“Oh, we can’t be,” said Winnie confidently, “unless Louise has died or gone West. If she’s in the land of the living I know she’s here. Once I asked the crowd over in the afternoon to make fudge, and she got there just as I was in the middle of sweeping out the kitchen, at one o’clock!”
“You never told me about that!” reminded Helen interestedly. “What did you do?”
Winona laughed. “Do! I didn’t have to do anything. Louise did the doing—she took the broom out of my hands, and sent me flying upstairs to dress, and did the sweeping herself! Oh, and there she is! Lou-i-ise!”
“Here I am!” Louise answered placidly, rising up in her white blouse from the very centre of the field by the station, and looking, with the sun shining on her brilliant hair, like a large white blossom with a red centre. “I got here long ago. Come on over here on the grass. It’s horrid on the benches, and I’m making friends with the nicest little brown hoptoad.”
“Ugh—no!” shuddered Helen, who did not care for hoptoads. “Here’s Nannie, with Adelaide and Dorothy.”
So the girls ran over to meet their Guardian, and the hoptoad was averted. Just behind the newcomers arrived Marie and Edith, Marie dignified and neat, as usual, in her dark-blue sailor-suit, and Edith in a fluffy pink dress that did not look as if it could stand much strenuous picnicking.
“Did you bring the rolls, Winnie?” called Marie.
“Certainly I did, and Helen has the bacon.”
“And I have the hard-boiled eggs,” said Louise gayly, “and here is the trolley—it sounds like a French lesson. We mount the trolley that we may go to the picnic. Come on, girls.”
The girls were bound for a little wood, five miles out, where nearly everybody that went on picnics had them. They sat down on a rear seat in a giggling row, while Marie went ruthlessly on counting supplies.