Part 46

"Polly, Polly Pepper," called a girl opposite, "give me one of your little lemon tarts. You did bring 'em this year, didn't you?" anxiously.

"Yes, indeed," answered Polly; "why, where are they?" peering up and down the festal, not "board," but tablecloth.

"Don't tell me they are gone," cried the girl, leaning over to look for herself.

"I'm afraid they are," said Polly; "oh, I'm so sorry, Agatha!"

"You should have spoken before, my child," said a parlor boarder, who had eaten only three of Mrs. Fisher's tarts, and adjusting her eyeglasses.

"Why, I've only just gotten through eating bread and butter," said Agatha. "I can't eat cake until that's done."

"A foolish waste of time," observed the parlor boarder; "bread and butter is for every day; cake and custards and flummery for high holidays," she added with quite an air.

"Hush up, do," cried Alexia, who had small respect for the parlor boarders and their graces, "and eat what you like, Penelope. I'm going to ransack this table for a tart for you, Agatha."

She sent keen, bird-like glances all up and down the length of the tablecloth. "Yes, no--yes, it is." She pounced upon a lemon tart hiding under a spray of sweet fern, and handed it in triumph across. "There you are, Agatha! now don't say I never did anything for you."

"Oh, how sweet!" cried Agatha, burying her teeth in the flaky tart.

"I should think it was sour," observed Amy Garrett; "lemons usually are."

"Don't try to be clever, Amy child," said Alexia, "it isn't expected at a picnic."

"It's never expected where you are," retorted Amy sharply.

"Oh dear, dear! that's pretty good," cried Alexia, nowise disconcerted, as she loved a joke just as much at herself as at the expense of any one else, while the others burst into a merry laugh.

"There's one good thing about Alexia Rhys," the "Salisbury girls" had always said, "she can take any amount of chaff, and not stick her finger in her eye and whimper."

So now she smiled serenely. "Oh dear, dear! I wish I could eat some more," she said. "I haven't tasted your orange jelly, Clem, nor as much as looked at your French sandwiches, Silvia. What is the reason one can eat so very little at a picnic, I wonder?" She drew a long breath, and regarded them all with a very injured expression.

"Hear that, girls!" cried Silvia; "isn't that rich, when Alexia has been eating every blessed minute just as fast as she could!"

"I suppose that is what we all have been doing," observed Alexia placidly.

Miss Salisbury had been a happy observer of all the fun and nonsense going on around her, and renewing her youth when she had dearly loved picnics; but it was not so with Miss Anstice. At the foot of the festal tablecloth, she had been viewing from the corners of her eyes the inroads of various specimens of the insect creation and several other peripatetic creatures that seemed to belong to no particular species but to a new order of beings originated for this very occasion. She had held herself in bravely, although eating little, being much too busy in keeping watch of these intruders, who all seemed bent on running over her food and her person, to hide in all conceivable folds of her white gown. And she was now congratulating herself on the end of the feast, which about this time should be somewhere in sight, when a goggle-eyed bug, at least so it seemed to her distraught vision, pranced with agile steps directly for her lap, to disappear at once. And it got on to her nerves.

"Oh--ow! Take it off." Miss Anstice let her plate fly, and skipped to her feet. But looking out for the goggle-eyed bug, she thought of little else, and stepped into some more of the jelly cake--slipped, and precipitated herself into the middle of the feast.

XIV MISS SALISBURY'S STORY

"Oh Miss Anstice!" cried the "Salisbury girls," jumping to their feet.

"Sister!" exclaimed Miss Salisbury, dropping her plate, and letting all her sweet, peaceful reflections fly to the four winds.

"I never did regard picnics as pleasant affairs," gasped Miss Anstice, as the young hands raised her, "and now they are--quite--quite detestable." She looked at her gown, alas! no longer immaculate.

"If you could wipe my hands first, young ladies," sticking out those members, on which were plentiful supplies of marmalade and jelly cake, "I should be much obliged. Never mind the gown yet," she added with asperity.

"I'll do that," cried Alexia, flying at her with two or three napkins.

"Alexia, keep your seat." Miss Anstice turned on her. "It is quite bad enough, without your heedless fingers at work on it."

"I won't touch the old thing," declared Alexia, in a towering passion, and forgetting it was not one of the girls. "And I may be heedless, but I can be polite," and she threw down the napkins, and turned her back on the whole thing.