“Yes, mine and Tom’s. I don’t care so much, about that, though; I daresay I wouldn’t have used it much more, anyway.”
“Let it go,” said Tom cheerfully. “It has played us false.”
“You’re a queer dub,” said Dan, turning to him with a smile. “Most of the time you don’t open your mouth. To-day you’re real sort of chatty. Adversity seems to agree with you, Tom.”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” was the reply. “It’s the picnic. Picnics always make me bright and sunny. I’m crazy about them and don’t know when I’ve ever enjoyed one more. You—you get so close to Nature, don’t you?”
“You surely do,” answered Dan, stumbling over a blackberry runner and picking himself up again. “Too close!”
“There’s the bridge!” cried Gerald from the end of the procession.
“Praises be!” said Alf. “I only hope it will hold together long enough for us to get across. It looks as though it might tumble down any moment.”
“Never look a bridge in the mouth till you come to it,” said Tom. “To me it is a most beautiful structure, far, far more beautiful than the Brooklyn Bridge or the Bridge of Sighs or any of the ponts of dear old Paris. Don’t you love the ponts of Paris, Dan?”
“I’m wild about plaster of Paris,” laughed Dan as they reached the narrow road and turned onto the old wagon bridge. Once across it they continued along the road instead of following the river back.