CHAPTER IV—A WINTER PICNIC
YOU may think that Lilia's “mortification” was quite an excitement in this enterprising young household; yet I assure you that never twenty-four hours passed but a ridiculous adventure of some kind overtook the girls. The daily bulletin which they carried over to Mrs. Carter at the Winter Farm kept the worthy inmates in constant wonderment as to what would happen next. Sometimes there was a regular programme for the next day, prepared the night before, but oftener, things happened of themselves, and when they do that, you know, pleasure seems a deal more satisfying and delightful, because it is unexpected. Uncle Harry was in great demand, and very often made one of the gay party of young folks off for a frolic. They defied King Winter openly, and went on all sorts of excursions, even on a bona-fide picnic, notwithstanding the two feet of snow on the ground. The way of it was this: On Friday, the boys—Hugh Pennell, Bell's cousin, Jack Brayton, and the young schoolmaster—turned the great bare hall in the top of the old Winship family house into a woodland bower.
By the way, I have not told you much about Geoffrey Strong yet, because the girls of the story have had everything their own way, but Geoffrey Strong was well worth knowing. He was only eighteen years old, but had finished his sophomore year at Bowdoin College, and was teaching the district school that he might partly earn the money necessary to take him through the remainder of the course. He was as sturdy and strong as his name, or as one of the stout pine-trees of his native State, as gentle and chivalrous as a boy knight of the olden time; as true and manly a lad, and withal as good and earnest a teacher, notwithstanding his youth, as any little country urchin could wish. Mr. Win-ship was his guardian, and thus he had become quite one of the Winship family.
The boys were making the picnic grounds when I interrupted my story with this long parenthesis. They took a large pair of old drop curtains used at some time or other in church tableaux, and made a dark green carpet by stretching them across the floor smoothly and tacking them down; they wreathed the pillars and trimmed the doors and windows with evergreens, and then planted young spruce and cedar and hemlock trees in the corners or scattered them about the room firmly rooted in painted nail-kegs.
“It looks rather jolly, boys, doesn't it?” cried Jack, rubbing his cold fingers, “but I'm afraid we've gone as far as we can; we can't make birds and flowers and brooks!”
“What's the special difficulty?” asked Geoffrey. “We'll borrow Grandmother Winship's two cages of canaries and Mrs. Adams' two; then we'll bring over Mrs. Carter's pet parrot, and altogether we'll be musical enough, considering the fact that the thermometer is below zero.”
This suggestion of Geoff's they accordingly adopted, and their mimic forest became tuneful.
The next stroke of genius came from Hugh Pennell. He found bunches of white and yellow everlastings at home with which he mixed some cleverly constructed bright tissue-paper flowers, of mysterious botanical structure. He planted these in pots, and tied them to shrubs, and behold, their forest bloomed!