“Don’t croak, Mary Morris. Out with the chickens, lay the ham in this corner, and the cherries will make a picturesque pile in the middle. Twelve meringues in all, that means a meringue and a half each. We shall have some difficulty in dividing. Oh, dear! oh, dear! how hungry I am! I was far too excited to eat anything at supper-time.”
“So was I,” said Phyllis, coming up and pressing close to Annie. “I do think Miss Danesbury cuts the bread and butter too thick—don’t you, Annie? I could not eat mine at all, to-night, and Cecil Temple asked me if I was not well.”
“Those who don’t want chicken hold up their hands,” here interrupted Annie, who had tossed her brown cap on the grass, and between whose brows a faint frown had passed for an instant at the mention of Cecil’s name.
The feast now began in earnest, and silence reigned for a short time, broken only by the clatter of plates, and such an occasional remark as “Pass the salt, please,” “Pepper this way, if you’ve no objection,” “How good chicken tastes in fairy-land,” etc. At last the ginger-beer bottles began to pop—the girl’s first hunger was appeased. Rover gladly crunched up all the bones, and conversation flowed once more, accompanied by the delicate diversion of taking alternate bites at meringues and cheesecakes.
“I wish the fairies would come out,” said Annie.
“Oh, don’t!” shivered Phyllis, looking round her nervously.
“Annie, darling, do tell us a ghost story,” cried several voices.
Annie laughed, and commenced a series of nonsense tales, all of a slightly eerie character, which she made up on the spot.
The moon riding high in the heavens looked down on the young giddy heads, and their laughter, naughty as they were, sounded sweet in the night air.
Time flew quickly, and the girls suddenly discovered that they must pack up their table-cloth and remove all traces of the feast unless they wished the bright light of morning to discover them. They rose hastily, sighing, and slightly depressed now that their fun was over. The white table-cloth, no longer very white, was packed into the basket, the ginger-beer bottles placed on top of it, and the lid fastened down. Not a crumb of the feast remained; Rover had demolished the bones, and the eight girls had made short work of everything else, with the exception of the cherry-stones, which Phyllis carefully collected and popped into a little hole in the ground.