"Now a thought strikes me," she exclaimed, as if addressing the entire company; "can any one here sketch the least bit in the world? What a fresh and charming illustrated paper the material I am collecting would make for one of the magazines, if I could get some truthful and spirited sketches from which an illustrator could take his cue!" She rolled the end of her pencil in her mouth and awaited an answer.
"Mr. Reynolds is an artist," said Moreton with a sidelong glance at his friend.
"Oh, I'm so glad! Won't you help me, Mr. Reynolds? Just a half dozen or so of striking local transcripts--a view of General DeKay's house, a scene or two from the quail shoot, some character studies and----"
"You overwhelm me," said Reynolds, his face actually showing the truth of his assertion. "I never could trust myself to undertake such a commission; and besides," he added with a tone of suddenly discovered relief, "I have no sketching materials with me."
Miss Crabb became thoughtful, tapping her forehead with the back of her note-book. Mrs. Ransom came to the rescue with a request for her to help pass coffee to the gentlemen. The negro attendant had brewed a pot of Java, the aromatic fragrance of which had been for some minutes on the air.
It would, indeed, have been worth while for an artist to have caught the impression of the scene just then. The men carelessly standing or sitting, with the young women ministering and the dogs lounging idly around the outskirts of the group; the soft atmosphere, the broad, airy landscape with the green-fringed silvery river winding through the middle distance, the slumberous quietude and the deep, dark forest rising yonder like a wall.
After coffee the gentlemen went aside to light pipes and cigars. The afternoon was well advanced before General DeKay proposed going to the field again. Now and then a quail had been heard whistling in the distance that far-reaching, energetic call of a straggler to his scattered companions. A momentarily freshening breeze was fast brushing from the sky the film of fleece clouds.
The ladies voted that they were satisfied with what they had seen, wished the sportsmen a merry afternoon and were driven back across the rustling sedge fields to the old mansion.