The fermentation of contentment in Roderick’s soul reached its climax a few days before the young men were to make their farewells.  He had been sitting with his friends on Cecilia’s veranda, but for half an hour past he had said nothing.  Lounging back against a vine-wreathed column and gazing idly at the stars, he kept caroling softly to himself with that indifference to ceremony for which he always found allowance, and which in him had a sort of pleading grace.  At last, springing up:  “I want to strike out, hard!” he exclaimed.  “I want to do something violent, to let off steam!”

“I ’ll tell you what to do, this lovely weather,” said Cecilia.  “Give a picnic.  It can be as violent as you please, and it will have the merit of leading off our emotion into a safe channel, as well as yours.”

Roderick laughed uproariously at Cecilia’s very practical remedy for his sentimental need, but a couple of days later, nevertheless, the picnic was given.  It was to be a family party, but Roderick, in his magnanimous geniality, insisted on inviting Mr. Striker, a decision which Rowland mentally applauded.  “And we ’ll have Mrs. Striker, too,” he said, “if she ’ll come, to keep my mother in countenance; and at any rate we ’ll have Miss Striker—­the divine Petronilla!” The young lady thus denominated formed, with Mrs. Hudson, Miss Garland, and Cecilia, the feminine half of the company.  Mr. Striker presented himself, sacrificing a morning’s work, with a magnanimity greater even than Roderick’s, and foreign support was further secured in the person of Mr. Whitefoot, the young Orthodox minister.  Roderick had chosen the feasting-place; he knew it well and had passed many a summer afternoon there, lying at his length on the grass and gazing at the blue undulations of the horizon.  It was a meadow on the edge of a wood, with mossy rocks protruding through the grass and a little lake on the other side.  It was a cloudless August day; Rowland always remembered it, and the scene, and everything that was said and done, with extraordinary distinctness.  Roderick surpassed himself in friendly jollity, and at one moment, when exhilaration was at the highest, was seen in Mr. Striker’s high white hat, drinking champagne from a broken tea-cup to Mr. Striker’s health.  Miss Striker had her father’s pale blue eye; she was dressed as if she were going to sit for her photograph, and remained for a long time with Roderick on a little promontory overhanging the lake.  Mrs. Hudson sat all day with a little meek, apprehensive smile.  She was afraid of an “accident,” though unless Miss Striker (who indeed was a little of a romp) should push Roderick into the lake, it was hard to see what accident could occur.  Mrs. Hudson was as neat and crisp and uncrumpled at the end of the festival as at the beginning.  Mr. Whitefoot, who but a twelvemonth later became a convert to episcopacy and was already cultivating a certain conversational sonority, devoted himself to Cecilia.  He had