“They’re awful little,” added Ruel, “but they’re sweet’s nuts. You can ketch a dozen in fifteen minutes.”
The boys had been fishing several times during their vacation, but had never taken the girls along.
The forenoon was full of both duty and play. Trunks were filled to the brim and sat upon; great bundles of birch bark were tied up and labeled. All the cattle received toothsome bits of their favorite varieties of food, and were bidden goodbye, with strokings and pattings, all of which they received with abundance of patience and long sighs.
Meanwhile aunt Puss busied herself in preparing an appetizing little lunch for the last picnic, and for the morrow’s journey. All the men were hard at work in the potato patch and the orchard. At about three o’clock Ruel threw down his hoe and informed the boys, with one of his quiet laughs, that Mr. Percival had given him a half-day vacation.
“Get your party together,” said he, “and meet me in fifteen minutes out here by the pasture bars. I’ll have the bait ready. You can bring the poles you used last Monday.”
With baskets for lunch and for final collections of fresh ferns, the girls joined the rest, and all started down the long pasture lane through which they had watched the cattle wandering slowly homeward so many times during the past weeks. By special invitation the little Irish girl was included in the party, much to her delight.
In a few minutes they were in the shade of the forest. The pines whispered softly to them, and the birches, in the little clearings here and there, fluttered their dainty leaves in the sunlight overhead. No one felt much like talking and almost the only sound was the occasional call of a thrush or the piping of a locust in the tree-tops. At length the brook was reached. The boys rigged their fishing tackle and were soon busily creeping down the banks of the little stream, uttering an exclamation now and then, as they captured or lost a lively trout.
The girls threw themselves down on a mossy bank, close beside a tiny spring which Ruel pointed out. There were fir-trees intermingled with the pines and hemlocks around it; and on its brink a fringe of ferns bent over the clear water. Randolph had known of the place before, but his cousins had never found it.
When the fishermen came back, they found lunch spread upon napkins, and awaiting only the trout. These Ruel took in hand, dressing and broiling them with the deftness of an old camper. Sheets of birch bark served for plates, and the boys whittled out knives and forks from the twigs of the same tree. Bridget, whose first camping experience it was, sat motionless, in a state of stupefied wonder and delight.
“Now, sir,” said Pet, addressing Randolph, “we need one thing more. As it’s a farewell meeting, we ought to have a poem, an original poem.”