Just then suddenly Harriet Gordon asked a question: “Has your aunt said anything yet about a picnic this summer?”
“I heard her say this afternoon that she felt just like one,” said Elliott.
Mother and daughter looked at each other triumphantly. “What did I tell you!” said one. “I thought it was about time,” said the other.
“Jessica Cameron always feels like a 161 picnic in midsummer,” Mrs. Gordon explained. “After the haying ’s done. You tell her my little niece will want to go. Alma has been here three weeks and we haven’t been able to do much for her. Do you think you will go, too, Harriet?”
“I’d rather not this time, Mother.”
“The Bliss girls will probably go, and Alma knows them pretty well. She won’t be lonesome.”
“Oh, no,” said Elliott, “we will see that she isn’t lonely.”
“Must you go? Tell Mrs. Cameron we will send our limousine whenever she says the word.” On the way back through the house Harriet Gordon paused before the picture of a young man in aviator’s uniform. “My brother,” she said simply, and there was infinite pride in her voice.
Elliott stumbled down the path to the road. She quite forgot to put up the pink parasol. She carried it closed all the way home. Were they limousine people? 162 You would never have guessed it to look at them. Why, she knew about picnics of that kind!—motor-car, luncheon-kit picnics! But what a shame to be so big! Couldn’t they do something about it? Good as gold, of course, and in such terrible sorrow! They weren’t unfeeling. The girl’s voice when she said, “My brother,” proved that. It seemed as though knowing about them ought to make them attractive, but somehow it didn’t. If they only understood how to dress, it would help matters. Queer, how nice boys could have such frumpy people! And Ted Gordon had been a perfectly nice boy. The picture proved that. But Aunt Jessica had been right about the flowers. The big woman and the farmer proved that. Altogether Elliott’s mind was a queer jumble.
“She said she’d send back the basket to-morrow, Aunt Jessica,” she reported. “Said she wanted to sit and look at it for a 163 while just as it was. And Miss Gordon asked me to tell you that whenever you were ready for the picnic you must let her know and she would send around their limousine.”