Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) by Maclean Anna

Author:Maclean, Anna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2011-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A Rough-and-Tumble Picnic

THE DAY OF the picnic dawned fair, with not a cloud in the sky. I awoke to the country smell of pine and wildflowers mixed with the pungency of flapjacks and coffee from the downstairs kitchen, and so stretched and sighed in my bed with great pleasure. And then I remembered the picnic, and my contentment disappeared. I would much rather arrange my own activities (including a good four-hour shift in my writing shed) than surrender my day to the machinations of Ida Tupper’s son.

Poor Sylvia was even less inclined to go. “He’ll be bringing me plates of pâté and buttered rolls all afternoon. He’ll ask me to go for walks with him,” she complained from under the bed quilt, refusing to rise.

“I might let it slip that you are secretly affianced and therefore he can never hope for a return of his affection,” I said. My qualms and concerns about the nature of Clarence Hampton made me willing to prevaricate rather than risk an entanglement of any sort between that mysterious man and my best friend.

“Sylvia is engaged?” asked Anna, coming into the bedroom just then, her arms full of fresh towels and chemises carried up from the laundry room behind the kitchen. “Who is the fellow? Do I know him? Why weren’t we invited to the betrothal supper?” She tapped her foot impatiently.

“Truly, she is not.” I laughed. “It is a ploy.”

“An extreme one,” said Anna thoughtfully. “What if that lie gets back to Boston and Sylvia’s mother?”

Sylvia stared back at me for a long moment. “It would serve Mother right.”

“But, Sylvia, didn’t Confucius require his followers to respect their elderly parents?” I said, looking up at the ceiling to avoid her gaze.

“Louy, don’t do that,” Sylvia protested. “You play me along like a trout. Yes, I have been fishing once or twice. You play me along and humor me, then turn it all around so I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”

“Well, today you are going, so get dressed,” I told her. “If the rumor spreads too far, we will find a way to make it up to your mother.”

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