“Isn’t this larks?” beamed Eunice. Picnics in the country were every-day affairs, but to start right out from town, to be gone all day, was particularly fine and grown-up.
Fortunately, when they were only half-way there, they were the only occupants of the cars, and they seemed to fill it full. Each one tried every corner, and each seat between. They read the advertisements carefully, and tried the effect of reading them backwards. Then they read a line from each one, and each reading seemed funnier than the last.
“Marjorie,” asked Cricket, who had been studying one advertisement carefully, “what does Ware mean?”
“Wear?” repeated Marjorie; “why, to put on anything—to wear it.”
“No, I don’t mean that kind of wear. Look up there. What kind of a ham is a Wareham?”
“Where is it? oh, that!” and Marjorie went off in a fit of laughter. “That doesn’t mean a ham at all. It’s just one word—Wareham. It’s a place,—Wareham Manufactory.”
“Oh,” said Cricket, meekly. “I thought it was a new kind of ham.”
In spite of their fun, it was a long ride to Porter’s Inn, which was the end of the line. They were glad enough to scramble out and stretch their limbs. It was a warm morning, and as the white stretch of country road was unshaded for a long distance, it was a hot, tired little party that reached Kayuna. As they pushed back the heavy gates, and went up the avenue, how delicious seemed the cool, green shade of the great beech trees, and how soft to their feet was the fine turf, along which they scampered!
How strange it seemed to the Wards to look up at those shuttered windows, and see no signs of life about the house!
“Seems as if I must see Dixie come racing down to meet us,” said Cricket, “and hear his little ‘row! row!’” But Dixie had been sent to the rectory to spend the summer, and Mopsie and Charcoal had gone over to Marbury, so that the children could have them there.