A week or so after the departure of Lord Minster, Mildred suggested that they should, on the following day, vary their amusements by going up to the Convent, a building perched on the hills some thousand feet above the town of Funchal, in palanquins, or rather hammocks swung upon long poles. Arthur, who had never yet travelled in these luxurious conveyances, jumped at the idea, and even Miss Terry, when she discovered that she was to be carried, made no objection. The party was completed by the addition of a newly-married couple of whom Mrs. Carr had known something at home, and who had come to Madeira to spend the honeymoon. Lady Florence also had been asked, but, rather to Arthur's disappointment, she could not come.
When the long line of swinging hammocks, each with its two sturdy bearers, were marshalled, and the adventurous voyagers had settled themselves in them, they really formed quite an imposing procession, headed as it was by the extra-sized one that carried Miss Terry, who complained bitterly that “the thing wobbled and made her feel sick.”
But to Arthur's mind there was something effeminate in allowing himself, a strong, active man, to be carted up hills as steep as the side of a house by two perspiring wretches; so, hot as it was, he, to the intense amusement of his bearers, elected to get out and walk. The newly-married man followed his example, and for a while they went on together, till presently the latter gravitated towards his wife's palanquin, and, overcome at so long a separation, squeezed her hand between the curtains. Not wishing to intrude himself on their conjugal felicity, Arthur in his turn gravitated to the side of Mrs. Carr, who was being lightly swung along in the second palanquin some twenty yards behind Miss Terry's. Shortly afterwards they observed a signal of distress being flown by that lady, whose arm was to be seen violently agitating her green veil from between the curtains of her hammock, which immediately came to a dead stop.
“What is it?” cried Arthur and Mildred, in a breath, as they arrived on the scene of the supposed disaster.
“My dear Mildred, will you be so kind as to tell that man” (pointing to her front bearer, a stout, flabby individual) “that he must not go on carrying me. I must have a cooler man. It makes me positively ill to see him puffing and blowing and dripping under my nose like a fresh basted joint.”
Miss Terry's realistic description of her bearer's appearance, which was, to say the least of it, limp and moist, was no exaggeration. But then she herself, as Arthur well remembered, was no feather-weight, especially when, as in the present case, she had to be carted up the side of a nearly perpendicular hill some miles long, a fact very well exemplified by the condition of the bearer.
“My dear Agatha,” replied Mildred, laughing, “what is to be done? Of course the man is hot, you are not a feather-weight; but what is to be done?”
“I don't know, but I won't go on with him, it's simply disgusting; he might let himself out as a watering-cart.”
“But we can't get another here.”
“Then he must cool himself, the others might come and fan him. I won't go on till he is cool, and that's flat.”
“He will take hours to cool, and meanwhile we are broiling on this hot road. You really must come on, Agatha.”
“I have it,” said Arthur. “Miss Terry must turn herself round with her head towards the back of the hammock, and then she won't see him.”
To this arrangement the aggrieved lady was after some difficulty persuaded to accede, and the procession started again.
Their destination reached, they picnicked as they had arranged, and then separated, the bride and bridegroom strolling off in one direction, and Mildred and Arthur in another, whilst Miss Terry mounted guard over the plates and dishes.
Presently Arthur and Mildred came to a little English-looking
