"You don't know his name," said Kathleen. "Let's do something with the ring."
"Imposs!" said Gerald. "I forgot to tell you, but I met Mademoiselle when I went back for my garters--and she's coming to meet us and walk back with us."
"I said," said Gerald deliberately, "that it was very kind of her. And so it was. Us not wanting her doesn't make it not kind her coming----"
"It may be kind, but it's sickening too," said Mabel, "because now I suppose we shall have to stick here and wait for her; and I promised we'd meet the bailiff-man. He's going to bring things in a basket and have a picnic-tea with us."
"Beyond the dinosaurus. He said he'd tell me all about the anteddy-something animals--it means before Noah's Ark; there are lots besides the dinosaurus--in return for me telling him my agreeable fictions. Yes, he called them that."
"As soon as the gates shut. That's five."
"We might take Mademoiselle along," suggested Gerald.
"She'd be too proud to have tea with a bailiff, I expect; you never know how grown-ups will take the simplest things." It was Kathleen who said this.
"Well, I'll tell you what," said Gerald, lazily turning on the stone bench. "You all go along, and meet your bailiff. A picnic's a picnic. And I'll wait for Mademoiselle."
Mabel remarked joyously that this was jolly decent of Gerald, to which he modestly replied: "Oh, rot!"
Jimmy added that Gerald rather liked sucking-up to people.
"Little boys don't understand diplomacy," said Gerald calmly; "sucking-up is simply silly. But it's better to be good than pretty and----"
"And," his brother went on, "you never know when a grown-up may come in useful. Besides, they _like_ it. You must give them _some_ little pleasures. Think how awful it must be to be old. My hat!"
"I hope _I_ shan't be an old maid," said Kathleen.
"I don't _mean_ to be," said Mabel briskly. "I'd rather marry a travelling tinker."
"It would be rather nice," Kathleen mused, "to marry the Gipsy King and go about in a caravan telling fortunes and hung round with baskets and brooms."
"Oh, if I could choose," said Mabel, "of course, I'd marry a brigand, and live in his mountain fastnesses, and be kind to his captives and help them to escape and----"
"You'll be a real treasure to your husband," said Gerald.