“I shan’t try to tame him,” said Estelle.  “I respect wild things a great deal too much to show them the charms of being tame.  But it’s something that he’s coming, and if once he will let me be his chum in holidays, I might bring him round to Ray.”

She planned the details of the picnic and invited Raymond to imagine himself a boy again.  This he did and suggested various additions to the entertainment.

“Did Sabina agree easily?” he asked, still returning to the event as something very great and gratifying.

“Not willingly, but gradually and cautiously.”

“She’s softer and gentler than she was, however.  I can assure you of that,” said Mr. Churchouse.

“She thought it might be a trap at first,” confessed Estelle.

“A trap, Chicky!  You to set a trap?”

“No, you, Ray.  She fancied you might mean to surprise the boy and bully him.”

“How could she think so?”

“I assured her that you’d never dream of any such thing.  Of course I promised, as she wished me to do so, that you wouldn’t turn up at the picnic.  I reminded her how very particular you were, and how entirely you leave it to Abel to come round and take the first step.”

“Be jolly careful what you say to him.  He’s a mass of prejudice, where I’m concerned, and doesn’t even know I’m educating him.”

“I’ll keep off you,” she promised.  “In fact, I only intend to give him as good a day as I can.  I’m not going to bother about you, Ray; I’m going to think of myself and do everything I can to get his friendship on my own account.  If I can do that for a start, I shall be satisfied.”

“And so shall I,” declared Ernest.  “Because it wouldn’t stop at that.  If you succeed, then much may come of it.  In my case, I can’t lift his guarded friendship for me into enthusiasm.  He associates me with learning to read and other painful preliminaries to life.  Moreover, I have tried to awaken his moral qualities and am regarded with the gravest suspicion in consequence.  But you come to him freshly and won’t try to teach him anything.  Join him in his pleasure and add to it all you can.  There is nothing that wins young creatures quicker than sharing their pleasures, if you can do so reasonably and are not removed so far from them by age that any attempt would be ridiculous.  Fifteen and twenty-seven may quite well have a good deal in common still, if twenty-seven is not too proud to confess it.”

CHAPTER XII

THE PICNIC

For a long day Estelle devoted herself whole-heartedly to winning the friendship of Abel Dinnett.  Her chances of success were increased by an accident, though it appeared at first that the misadventure would ruin all.  For when Estelle arrived at ‘The Magnolias’ in her pony carriage, Sabina proved to be sick and quite unequal to the proposed day in the air.

Abel declined to go without his mother, but, after considerable persuasion, allowed the prospect of pleasure to outweigh his distrust.