It will depress me to the verge of suicide.
Then I shall fall to upon my _magnum opus_."
"You really think it will be that?"
"It should be mine. It isn't saying much; but I never had such a plot as
you have given me!"
Rachel shook her head in a last disclaimer as she moved away with the
Vicar of Marley.
"Oh, Mr. Langholm, do you write books?" asked the schoolgirl, with round
blue eyes.
"For my sins," he confessed. "But do you prefer an ice, or more
strawberries and cream?"
"Neither, thank you. I've been here before," the young girl said with a
jolly smile. "But I didn't know I should come back with an author!"
"Then we'll go out into the open air," the author said; and they
followed Rachel at but a few yards' distance.
It was a picturesque if an aimless pageant, the smart frocks sweeping
the smooth sward, the pretty parasols with the prettier faces
underneath, the well-set-up and well-dressed men, with the old gray
manor rising upon an eminence in the background, and a dazzling splash
of scarlet and of brass somewhere under the trees. The band was playing
selections from _The Geisha_ as Langholm emerged from the tea-tent in
Rachel's wake.
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