Dot opened her sleepy blue eyes and looked right into the big brown eyes of Don, Buttercup's baby calf.
"Oh! Oh!" cried the little girl.
"Ma-a-a," replied Don as he frisked away.
"You are a dear little thing," Dot called after him, "but I wish you wouldn't kiss me with your tongue all over my face."
The morning of the picnic was bright and clear. There was great excitement in the kitchen and pantry. Mrs. White and Molly, the maid, were fixing the lunch, but the four little girls couldn't help popping in every few minutes to take a peep. The two other mothers peeped too. What they saw made them wish that they were to be invited to the picnic. But this time only the four little girls who had found Brown Betty were to go.
At last the lunch was packed in four baskets and off the children went.
On their way they found some wild strawberries. They stopped to pick them, and Mary showed the others how to make leaf baskets to hold berries. They gathered broad, flat leaves and fastened them together with little twigs.
Then they went on until at last they came to the loveliest spot you ever saw. It was an open space with trees all around it. Near-by was a little bubbling spring.
The children set their baskets in the shade and began to romp and play. They played "Hide-and-Go-Seek" and a new game which they called "Echo." Can you guess how to play this game?
At last they grew tired and hungry and began to unpack their baskets and to put their lunch on a mossy spot near the brook. Such a feast you never saw! Everything a child likes best came out of those baskets. How the four children did eat and eat and eat! And when they had eaten and eaten and eaten until they could eat no more, there were still some good things left.