"I think there has been quite enough of this foolishness," she said curtly. "Sue, will you pass the sandwiches? Have some chicken-pie, Clarice!"
A sage has said that food stops sorrow, and so it proved in this case. The chicken-pie was good, and all the children felt wonderfully better after the second help all round. Tongues were loosed, and chattered merrily. The boys related with many chuckles their chase of the woodchuck, and how he finally escaped them, and they heard him laughing as he scuttled off.
"Well, he was laughing—woodchuck laughter; you ought just to have heard him, Mary."
Sue made them all laugh by telling of her encounter with Katy and the milk-pan. Even Clarice warmed up after her second glass of shrub, and told them of the picnics they had at Saratoga, where she had been last year.
"That was why I was so surprised at this kind of picnic, dear," she said to Sue, with a patronizing air. "It's so different, you see. The last one I went to, there were—oh, there must have been sixty people at the very least. It was perfectly alegant! There were two four-in-hands, and lots of drags and tandems. I went in a dog-cart with Fred. You know—the one I told you about." She nodded mysteriously and simpered, and Sue flushed with delighted consequence.
"What did you take?" asked Lily, her mouth full of chicken.
"Oh, a caterer furnished the refreshments," said Clarice, airily. "There was everything you can think of: salads, and ice-cream, and boned turkey, and all those things. Perfectly fine, it was! Everybody ate till they couldn't hardly move; it was alegant!"
"Didn't you do anything but just gob—I mean eat?" asked Mary.
"Oh, there was a band of music, of course; and we walked about some, and looked at the dresses. They were perfectly alegant! I wore a changeable taffeta, blue and red, and a red hat with blue birds in it. Everybody said it was just as cute! The reporter for the 'Morning Howl' was there, and he said it was the handsomest costume at the picnic. He was a perfect gentleman, and everything I had on was in the paper next day."
"This is soul-stirring," said Tom (who did sometimes show that he was fifteen, though not often), "but didn't I hear something about toasts?"