“I expect,” said Miss Milly, “that the charm lies in our appetites.”
“Yes,” said Johnny Bixby, taking an enormous bite of cake, and, to Nelly’s great horror, speaking with his mouth full—“yes, I think goin’ on picnics and such like, is real hungry work.”
This speech was received with a shout of approbation; and, on Sidney remarking that he thought that Johnny should be made the orator of the occasion, the children laughed again, and quite as heartily as though they fully understood what orator meant.
When the dinner was over, and the larger girls began to gather up the fragments, and restore plates and spoons to their owners, the rest prepared for a ramble. Miss Milly said they must not go far, nor stay long, and, promising to obey, the children set out together.
As soon as they were separated from the others, which happened insensibly, Johnny Bixby gave Nelly, with whom he was walking, a very animated account of Sidney Harrow’s behavior at the fishing-ground.
“Afraid of cows!” said Nell; “well, that beats all I ever heard. I am afraid that Sidney will not help Miss Milly along much. Come, show me where you fished, Johnny, will you?”
Johnny led the way, and in a little while he and Nelly stood on the very rock from which the boys had dropped their lines in the morning. The moss upon it was trodden under foot, and it was quite wet where the fish had been hauled in.
“I wonder if this is a creek,” said Nell, looking up and down the brook with an admiring gaze; “Marm Lizy used often to tell me of a creek where she rowed a boat, when she was young.”
“Marm Lizy?” asked Johnny; “who’s that, Nell?”
Nelly turned very red, and was silent. She remembered, like a flash of lightning, that John was a stranger in the village, his home being in the adjacent city, and that therefore he had, perhaps, never heard the story of her degraded childhood. Pride rose up and made her deceitful.