“Ye needn’t ask me to join ye,” said Silas Barnes, “and sing ‘Chany,’”—he meant China—“for I don’t think that’s gay enough for a picnic.”
Miss Hobson suggested that they might please Mr. Barnes by singing “Yankee Doodle.” This was meant to suggest that Silas Barnes was too frivolous, but he did not, apparently, feel injured, as he laughingly answered that he would “rather be patriotic than mournful, and he reely guessed they’d better settle upon ‘Yankee Doodle,’ as Miss Hobson suggested.”
On one end of the door-stone old Mrs. Perkins had just convinced her neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, that it was just the right time of the year to gather ‘pennyroyal’ and mouse-ear, and so have them a-drying, and Mrs. Buffum had gathered the six little Buffums under her wing by uttering this awful threat:—
“Johnny! Johnny Buffum! do you and Hitty want to go to the picnic? Katie! do you and Jack and Sophy and Ann want to stay at home? Well, then, come here, or the first thing you’ll know the wagons’ll go without ye!”
From all directions the six young Buffums rushed and crowded closely around their mother. Stay at home from their first picnic? Never!
At last every one had arrived, and they lost no time in clambering into the waiting wagons; then away they jogged toward the grove.
Farmer Gray had taken his wife and Helen Dayton, Randy and little Prue in one wagon, and had told his other boarders that they were welcome to fill his two remaining wagons, allotting places as they chose.
The wagon with the choir had started first, and Randy and Helen could still faintly hear the stirring strains of “Yankee Doodle.” Randy sat with sparkling eyes, enjoying the ride as she had never enjoyed one before. Had she not a fine new hat? Was she not beside the beautiful Miss Dayton? and had not Jotham, to the envy of the other girls, given her a package purchased expressly for her?
“What you got in your bundle what Jotham gave you, Randy?” asked Prue. “Will you let me see?”
“Yes, do let us see,” said Helen Dayton; “I know it must be something nice.”