The farmer’s wife came in just then, and told them she would pack the dinner-basket herself, to see that everything was right, and that it was full enough, for she said she had heard somebody remark that good appetites were sure to go along on picnics. Nelly and Martin stood by and looked at her as she unfolded a clean white towel, and outspread it in the basket, so that the ends hung over the sides. After this she took some thin pieces of cold beef and put them between slices of bread and butter, and these she packed away first. Now came Comfort’s sponge-cake, cut in quarters, and as many little lady-apples as remained from the winter’s store,—for it was late in the spring. A cup to drink out of the mountain streams was also added, and the towel-ends were nicely folded over the whole and pinned together.
A happy pair they were, when they set out,—Martin carrying the provisions, and Nelly singing and making flying skips beside him. When they reached the school-house, nearly all the children were assembled. Miss Milly was there, and her brother too, a handsome young lad, of about eighteen, with a very brown, sunburnt face. Nelly knew him, the moment she saw him, to be the same person she had seen before. They were not to start for an hour yet, for, high as the wind had been, and was, the grass was still glittering with dew. The little road-side brooks were furrowed into white-crested waves, and the school-house creaked and moaned with the gusts that blew against it.
“I am almost afraid to venture taking the children out,” said Miss Milly; but upon hearing this, such a clamor of good-humored expostulation arose, and so many sorrowful “oh’s,” and “oh dear me’s,” resounded through the room, that Sidney Harrow, as any other boy would have done, begged his sister to have mercy and never mind the wind.
In a little while the party started. Mr. Bradish’s mountain, the proposed scene of the picnic, was distant about one mile from the school-house. The route to it lay through a long, shady lane that gradually wound towards the woods, and lost itself at last amid the huge, gray rocks and dense shade of the hill-top itself. It was spring-time, and the grass was very green, and delicate wild flowers starred all the road-side. Here and there, in the crevice of a mossy stone, grew a tuft of wild pinks, nodding against a group of scarlet columbines, while, wherever the ground afforded unusual moisture, blue violets thrust up their graceful heads in thick masses.
“Hurrah!” cried Johnny Bixby, as they reached the summit of the mountain; “Hurrah! here we are at last. The picnic’s begun!”
Miss Milly said the children might stray around together for some time before it would be the dinner-hour, and they might gather as many wild flowers as they wished, to decorate the picnic grounds. All the girls set to work, and such a crowd of violets, anemones, wild buckwheat, and pinks as was soon piled around Miss Milly’s feet, was a sight to behold. While Sidney Harrow with Martin and the rest of the boys were fishing in a little stream that ran over the mountain, about one quarter of a mile distant, Miss Milly’s party tied bouquets to the branches of the trees, and hung garlands on the bushes, around the spot where they were to dine. The wind died away, the birds sung out merrily, and the air grew soft and warm, so that, after all, there was no fear of little folks taking cold. The brook where Sidney and Martin led the boys was not a very deep one, and therefore it was not dangerous, but it was celebrated for miles around for its fish. A large, overhanging rock, under the shade of a tree, served, as Martin said, for a “roosting-place,” and from it they found the bites so frequent that quite a little string of fish was made, and hung on some dead roots that projected from the bank.
“What a wild place this is,” said Martin, looking around him, as he drew in his line for the fourth time.
“Yes,” said Sidney; “it is. That is the best of it. I wouldn’t give a fig for it if it wasn’t. Look at that cow coming to drink. I wonder where she hails from! How she looks at us!”
The cow did indeed regard them with a long stare of astonishment, and then, scarcely tasting the water, she plunged, bellowing, into the woods again.
“She is frightened,” said Martin; “that’s old Duchess, one of Mr. Bradish’s cows. He turns them out with their calves every summer, to take care of themselves till fall.”