Bernie Gridley’s father cared nothing about picnics, even though he was a deacon in the church. The Duchess expected to attend merely to chaperone Bernice. But at the last moment the 8:10 train pulled into the Paris station with Gridley relatives. So the Duchess had to consign Bernice-Theresa to the watchful care of a much harassed and overworked Sunday-school teacher who later had a beau herself. Nathan and the little Gridley girl became babes in the wood. They needed no encouragement to make the most of their opportunity.
It was one of those perfect August days of which young men write sonnets and older men compose symphonies. The sky gave no suggestion of the thunderstorm which was to come at three o’clock, interrupt the ball game, send the picnickers scurrying to cover and leave the world washed afterward in moist and golden glory.
There is small space here for a detailed account of that day’s program, the sports or the luncheon or the minor mishaps or the shower or the return homeward afterward by moonlight. Only a brief record of a tryst which Nathan and I kept with two little girls off in leafy woods.
A path led from the grove over the hill to the northward. Knee-high with vagrant grass, bordered by white birches, poplars and brambles, it wound into the thickest, quietest part of that forest which once stretched from the Paris town line to Center Wickford. We had not been in the grove an hour before Nathan came dodging excitedly through the crowd. He caught my arm and drew me aside.
“I’ve seen Bernie and Elinore!” he cried feverishly, Bernie being about all the picnic meant for him, anyhow. “Her Ma couldn’t come and she’s all alone. She says let’s go way off up the woods and eat our dinners together, just us four! Oh, gee, Billy, what a chance—what a chance!”
“Chance for what?” I demanded.
My friend was crestfallen.
“Why—why—to just be with ’em all day—and perhaps we can kiss ’em——!” He added this last in a whisper.
“Oh, hake! I got sumpin’ on my mind besides always kissin’ girls. I wanner see the sports and try for a prize!” But he persuaded me.
Nathan carried his luncheon under his arm in a paper. Already it was misshapen and greasy with handling. Some boys had pushed it from his grasp and used it as a football. It consisted of three very fatty doughnuts and some thick slices of soggy, indigestible oatmeal bread with equally indigestible chunks of hard cheese between them. This he proposed to open in front of Bernie. It made me nervous.