"Can't we? Just let me try! Keep off, Nettie, or I'll eat you up—I'm as hungry as Red Riding-hood's famous—or infamous—bear!"
"It was a wolf!" declared Nettie, in the tone of one who knew.
"So much the better to eat you up, my honey!" Mat smacked his lips voraciously, displaying two rows of firm white teeth, and made a dart at the little girl. She ran screaming to Laura, who, Ivy often declared, was the children's real and truly Noah's ark of refuge.
Everybody was hungry and they only waited to reach a suitable place for lunch.
"I know the very spot," said Hugh, leading the way.
"Behold a Moses to lead us out of the wilderness!" cried Mat.
"And behold the Promised Land!" Ivy screamed in delight, as her brother set his basket among the great knotted roots of a tree that helped to shade a stretch of green-sward which extended gradually to the river.
"This Moses remains to dine," said Hugh.
The girls spread a white cloth on the ground and proceeded to unpack the baskets.
Although they had made frequent stops on the road, Laura feared the walk had over-taxed Ivy's strength, and wished her to rest; but she refused to be left out of any activity. She it was who sat, a spirit of prodigality, in the midst of the baskets, dealing out the good things one by one, while Alene and Laura arranged them artistically, piling in the center a pyramid of fruit, and placing the cakes and pies and pickles in the most tempting proximity, not forgetting sandwiches, and plain bread and butter. Indeed, as Mat remarked when he came up from the spring with a pail of cold water, "The very look of it was enough to give an imaginative person the nightmare."