"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Grace Ford."
"Why? They're the most comfortable ones I have, to go tramping about in, and they're so stained from the salt water that they can't be damaged any more. Just right for the picnic, I think."
"Yes, but you walk worse than a Chinese woman before the binding of feet was forbidden. Don't let her carry anything spillable, Betty, or we won't have all the lunch we count on," Mollie urged.
"Oh, is that so!" exclaimed Grace, with as near an approach to "snippiness" as she ever permitted herself.
"Oh, I'll carry the basket," said gentle Amy, always anxious to avoid a quarrel.
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" insisted Betty, who had, like the Little Captain she was, arranged the commissary department on lines she intended to see carried out.
"Oh, well, if we're going, let's go!" exclaimed Mollie. "We're wasting the best part of the day getting ready."
It was the day after Mollie had proposed that the outdoor girls go on a little picnic, and her plan had been enthusiastically adopted. As she had said, the affair of the diamonds was getting on the nerves of them all. They had stuck too close to the house, and there was a "jumpiness" and fault-finding spirit seldom manifested by the four chums.
They were to take their lunch, and spend the day on the beach, or in the scrubby woods, not far away, taking to a boat if they felt so inclined.
The boys had offered to take them out for a cruise in the Pocohontas, but the girls felt that they would rather be by themselves on this occasion.