“Oh, now she's getting the whole thing!” groaned Leslie, looking back from the hall, to peer in. “Old black silk is giving it to her. Oh, I just hate Miss Anstice!”
“Sarah, why couldn't you have kept still?” cried another girl. “If you hadn't spoken, Miss Anstice would have gotten over it.”
“Well, I wasn't going to have Polly Pepper blamed,” said Sarah sturdily. “If you were willing to, I wasn't going to stand still and hear it, when it was our fault she told us first.”
“Oh, no, Sarah,” said Polly, “it surely was my own self that was to blame. I ought to have run in and told Miss Salisbury first. Well, now, girls, what shall I do? I've lost that picnic for you all, for I don't believe she will let us have it now.”
“No, she won't,” cried Leslie tragically; “of that you may be sure, Polly Pepper.”
VIII “WE'RE TO HAVE OUR PICNIC!”
And that afternoon Polly kept back bad recollections of the gloomy morning at school as well as she could. She didn't let Alexia get the least bit of a hint about it, although how she ever escaped letting her find it out, she never could quite tell, but rattled on, all the messages the girls had sent, and every bit of school news she could think of.
“Were the other girls who went to Silvia's, at school?” asked Alexia suddenly, and twitching up her pillow to get higher in bed, for Dr. Fisher had said she mustn't get up this first day; and a hard piece of work Mother Fisher had had to keep the aunt out of the room.