E. Nesbit

“ With motor cars careering not only on all our roads but through all our fiction and up and down the columns of our daily press, a narrator may be excused for announcing “Sevenoaks” as the next stage in his story. Daphne had insisted on occupying the front seat, enjoying in silence the wild exhilaration of laughing at the law to the tune of some fifty miles an hour. The chauffeur sat silent also, his eyes on the track. As they reached the foot of River Hill, a timber waggon lumbering across the road called a halt. It was then that the chauffeur turned and met the eyes of Columbine. ”

“ Daphne found herself asking, in a quite ordinary voice, that surprised and pleased her; “he isn’t very seriously hurt, I suppose.”
“He will need nursing,” said Mr. Seddon. “When he recovered his consciousness—or partly recovered it, he asked first for you and then for Henry. And Henry remained with him. He is a noble heart—no sacrifice is too great for him.”
Daphne feverishly hoped that it had been a sacrifice.
“I suppose Mr. Henry will nurse his friend,” she said, and hated herself for feeling how much she should hate it if Mr. Henry did nurse his friend. ”

“ Colombe would never mould Daphne’s life—she never had moulded it. And Daphne would never again mould Colombe’s.
Anxious eyes watched the road; motors passed but none stayed. It seemed heartless and ungrateful to begin to eat the glorious lunch provided by the absent Seddon; yet, as Claud said, what were they to do?
A proposal to explore the Castle met with no response. An energetic young worker in metal proposed games, and in a party weakened by hunger no one was found strong enough to resist him. Games were played. ”

“ If she’s been at all loyal to me, you and I know each other most frightfully well.”
“Then let’s start on that assumption”—Claud got his eyes away from Daphne’s profile. “I feel, of course, that I have known you all my life. If you feel it too—I had a presentiment that something beautiful was going to happen today—I saw a spider yesterday and didn’t kill it. That always brings luck.”
“You don’t say!”
“I always know when I’m going to be friends with people, don’t you?” he found himself saying fluently. “I don’t care a bit to talk to people unless I do care to talk to them, do you?” ”

“ She was young, and, all said and done, a picnic was a picnic.
“Be a dormouse with all the pillows, while Daffy gets dressed,” she urged, springing up.
“All the blankets and sheets too,” said Doris. “I’ll be a dormouse that’s made itself a nest inside of a giant’s pin-cushion—but it’s all pinny inside so you can’t ’spect the dormouse to be quiet very long:, because whenever it sneezes the pins bite it.” ”

“ The boys and girls paired off. Miss Claringbold declined Claud’s pressing invitation to climb the gate-tower with him, in favour of “a rest.”
“I have never been in a motor car before,” she said. “The rapid movement has fatigued me—oh, a very pleasant fatigue. No—don’t anyone stay with me. I shall really like to be left alone. Then no one will know if I go to sleep.”
Daphne took Madeleine’s arm. It was no part of her programme to climb towers with Claud, who, with one deeply reproachful look at her turned to Columbine, imploring her to console him for Miss Claringbold’s cruelty. ”

“ Winston came back and said. “Something’s gone wrong with his infernal machine—no, it’s not swearing, Miss Claringbold—it’s what the most respectable papers call it when it’s dynamite. But hearing that we had already Miss Pinsent’s automobile champing its bit at our door, he said if you didn’t mind giving us a lift he’d catch us up before we got to Sevenoaks.”
“Oh, he will, will he?” said Columbine turning to the chauffeur. “This is a 40 h.p. Panhard, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the chauffeur, with a sort of military salute. “I take it you do not think that your friend will catch you at Sevenoaks.” ”

“ Columbine thought of plum pudding, the leaning youth of fried potatoes; Daphne thought of geese and Doris of chicken. It was Winston who recognised the inevitable.
“Jove!” he cried, “you’ve all thought of things to eat, every one of you. And the Dormouse is asleep. It’s half past two. Poor old Seddon must have fallen down in a fit—or else his motor car has. Let’s have lunch. He’ll never forgive me if we don’t. Doris-girl, come and sit longside er me.” ”

“ You are sure they are sure of that about you?”
“Oh, well!” he said, “of course one always hopes they would be; and if they are the really right people that you’re sure they are, then they are sure to be sure about you, and that’s sure to be all right.”
“And are you always so sure about people?”
“Of course not,” he said, looking at her tenderly with his nice eyes. “Why do you suppose people waste all the time they do in preliminaries instead of being friends the minute they set eyes on each other? ”

“ Seddon, we shan’t die of starvation as well as grief.”
“We ought to wait till two, don’t you think?”
“Not later, I implore,” said the boy who was finding a tree an imperfect substitute for a wall.
“We might unpack now,” said Claud, “so as to be ready to fall to the moment the missing links appear in the offing.”
“I do adore your friends,” said Columbine to Daphne under cover of the unpacking of the baskets and the chorus of speculation concerning the fate of the Third Car. “They all look nice—every single one of them. All art-students, you say? ”