"Hurrah!" shouted Jozef, discovering two mushrooms, or champignons, showing a brown and a red head above the moss.
Such a scampering as there was among the trees until every basket was filled to overflowing.
Here Etelka, the youngest of the party, found one that she thought the prize of all. It was red with white raised spots.
"Come here!" she cried. "I have found a new kind. Shall I taste it?"
Helena took two rapid leaps toward her.
"Drop it! Drop it!" she exclaimed. "That's a poison muchomurka. Never, never taste anything of which you are not certain if you don't wish to die."
"I thought it prettier than the red ones you found," said Etelka, somewhat abashed.
"It is entirely different," and then Helena showed her how it differed and again impressed on all to confine themselves to those they knew.
Then the baskets were put down in a circle and the children played hide-and-seek among brown trunked firs with long gray mosses festooned from branch to branch, knotted larch trees, and pines dripping with balsam. At last, tired, they sank down on some netted roots and ate their lunch of thick slices of rye bread spread with goose fat.
"I found some sweet-root here once," Jozef volunteered when they had eaten every morsel.