“Well, you certainly do mix up baths with your picnics,” laughed Mr. Merrill when he saw them coming. “Remember the time you fell into Clearwater, Pussy?”
“But it isn’t so bad, really, Dadah,” said Mary Jane, “and I’m not wet now.”
“So you’re not,” said Mr. Merrill, “but I am hungry—anybody agree with me?”
They all admitted to being nearly starved, so they found a pretty, grassy spot close by the lake on which several beautiful swans were sunning themselves, and there they spread out the luncheon they had brought. At first the girls were so hungry they didn’t want to do anything but eat. But by the time they had eaten a plateful of potato salad and three or four sandwiches, the swans discovered their lunching place and came to call. Evidently swans were used to being treated very nicely by folks who came to the park for they didn’t seem to have a trace of fear of strangers.
The girls tossed the crusts of the sandwiches to the edge of the water and the swans bent their long necks and picked them up and ate them, every crust, so daintily just as though crusts were a diet fit for kings—and swans. The swans didn’t actually come out of the water, but they came so close to the shore that the girls could almost touch them and they soon got to feeling very well acquainted.
So it was with some regret that they heard Mr. Merrill say, “Well, girls, weren’t we to see some of the other parks too?” And here it was four o’clock!
The basket was packed—and there wasn’t a scrap of anything a swan could eat, you may be sure of that—and they strolled down to the roadway. In a minute or two Mr. Merrill hailed a passing taxi and they settled themselves for a nice long ride.
They didn’t stop at any other park; Mary Jane was sure no other could be as interesting as the one where she had had such exciting experiences and Alice was quite as content as her father and mother to sit back, cool and comfortable, and see the beautiful flowers and shrubbery slip past them. So they rode and rode through one park after another, it seemed, till suddenly Mary Jane spied something that looked familiar.
“That’s my Midway!” she announced, as the car turned into the long, broad stretch of parkway near their own home.
“Sure enough it is!” exclaimed Mr. Merrill in pretended amazement, “we’ll have to turn around and go back!”