“How lovely!” sighed Anne. “Won’t it be simply perfect, Miss Letty?”
“I shall probably be in France by the time it is built,” she replied; for one of her contrary fits had been hovering over Miss Letty all day.
The cool morning disappeared in a sultry noon. They waited dinner as long as their hunger made it possible, but Mr. Hugh did not come. Then, as is usual at picnics, outdoors and dinner combined to bring sleep. Not that any one travelled all the way to dreamland, but they all sat about in blissful silence, watching the shadows among the trees and the silent molting birds flit shyly in and out, for only the locusts serenaded them. August is the voiceless summer month in the woods; the spring song is over, and the young of the year are not yet trying their throats, as they do in autumn.
“Four o’clock!” said Miss Jule, sitting up suddenly, and giving her ticking-covered hay pillow a vigorous punch—Miss Jule always had a dozen of such for piazza, hammock, and excursion purposes. “I think we had better make a start; for if I’m not mistaken, there are what Martin calls ‘dunderheads’ in the west, and we do not wish to end the day by running all the seven miles home, to escape a wetting.”
When the wagons were loaded, and they all gathered in the open preparatory to starting, the wind had veered, and the black clouds were hurrying off toward salt water again.
“Do you think we might ride our wheels home?” said Anne to Miss Jule. “See, the road is shady for a mile farther up, and then it loops around the Ridge to the turnpike, and it is down grade all the rest of the way.”
“Yes; please do let us ride,” said Elsa Willoughby; “for I sat so long on that rock sketching that I need stretching all over.”
Miss Jule thought a minute, looked at the sky, and said: “The shower has gone round. It’s a lonely road, to be sure; but with six of you together no harm can happen, and even if you loiter, you will be at home before supper time.” So the brake and Miss Jule started off one way and the girls on their wheels the other.