That Loo began to be played at the Club, and the Admiral’s weekly accounts to grow less satisfactory than in the days when he and Mrs. Buzza were steadfast opponents at Whist.

That Mrs. Simpson discovered her great uncle to have been a baronet on this earth.

That Mrs. Payne had prefixed “Ellicome” to her surname, and spoke of “the Ellicome-Paynes, you know.”

That Mr. Moggridge had been heard to speak of Sam Buzza as a “low fellow.”

That Sam had retorted by terming the poet a “conceited ass.”

And—­

That Admiral Buzza intended a Picnic.

To measure the importance of this last item, you must know that a Trojan picnic is no ordinary function.  To begin with, it is essentially patriotic—­devoted, in fact, to the cult of the Troy river, in honour of which it forms a kind of solemn procession.  Undeviating tradition has fixed its goal at a sacred rock, haunted of heron and kingfisher, and wrapped around with woodland, beside a creek so tortuous as to simulate a series of enchanted lakes.  Here the self-respecting Trojan, as his boat cleaves the solitude, will ask his fellows earnestly and at regular intervals whether they ever beheld anything more lovely; and they, in duty bound and absolute truthfulness, will answer that they never did.

It follows that a Trojan picnic depends for its success to quite a peculiar degree upon the weather.  But on the day of the Admiral’s merry-making, this was, beyond cavil, kind.  Four boats started from the Town Quay; four boats—­alas!—­could by this time contain the cumeelfo of Troy; for everybody who was anybody had been invited, and nobody (with the exception of the Honourable Frederic, who could not leave his telescope) had refused.  Sam Buzza did not start with the rest, but was to follow later; and in his absence Mr. Moggridge paid impressive court to Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys, though uneasily, for Sophia’s saddened eyes were upon him.

Yet everybody seemed in the best of spirits and tempers.  The Admiral, after bestowing his wife in another boat, and glaring vindictively at Kit’s House, where the figure of Mr. Fogo was visible on the beach, grew exceedingly jocose, and cracked his most admired jokes, including his famous dialogue with the echo just beyond Kit’s House—­a performance which Miss Limpenny declared she had seldom heard him give with such spirit.  She herself, spurred to emulation, told her favourite story, which began, “In the Great Exhibition of Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-one, when her Majesty—­long may she reign!—­partook of a public luncheon—­” and contained a most diverting incident about a cherry-pie.  And always, at decent intervals, she would exclaim—­

“Did you ever see anything more lovely?”

To which the Admiral as religiously would reply—­

“Really, I never did.”