found me a tough subject to tackle. Well--speaking of tackle--there was the rope and pulley, all ready for lowering; block up at the ceiling, rope dangling,--just over the trap that led into the vault. There were the barrels; nothing was easier, I thought. Child's play; I would have every one of the barrels lowered and stowed before those scoundrels came back from their dinner. I pushed the first barrel to the edge of the trap (lifted the trap-door first, you understand), hooked on the 'fall,' pleased as Punch with myself--the only man in the world, I give you my word; then I got a good hold on the rope, and--kicked the barrel over the edge."

"Oh! Colonel Ferrers!" cried the girls.

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the boys in the tree.

"Loaded with minerals, you understand! stone, metal, I don't know what. The barrel went down, and I went up."

"_Oh!_ Colonel Ferrers!"

"Up to the ceiling, I give you my word. High room, too, great warehouse, twenty feet if it was one. There I hung, and there I swung, a spectacle for gods and men."

"What _did_ you do?" asked Mrs. Merryweather, as soon as she could control her laughter. "Dear friend, it is most heartless to laugh, but how can we help it? How did you ever get down? did you have to wait till the men came back?"

"No, madam. My pride would not allow that. I learned my lesson, or a part of it, while I hung there like Mahomet's coffin; I learned that Gravitation did not trouble itself about superior young men; but I did not learn all that there was to learn; that took the sequel. Well, I hung there, as I say, revolving slowly; centrifugal force, you understand; I was really exemplifying the workings of natural forces; interesting demonstration, if there had been any one there to see. My crumb of comfort was that there was no one. I must get down before those men came back from dinner; that was the one thing necessary in the world at that moment. I measured the space of the trap as I swung; I prided myself on my correct eye; you see I was a most complete ass: I have seen only a few completer. I thought I could jump down astride of the trap, so to speak, and get no harm. I came down the rope, hand over fist, till I got to the end of it; only about six feet between me and safety: then I jumped."

"And did you--"

"No, my dear madam, I did not. I went down into the cellar, on top of the barrel, and I carry the mark of the edge of that barrel on my shoulders to this day, and shall to my latest day. And the moral of this story," the Colonel concluded, glancing up into the depths of the great hemlock, "the moral, my young friends, is: wait till you know something before you decide that you know everything."

When the laughter had subsided, Mr. Merryweather said: "Your story, Colonel, reminds me of a scrape that Roger and I once got into, years ago. No, it wasn't Roger, it was my brother Will. My children all know it, but it may be new to you and our other guests. It happened when we were out sailing one day, on this very pond. The water was pretty low that year, and we got over into a cove on the north side, where we seldom went, and didn't know the ground thoroughly. Indeed, in very low water, one is apt to find that one doesn't know any ground thoroughly. New ledges and rocks are constantly cropping out--as you shall hear. Well, we were sailing along in fine style, before a fair wind, when suddenly--we ran aground."

"On the shore?" asked the Colonel.

"No; on a rock. It was getting dark, and we could not see very well, but I could see a nose of rock, and it looked like the end of a ledge. 'I'll get out and shove her off!' said I. I sounded with an oar, and found the water barely ankle-deep on the ledge. So I took off my shoes and stockings, rolled up my trousers a little, and stepped in--up to my neck!"

"Ha! ha!" roared the Colonel. "Ho! ho! that was sport. I wish I had seen you."

"Wait a moment!" said the Chief. "The picture is not ready for exhibition yet. When Will had got through laughing at me, he went to work--I found I could not stir the boat alone--he went to work and got ready. Stripped to the skin--he had on a new suit, and was something of a dandy in those days--stepped carefully overboard--and landed in water three inches deep."

"Merryweather, you are making this up!"

"Indeed I am not, my dear sir. There we stood, I up to my chin, he with his toes under water, and laughed till we were so weak that we had to go ashore and sit down before we had strength to push that boat off. There is my Roland for your Oliver, Colonel. And now, Miranda, I think we are ready for your game. Come down, boys!"

The boys came scrambling down, still laughing over the stories, and soon all were seated on the carpet of dry, fragrant pine-needles. The girls had found some oak-leaves ("It is my belief," said Mr. Merryweather, "that if Bell went to a picnic in a coal-mine or on a sand-bank, she would still manage to find oak-leaves somewhere!"), and were busily twining garlands for the heads of the company.

"Are we all ready?" asked Mrs. Merryweather. "Well! my game--a very simple one--is called _Vocabulary_. It came from my reading the other day an admirable little book written by a wise professor, in which he deplores the poverty of our vocabularies, and makes a suggestion for our enlarging them. He advises us to add two or three words to our list every week. The first time we use a new word, he says, it will be embarrassing to us and, it may be, amusing to our hearers; but if we have courage and patience, we shall be doing a good work not only for ourselves, but for all our generation and the generations that are to come. Well, this naturally appealed to me, and I was thinking of proposing it to you all this evening; and then, as we were driving over, it occurred to me that it might be made into a rather amusing game."

"Miranda," said her husband, "is there anything in life that you do _not_ think can be made into a rather amusing game? But go on!"

"Dear Mammy!" said Phil. "Do you remember when you and I both had the toothache, and you thought it might be amusing to count the jumps and see how many there were in a minute?"

"Well, so it would have been," said his mother, "if we had only had a little more fortitude. Now if you are all going to laugh at me, you shall not learn the game."

"Oh, we will be good!" exclaimed the Merryweathers. "We truly will."

"The game of _Vocabulary_," said Mrs. Merryweather, "is played thus. One--I, for example--begins to tell a story. I say, 'I went out to walk this morning, and I met--' there I stop short, and you, in turn, give a verb synonymous, more or less, with 'met.' This goes around the circle till some one cannot find a verb, and that some one must continue the story, stopping at any word he likes. I fear this is not very clear; perhaps we can illustrate it best playing it. I will begin as I suggested. I went out to walk this morning, and on my way I met--" she stopped.

"Encountered!" said Mr. Merryweather.

"Approached!" said the Colonel.

"Ran up against!" said Gerald.

"Fell afoul of!" said Phil.

"Fell in with!" said Bell.

"Peggy, you come next."

"Oh! I can't!" cried poor Peggy. "They have said everything; Mrs. Merryweather, I can't _ever_ play anything of this kind, you know. I am too stupid."

"Nonsense, my child; you are not in the least stupid. If you cannot think of a word, go on with the story."

"But I don't know how!" cried Peggy, her eyes growing large and round, with a look that Gertrude and Margaret knew only too well. The tears were not far behind those round blue eyes; and Margaret hastened to the rescue. "You met a man, dear!" she whispered. "That is all you need say."

"Well--I met a man!" said Peggy, with a gasp.

"Person!"

"Individual!"

"Anthropoid ape!"

"Masculine mortal!"

"Chump!"

"I object to the definition!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "In case of a false definition, the falsifier takes up the thread. Go on, Jerry."

"This man (he _was_ a chump, you'll see!) was so ugly that not a crow dared to stay in the same county with him, and so disagreeable that it gave one spasms to look at him; also, he had not the manners to take off his hat--" he stopped short.

"Cap!"

"Hood!"

"Helmet!"

"Bonnet!"

"Head-dress!"

"Tam-o'-shanter!"

"Mitre!"

"Tiara!"

"Fez!"

"Turban!"

"Beretta!"

"I give in!" cried the Colonel. "I cannot think of another thing, so I continue the tale.

"This odious person, after passing me in the unmannerly fashion described, was about to proceed further; but I, seizing him by the coat collar, lifted my stout stick, and gave him a good sound--"

"Thrashing!"

"Licking!"

"Beating!"

"Chastisement!"

"Hiding!"

"Walloping!"

"Whipping!"

"Scourging!"

"Drubbing!"

"Trouncing!"

"Thwacking!"

"Lashing!"

"Flogging!"

"Caning!"

"Larruping!"

"Fustigating!"

"Basting!"

"Leathering!"

"Thumping!"

"Whopping!"

"Rib-roasting!"

"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Merryweather. "This is rather terrible, I think. There seem to be more terms to express personal violence than anything else."

"We haven't begun to give them all, either!" said Phil. "If we are allowed to use modern slang--I know you prefer ancient, Mammy--"

"I know you are a saucy boy!" said his mother.

"My dear friends," said the Chief, rising. "This is all very fine: but the simple fact is, it is beginning to rain, and I think it advisable for us to beat, fustigate, (where _did_ you get that, Miranda?) or wallop, a retreat!"

Then there was scrambling up, and running to and fro, and gathering up of baskets and shawls. The good old horse, which had been grazing peacefully in a clearing hard by, was harnessed, and Mr. and Mrs. Merryweather, Colonel Ferrers, and the _impedimenta_ bundled in and off as hastily as might be. Finally, as the rain began to pour down in good earnest, the younger campers gathered into a solid phalanx and walked home across the fields, singing in chorus, and informing all whom it might concern that they were

"Marching along,
Fifty score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!" _

Read next: Chapter 5. Kitty And Willy

Read previous: Chapter 3. Auf Das Wasser Zu Singen

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