The weather grew cold and crisp. There was a smell of smoke in the air from burning leaves and from the chimneys of the faculty homes wherein wood fires glowed cheerfully.
At last Saturday arrived. It was the day of the excursion to Exmoor, and it was with more or less anxiety regarding the weather that the three girls scanned the skies that morning for signs of rain. But the heavens were a deep and cloudless blue and the air mildly caressing, neither too cold nor too warm.
“It is like the Indian summers we have at home,” exclaimed Molly, when, an hour later, they turned their faces toward the village through which the trolley passed.
Mabel Hinton, passing them as they started, had called out:
“Art off on a picnic?”
And they had answered:
“We art.”
Some other girls had cried:
“Whither away so early, Oh?”
And they had cried: