and she joined in the chorus with the others, her clear, sweet voice piping out like the notes of a field lark in a chorus of birds.
At last Billie pulled up at the side of the road under a cliff, on top of which was an old grass-grown fort used during the Indian wars.
“This must be it,” she said. “It’s peaceful enough looking now to make a good picnicing ground, but I don’t suppose it was much of a picnic for the people who built it to shoot Indians from.”
“Nor much of a picnic for the Indians, either,” said Ben, helping Billie out while Charlie Clay assisted the other girls to the ground and Percy and Merry unstrapped the luncheon hamper.
“Let’s eat up high,” suggested Billie. “That is, if you can carry the basket up that steep incline.”
“The pack mules are here for that work,” said Ben, pointing to Merry and Percy. “Charlie, you bring the rugs for the ladies to sit on and I’ll help the ladies.”
“Will you listen to Nervy Nat,” cried Percy, as he obediently shouldered his end of the luncheon hamper and followed Merry up the hill.
How they laughed and scrambled and shoved as they clambered up the pebbly path. Once Mary, with a shrill cry, slipped and stumbled back on Nancy who fell against Charlie, who, in his turn, tumbled against Ben, and that pillar of strength, grasping a branch of a pine tree with each hand, supported the whole human weight without a tremor.
It was like picnicing in the tops of the trees, when they finally spread the cloth in the grass-grown enclosure of the fort, and beyond them stretched the entire expanse of the ocean glimmering blue in the sunshine, with an occasional ship outlined on the horizon.
“I hope the ginger ale is still cold,” cried Merry.