There were several boatloads of girls who set off on the picnic that fine Saturday, eager to enjoy the last outing of the sort they would, perhaps, have before cold weather settled down upon them.
"This time of year the weather may change over night," said Gladys Holt, as she put a fuzzy white sweater into the boat she and her chums had appropriated. "To-morrow we may be wondering how we ever had the nerve to come out to-day!"
The boats were, many of them—most of them, in fact—built with a double set of oars and oar-locks. Two boats of this sort the Woodford girls and their friends chose for the trip up the lake.
"Jo and I'll do the work," said Sadie to Nan. "You sit in the stern and look handsome, Nan."
"If I sit in the stern I ought to look stern," retorted Nan, and at this feeble witticism the girls laughed happily. It was the kind of day that made them laugh at almost anything!
"Don't let's follow the crowd," called Jessie, as her boat, safely launched, floated out upon the bright surface of the lake. "Let's be original."
"Right-o," agreed Jo. "Where'll we go?"
"To Huckleberry Island." It was Gladys Holt who spoke this time from the neighboring boat, and she accompanied the words by a gesture of the hand that indicated the black outline of an island far up the lake. "Follow us, and you'll never repent it."
With a laughing wave of her hand, Jo assented. But Sadie looked troubled.
"Huckleberry Island is a long distance up the lake," she said. "I don't think Miss Romaine would want us to go so far."