The afternoon was well advanced, and Rosetta Muriel rose to make her farewells, expressing an enjoyment which was perhaps a concession to her sense of propriety, rather than a perfectly spontaneous expression of feeling. Rosetta Muriel found the girls of Dolittle Cottage strangely puzzling. She had prepared herself to meet these city visitors on their own ground, and instead of holding her own, she had it all her own way. Apparently she was the only one of the company who could claim with any show of reason, to be an authority on the doings of the smart set.
After supper, while the rain still pounded unweariedly on the roof, Aunt Abigail told the story of a high-spirited young ancestress, who had lived back in the colonial times, and in the stirring days of ’76 had pitted her wits against one of King George’s officers, and won from him a concession which was perhaps equally a tribute to her beauty and her brains. It was one of the stories which cannot be re-told too often, full of the audacious courage of gallant youth, and the listening girls felt a vicarious pride in the daring of their countrywoman of bygone days. As for Amy, she straightened herself so as to give the effect of having grown suddenly taller.
“My ancestress,” she observed with fitting pride. “How many times my great-grandmother was she, Aunt Abigail? It’s no wonder I’m a little out of the ordinary.”
In spite of a disheartening beginning, it had been a very satisfactory Fourth. Up-stairs, as the girls made ready for bed, Ruth voiced the general opinion. “For a safe and sane Fourth, it hasn’t been half bad.”
Peggy who had crossed the hall, to combine sociability with the ceremony of taking down her hair, brushed her refractory locks with energy.
“I wish they’d never tacked that on to the Fourth of July,” she said. “So many things are safe and sane, darning stockings, for instance. The Fourth of July ought to be a lot more. It ought to be jolly, and to teach you something, and make you think. And this Fourth has come pretty near all three.”
CHAPTER VI
THE PICNIC
Though the Fourth of July picnic had failed to materialize, it was responsible for turning the thoughts of the girls in a new direction. In the beginning of their stay the cottage porch with its shading vines and inspiring view, had satisfied them completely, but the magic of the word “picnic” had awakened a longing to come a little closer to the heart of things.
“I’m tired of eating off a table,” Amy declared. “I want to sit on the grass, and pick ants out of my sandwiches, and feel as if I was really in the country. What’s the matter with a picnic?”