“I’ll go in and pack some now!”
So Mary, as eager for a picnic as the two younger children, wheeled the baby around to the front porch and left Great Aunt Charlotte minding her. Then she ran into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Tyler if she might have a basket. Together they filled it with bread and cookies as well as a big jar of strawberry jam.
“Here we are,” said Mary, opening the kitchen door and running along the narrow walk that the children had named the Way of Peril. She jumped over the One Way Steps and almost spilled the basket. “Here we are! All ready to start on the expedition.”
Tommy had whittled out a whistle from an elderberry branch while she was packing the lunch.
“I’ll be the leader!” he cried, blowing the whistle.
“No, I will,” cried contrary Mary.
“But I thought of it,” Tommy insisted. “I should be the leader.”
“No, I should!”
It began to sound like a quarrel and, as the day was much too fine for quarreling, Muffs sat down on the One Way Steps to think of a way out. It had been a quarrel that had sent her father to the ends of the earth and she didn’t want anything to spoil this expedition.
“I’ll tell you what,” she exclaimed. “We’re supposed to be story book people so let’s all say Mother Goose rhymes and the one who thinks of the most can take the lead.”