02 Morning at Jalna by Mazo de La Roche

Author:Mazo de La Roche
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781459700802
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2011-07-12T23:00:00+00:00

There was an unbelievably holiday feeling. Clean sheets were blowing wetly on the clotheslines. The pudding was merrily bubbling in the pot. Twin Jersey calves were born in the stable. Mulberries were lying darkly on the lawn. Yet, though effort was involved in these activities — the sheets had had to be washed, the pudding concocted, the cow had laboured to produce the calves, the tree had struggled against storm and drought to produce the mulberries, Philip and Adeline had been through stress and strain during the long visit from the Sinclairs — yet, on this day of Indian summer, all might have been spontaneous and without effort, so happy were all living creatures at Jalna.

Augusta said, “It seems to me that this would be a good day for a picnic.”

“I was just going to remark,” said Ernest, “that this would be a good day for a picnic.”

“A lovely thought,” said Adeline. “We’ll have a picnic by the lake and go in bathing. I’ll pack a hamper with good things to eat. We’ll invite James Wilmott and the Laceys. Will that suit you, Philip?”

“It’s just what I need,” said Philip, “a picnic by the lake.”

“I was going to remark,” said Ernest, “that what I need is a picnic by the lake.”

Philip fixed him with a cold blue stare. “We can do without any remarks from you,” he said.

“He pushes into everything,” said Nicholas, “as if he were the most important person in the house.”

Ernest hung his head. Yet he was not subdued for long. Soon he was taking part, as well as he could, in preparations for the picnic. There was much running up and down stairs with bathing suits; much panting up and down, from and to the basement, on the part of Mrs. Coveyduck and Bessie with provisions. Messengers were dispatched by Philip with invitations for the Laceys and James Wilmott.

Wilmott appeared, wearing a light-coloured jacket, tight trousers, large dark cravat, and wide-brimmed straw hat. He carried a basket containing fillets of salmon that had been stored in his ice-house — on ice cut from “his own river,” as he called it. All the way from the sea these salmon came to spawn in the river, so he said. He deplored the fact that every year there were fewer of them.

The Laceys too came happily to the picnic — the parents, the two little daughters who were the age of Nicholas and Ernest, and their son, Guy, who was still on leave from the Royal Navy. The sight of him was as thrilling to Augusta as the sight of the azure lake that sent its countless gleaming ripples to the edge of the sandy beach, on which a flock of sandpipers strutted without fear of the picnickers, till Nero routed them with boastful barks. Curly-pated, woolly footed, he romped up and down the beach. There was nothing he enjoyed more than this annual picnic by the lake.

Baby Philip also was of the party. It was his first sight of the lake and he stood thunderstruck by its immensity.

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