True enough, Phebe was as essential to any picnic as the feast, though much less obtrusively so, and Gerald watched her friend’s quiet helpfulness with lazy interest.  She herself was stretched at ease on the clean, fresh grass under some glorious old trees.  The place chosen was a lovely spot at the head of the lake; the drive there had been long and hot, and now she lay enjoying to the full the refreshment of the shadow and the breeze, and the perfection both of the view and of her immediate surroundings.  Bell Masters sat near her, having discovered that she was generally surest of Mr. De Forest’s company when in Gerald’s neighborhood.  Nor had she been mistaken this time.  He had openly abandoned the greedy band of berry-pickers, and the artistic knot of sketchers, and the noisy body of pleasure-seekers, who were paddling frivolously around the shores of the lake and screaming with causeless laughter, as soon as he found that Gerald did not intend attaching herself to any of them but had struck out the new and independent line of doing absolutely nothing at all.  Halloway had been helping industriously with the fire, but he came toward the group under the trees when his services seemed no longer required.

“You look most invitingly comfortable,” he said, fanning himself with his hat.  “We must try to coax Miss Phebe here for a rest.”

“Pray don’t,” said De Forest, lifting a lazy hand with an air of finding even that motion too great an effort.  “At least not till the coffee is well under way.  I tasted a cup of her make yesterday.  Don’t call her off.  We are all benefiting in a manner by her absence.”

“I can make good coffee too, when I choose,” said Bell, biting at the rim of her straw hat.

De Forest contemplated her with new interest.  “Ah, can you.  ’Tis a gift of the gods given to few.  And when do you choose, may I ask?  Apparently not to-day.”

“’Tisn’t my picnic.”

“Oh!  Is it Miss Lane’s?”

“One would say it was, from the way she slaves for it,” remarked Gerald.

“Why don’t you help too?” asked De Forest, breaking off blades of grass and flinging them out singly upon the air.

“For Miss Masters’ excellent reason:  it is not my picnic.”

“You contribute your valuable aid solely to your own undertakings then?”

“Why am I called upon to contribute it to any other?”

“’Tis a problem for philosophers.  But for argument’s sake, let us say for the good of humanity at large, and of the Dexters in particular.”

“I am not bound to the Dexters by any obligation that I can see to help them carry out their entertainment.  If they are not equal to it, they should not give it.”

“Nothing Quixotic about you, is there?” said De Forest, looking at her quizzically.

“Nothing whatever,” replied Gerald, easily.  “Why should there be?  Let every one look out for himself.”

“And if some can’t?”