id="pgepubid00007">CHAPTER IV.

THE PICNIC.

Seated upon a stone which happened to be clean enough for even her exacting taste, Mrs. Sanford was conversing with Mrs. Brown, a frowsy lady whose house-keeping was a perennial source of offence to her order-loving neighbor. Mrs. Brown was a miracle of tardiness,—the last-comer at every gathering, the last guest to depart. Indeed, so fixed were her friends in the habit of expecting her to be behindhand, that she could have chosen no surer method of throwing into confusion any plan wherein she was concerned than by appearing for once on time; which, to do her justice, she never did. "She is so slow," Will Sanford once said, "that she always looks solemn at a wedding, because the grief of the last funeral has just got into her face. Her smiles appear by the time another funeral comes."

On the present occasion Mrs. Brown had reached Mackerel Cove just as preparations for dinner were being completed. Mrs. Sanford, who had been superintending the making of the coffee, had seated her plump person upon the stone mentioned to rest and get cool, when the late-comer appeared. Mrs. Brown sank languidly upon the fallen trunk of a tree.

"I didn't know as I should ever get here," she said. "My girl's gone mad."

"Gone mad!" ejaculated the doctor's wife. "I knew something dreadful would happen when you found that silver dollar, and kept it: that's always unlucky. Is she really mad? You don't mean Selina?"

"No, not Selina, but the hired girl. She must be mad. She poked all my hair-pins down a crack in the floor. Selina thinks she did it to plague me; but I know she's crazy."

"I declare! The trouble you have with your girls beats every thing I ever heard of. I should think you'd rather do the work yourself than have them about."

"Oh! I must have a girl to shirk things on to," said Mrs. Brown.

"Shirk!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford. "Lawful sakes! I don't have time to shirk. If I hadn't so much to do, I might find time to plan and contrive to get rid of half my work; but now"—

The words died upon her lips as she caught sight of a buggy coming along the shady wood-road. In it sat her daughter Patty, chatting happily with Tom Putnam. The sight filled her with amazement little mixed with pleasure. The lawyer might be a man after her husband's heart; but he was not after hers. He constantly said things she could not understand; he oppressed her as might an unguessed conundrum; and, moreover, he was a dozen years older than her daughter. Clarence Toxteth filled the measure of Mrs. Sanford's requirements when she considered her daughter's matrimonial prospects, which, thrifty housewife that she was, was not seldom. The young man was rich, good-looking, trimly dressed; and Mrs. Sanford appreciated to the full the advantages of the possession of money. The worthy lady was not without a deeply-seated suspicion that Patty, in the depth of her heart, preferred the lawyer to his more pretentious rival. The girl was like her father, and looked at things in a way wholly unaccountable to her mother, who saw only the other side of the shield. To-day Mrs. Sanford had been at ease in her mind, believing Toxteth to have been the chosen escort. She chanced to be out of the way when he arrived at the picnic-ground, and supposed her daughter to be about somewhere. What, then, was her dismay to perceive her driving up with Mr. Putnam, as boldly and gayly as if she had never deceived her family!

"Is dinner ready, mother?" called the transgressor lightly, as they drove up. "I am as hungry as three polar bears."

"Good-morning, Mrs. Sanford!" the lawyer said. "There is a delightful smell in the air, as if you had been making coffee."

"So I have," she returned, a little mollified by the compliment implied. "You are just in time: they are blowing the horn now."

And indeed, through the beautiful beech-woods rang the shrill cry of a tin dinner-horn blown by lusty lungs. It sounded harsh enough in the sylvan spaces; but not Pan himself could have piped more enchantingly into the ears of the hungry country people scattered about in the grove. The young folk came flocking towards the spot where table-cloths, spread upon the mossy ground, were heaped with that profusion of cake and other sweetmeats, and scarcity of any thing eatable, by which a picnic-dinner is usually characterized. A pleasant chattering and bustle followed, while the company seated themselves around upon stones, stumps, moss-covered roots, or the green turf itself. Harmless practical jokes were played, clumsy attempts at wit laughed over, clever ruses employed by people who wished their being together to have the appearance of the merest accident; and amid the chatter, the laughter, and the rattle of crockery, the feast began.

Mrs. Sanford had pressed Mr. Putnam into her service to pour the coffee, knowing of old that he was steady-handed and quick-witted, and feeling not unwilling, moreover, to draw him away from Patty's side. That young lady, being thus left to her own devices, curled herself up in a soft mossy nook, between two huge beech-roots, the tree-trunk behind her.

"I have a crow to pluck with you," the voice of Clarence Toxteth said at her elbow.

"Oh, let's not pluck a crow!" she answered, without turning her head. "It isn't pleasant; and nobody feels any better for it."

"But why did you tell me you were coming with Mr. Blood?"

"I beg your pardon," she said, laughing, and turning to flash her dark eyes upon him. "I only said he came before you to ask me, and so he did. You gave up too easily. I knew by that, that you didn't really care whether I came with you or not."

"Care? I did care. I thought you had promised him: so I brought Miss Purdy, and you know I can't endure her."

"I am sure she ought to be obliged to you."

"Well, there was nobody else."

"Was that the reason you came for me?" Patty said saucily. "Flossy, what are you wandering about so for?"

"I am seeking what I may devour," Flossy answered, seating herself at her cousin's feet. "But I do not find it. I'd like a square chunk out of the side of a cow or a chicken. The sight of these deserts of cake makes me sick."

"Make up your mind what you really would like," Clarence said, "and I'll order it of the wood-nymphs. What will you have first,—turtle-soup?"

"Oh, dear, no!" Flossy answered. "I like to know what I am eating, and turtle-soup is all green fat and things. I'll eat a little pop-corn, if you please. So saying I gayly munch and munch like an educated mooly cow. Patty, where did you pick up Mr. Putnam?"

"Nowhere. He came after me."

"You didn't put him off with an evasive answer," Toxteth said in her ear.

"He didn't ask me," she retorted. "He only told me he was coming to take me."

"You girls like to be bullied," the young man muttered crossly.

"Mercy sakes!" cried the shrill voice of Mrs. Brown, behind the tree at whose roots they were seated. "I thought I heard dishes rattling; but I didn't think dinner'd begun."

"Not only begun, but finished," Patty cried, springing up. "Let's go down to the beach, Flossy."

CHAPTER V.

A MISHAP.

Mackerel Cove was surrounded by high banks, the path from the grove above being very steep and difficult. A rude hand-rail had been nailed to the trees to assist the visitor in descending; but the feat was still any thing but an easy one.

As Flossy and her cousin, with young Toxteth following,