Life — August 23, 1883 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

don Robinson and old Miss Peplow, Dr. Allyn and Miss Andrews—she is an English girl and perfectly /ovely—and Mr. and Mrs. Bliss chaperoned us—has n't she the vilest cackle for a laugh you ever heard, Lurlie? It nearly drove me wild, Of course J expected to go with Archie, but do you know what that Carrie Van Salmon did? She got Archie to take her off for alittle ride about a half hour before the picnic started, and kept him dawdling around the Indian camp buying baskets and getting her fortune told until everybody was getting into the buckboard, and of course my partner was absent. Well, as I had n't made a posttive engagement with Archie, I was able to ask Mr. Rathbone. as we took our seats, up drove Archie, and he explained that his watch must have been fifteen minutes siow, but I Anow Car- rie Van Salmon set it back, for I noticed the other day she held it while he was climbing the rocks at Great Head. She did look too malignantly happy for anything when they drove up, and she had the audacity, when she heard that Archie and I hada half engagement to go to- gether, to insist on my taking her place in the dog-cart. But of course I smiled and looked indifferent, and said it was all right, though I could have bitten her head off—couldn’t you, Lurlie? I wasn't so much disappointed, after all, because Mr. Rathbone was with me, and the way his great, dark, splendid eyes lighted up when he saw the matter settled, made me positively happy. I wish you could see him, Lurlie. When we got to Jordan’s pond over that dreadful bumpy road, we went out row- ing in some miserable little leaky boats, and Mr. Rathbone told me his first name was Cecil—is n't that sweet—and said he thought Gwendolyn the most rapturously musical name he ever heard, ‘and he begged me to let him call me Miss Gwendolyn—when we were alone, of course—and I said I would, and he looked up at the blue sky with that soft dreamy expression, repeated my name in a whisper to himself, and then asked me if I would care very much if he smoked a cigarette. Then, after he lit the cigar- ette, he said I reminded him of a poem by Owen Meredith, “ Madame La Mar- quise,” and he was just going to tell me why, when that vile little Gregory Jones hooted out to us from shore that lunch was ready, and of course we had to go back and eat stuffy old sandwiches and pickles: under a tree, and I had four- Just + THE OCEAN STEAMER—No. 8. “ Luncu SERVED,.’M.” teen caterpillars and three bugs drop right down my back, and Mr. Rathbone was so busy picking them off that he could n’t eat any- thing but some hard boiled eggs and a little cake. Archie was n't there, but Maude Halcombe told me that he went mountain climbing with Mamie and Charlie Hattan and Carrie Van Salmon. They had not returned when our buck-board left, and so I must wait until I see Mamic before I can tell you what they did. Mr. Rathbone and io Mama has just interrupted me to say that the last buckboard has returned, and that we must go down to supper. Good bye, darling Lurlie, for a little while. Gwen. P. S.—What bo you think! Mamie rushed up to tell me that sm- mediately after they left the place, Carrie Van Salmon managed to get with Archie and then Aa/f way up the mountain they sat down to rest and Mamie didn ’t’see them again until they all got back ¢o the buckboard! Mamie says she has something else to tell me just as soon as she finishes supper. I am nearly wi/d to know. G. P. S.—Mr. Cecil Randolph has just sent up the loveliest knot of pink (Continued on page 92.)