“I feel like a picnic,” said Mother Jess, “a genuine all-day-in-the-woods picnic.”
It was rather queer for a grown-up to say such a thing right out like a girl, Elliott thought, but she liked it. And Aunt Jessica was sitting back on her heels, just like a girl too, looking up from the border where she was working. Elliott had caught sight of her blue chambray skirt under a haze of blue larkspurs and had come over to see what she was doing. It proved to be weeding with a clawlike thing that, wielded by Aunt Jessica’s right hand, grubbed out weeds as fast as she could toss them into a basket with her left. Elliott was surprised. Weeding a flower-bed 147 when, as she happened to know, the garden beets weren’t finished did not square with her notions of what was what on the Cameron farm. She was so surprised that she answered absently, “That sounds fine. I think I feel so, too,” and kept on wondering about Aunt Jessica.
“We usually have a picnic at this time of year when the haying is done,” said that lady, and fell again to her weeding. “It is astonishing how fast a weed can grow. Look at that!” and she held up a spreading mat of green chickweed. “I have had to neglect the borders shamefully this summer.”
Elliott squatted down beside her and twined her fingers in a tuft of grass. “May I help?” She gave a little tug to the grass.
“Delighted to have you. Look out! That’s a Johnny-jump-up.”
“Is it? Goodness! I thought it was a weed!”
“Here is one in blossom. Spare Johnny. He is a faithful friend till the winter snows.”
“Johnny-jump-up.” Elliott’s laughter gurgled over the name. “But he does rather jump up, doesn’t he? Funny little pansy thing! Funny name, too.”
“Not so odd as a few others I know. Kiss-me-in-the-buttery, for instance.”