"Mrs. Rose, we are going to have a picnic on Monday in the Valley of Jehoshaphat; will you and your young ladies join us? We shall send the hampers to the tomb of Zachariah."
"Thank you, Miss Todd; we should have been so happy; but we have only three days to do Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, and Jericho. We must be off to-morrow."
"Mamma, I lost my parasol somewhere coming down the Mount of Offence. Those nasty Arab children must have stolen it."
"They say the people in Siloam are the greatest thieves in Syria; and nobody dares to meddle with them."
"But I saw it in your hand, my dear, at the Well of Enrogel."
"What, no potatoes! there were potatoes yesterday. Waiter, waiter; who ever heard of setting people down to dinner without potatoes?"
"Well, I didn't know what to say to it. If that is the tomb of Nicodemus, that seems to settle the question. May I trouble you for the salt?"
"Mr. Pott, I won't have anything more to say to you; you have no faith. I believe it all."
"What, all? from Calvary upstairs in the gallery down to the dark corner where the cock crew?"
"Yes, all, Mr. Pott. Why should not a cock crow there as well as anywhere else? It is so beautiful to believe."
George Bertram found himself seated next to a lady-like well-dressed Englishwoman of the middle age, whom he heard called Miss Baker; and next to her again sat--an angel! whom Miss Baker called Caroline, and whom an odious man sitting on the other side of her called Miss Waddington.
All my readers will probably at different times have made part of a table-d'hôte assemblage; and most of them, especially those who have travelled with small parties, will know how essential it is to one's comfort to get near to pleasant neighbours. The young man's idea of a pleasant neighbour is of course a pretty girl. What the young ladies' idea may be I don't pretend to say. But it certainly does seem to be happily arranged by Providence that the musty fusty people, and the nicy spicy people, and the witty pretty people do severally assemble and get together as they ought to do.
Bertram's next-door neighbour was certainly of the nicy spicy order; but this did not satisfy him. He would have been very well pleased to talk to Miss Baker had it not been for the close contiguity of Miss Waddington; and even her once-removed vicinity would not have made him unhappy had not that odious man on her left had so much to say about the village of Emmaus and the Valley of Ajalon.