Five Little Peppers at School Part 25

And Miss Anstice said the same; although, try as hard as she would, her smile never could be sweet like Miss Salisbury's. And then off the girls would go to "exploring," as they called rambling in the Glen, the under-teachers taking them in charge.

And now Polly Pepper ran to her hamper, which she saw in a pile where the baskets had been heaped by the maids. "There it is," pointing to the tag sticking up; "oh, help me,--not you, Alexia," as Alexia ran up as usual, to help forward any undertaking Polly Pepper might have in mind.

"Dear me! you might almost kill your arm."

"This old arm," cried Alexia,--"I'm sick and tired of it."

"Well, you better take care of it," cried Polly gaily, "and then it won't be an old arm, but it will be as good as brand new, Alexia. Oh, one of the other girls, do come and help me."

"What do you want, Polly?" cried some of the girls, racing up to her.

"I want to get out my hamper," said Polly, pointing to the tag sticking up "high and dry" amid a stack of baskets. "My tin botany case is in it; I must get the ferns I promised to bring home to Phronsie."

"You stand away, all of ye." The old man Kimball, his horses out of the shafts, and well taken care of, now drew near, and swept off with his ample hand the bunch of girls. "Which one is't? Oh, that ere one with the tag," answering his own question. "Well, now, I'll git that for you jest as easy as rolling off a log. One--two--three--there she comes!"

And, one, two, three, and here she did come! And in a trice Polly had the cover up, and out flew the little green tin botany case; and within it being an iron spoon and little trowel, off flew Polly on happy feet to unearth the treasures that were to beautify Phronsie's little garden; a bunch of girls following to see the operation.

The magazine fell idly to the lap of Miss Salisbury. She sat dreamily back, resting her head against the boulder. "Sister," she said softly, "this is a happy custom we have started. I trust nothing will ever prevent our holding our annual picnic."

"Yes," said Miss Anstice absently. She was very much interested in a story she had begun, and she hated to have Miss Salisbury say a word.

Although she had on a stiff, immaculate white gown (for on such a festival as the annual picnic, she always dressed in white), still she was not in the same sweet temper that the princ.i.p.al was enjoying, and she held her thumb and finger in the place.

"Yes, the picnic is very good," she said, feeling that something was expected of her, "if we didn't get worms and bugs crawling over the tablecloth."

"Oh sister!" exclaimed Miss Salisbury, quite shocked; "it is no time to think of worms and bugs, I'm sure, on such a beautiful occasion as this."

"Still, they are here," said Miss Anstice; "there is one now," looking down at the hem of her gown. "_Ugh!_ go right away," slapping her book at it. Then her thumb and finger flew out, and she lost her place, and the bug ran away, and she added somewhat tartly, "For my own taste, I should really prefer a festival in the schoolroom."

When it came to spreading the feast, not one of the maids was allowed to serve. They could unpack the hampers, and hand the dishes and eatables to the girls, and run, and wait, and tend. But no one but the Salisbury girls must lay the snowy cloth, dress it up with flowers, with little knots at the corners, concealing the big stones that kept the tablecloth from flapping in any chance wind. And then they all took turns in setting the feast forth, and arranging all the goodies. And some one had to make the coffee, with a little coterie to help her. The crotched sticks were always there just as they had left them where they hung the kettle over the stone oven. And old man Kimball set one of the younger drivers to make the fire--and a rousing good one it was--where they roasted their corn and potatoes. And another one brought up the water from the spring that bubbled up clear and cold in the rocky ravine, so when all was ready it was a feast fit for a king, or rather the queen and her royal subjects.

And then Miss Salisbury and "sister" were escorted with all appropriate ceremonies down from their stone thrones,--and one had the head and the other the foot of the feast spread on the gra.s.s,--to sit on a stone draped with a shawl, and to be waited on lovingly by the girls, who threw themselves down on the ground, surrounding the snowy cloth. And they sat two or three rows deep; and those in the front row had to pa.s.s the things, of course, to the back-row girls.

"Oh, you're spilling jelly-cake crumbs all down my back," proclaimed Alexia, with a shudder. "Rose Harding," looking at the girl just back of her, "can't you eat over your own lap, pray tell?"

"Well, give me your seat then," suggested Rose, with another good bite from the crumbly piece in her hand, "if you don't like what the back-row girls do."

"No, I'm not going to," said Alexia, "catch me! but you needn't eat all over my hair. Ugh! there goes another," and she squirmed so she knocked off the things in her neighbor's as well as her own lap.

"Oh dear me! Keep your feet to yourself, Alexia Rhys," said the neighbor; "there goes my egg in all the dirt--and I'd just gotten it sh.e.l.led."

"All the easier for the bugs," observed Alexia sweetly; "see, they're already appropriating it. And I guess you'd kick and wriggle if some one put jelly cake down your back," returning to her grievance,--"slippery, slimy jelly cake," twisting again at the remembrance.

"Well, you needn't kick the things out of my lap. I didn't put the jelly cake down your back," retorted the neighbor, beginning to sh.e.l.l her second egg.

Oh dear! was ever anything quite so good in all this world as that feast at the "Salisbury picnic!"

"I didn't suppose those baskets could bring out so much, nor such perfectly delicious things," sighed Polly Pepper, in an interval of rest before attacking one of Philena's chocolate cakes.

"Polly, Polly Pepper," called a girl opposite, "give me one of your little lemon tarts. You did bring 'em this year, didn't you?" anxiously.

"Yes, indeed," answered Polly; "why, where are they?" peering up and down the festal, not "board," but tablecloth.

"Don't tell me they are gone," cried the girl, leaning over to look for herself.

"I'm afraid they are," said Polly; "oh, I'm so sorry, Agatha!"

"You should have spoken before, my child," said a parlor boarder, who had eaten only three of Mrs. Fisher's tarts, and adjusting her eyegla.s.ses.

"Why, I've only just gotten through eating bread and b.u.t.ter," said Agatha. "I can't eat cake until that's done."

"A foolish waste of time," observed the parlor boarder; "bread and b.u.t.ter is for every day; cake and custards and flummery for high holidays," she added with quite an air.

"Hush up, do," cried Alexia, who had small respect for the parlor boarders and their graces, "and eat what you like, Penelope. I'm going to ransack this table for a tart for you, Agatha."

She sent keen, bird-like glances all up and down the length of the tablecloth. "Yes, no--yes, it is." She pounced upon a lemon tart hiding under a spray of sweet fern, and handed it in triumph across. "There you are, Agatha! now don't say I never did anything for you."

"Oh, how sweet!" cried Agatha, burying her teeth in the flaky tart.

"I should think it was sour," observed Amy Garrett; "lemons usually are."

"Don't try to be clever, Amy child," said Alexia, "it isn't expected at a picnic."

"It's never expected where you are," retorted Amy sharply.

"Oh dear, dear! that's pretty good," cried Alexia, nowise disconcerted, as she loved a joke just as much at herself as at the expense of any one else, while the others burst into a merry laugh.

"There's one good thing about Alexia Rhys," the "Salisbury girls" had always said, "she can take any amount of chaff, and not stick her finger in her eye and whimper."

So now she smiled serenely. "Oh dear, dear! I wish I could eat some more," she said. "I haven't tasted your orange jelly, Clem, nor as much as looked at your French sandwiches, Silvia. What is the reason one can eat so very little at a picnic, I wonder?" She drew a long breath, and regarded them all with a very injured expression.

"Hear that, girls!" cried Silvia; "isn't that rich, when Alexia has been eating every blessed minute just as fast as she could!"

"I suppose that is what we all have been doing," observed Alexia placidly.

Miss Salisbury had been a happy observer of all the fun and nonsense going on around her, and renewing her youth when she had dearly loved picnics; but it was not so with Miss Anstice. At the foot of the festal tablecloth, she had been viewing from the corners of her eyes the inroads of various specimens of the insect creation and several other peripatetic creatures that seemed to belong to no particular species but to a new order of beings originated for this very occasion. She had held herself in bravely, although eating little, being much too busy in keeping watch of these intruders, who all seemed bent on running over her food and her person, to hide in all conceivable folds of her white gown. And she was now congratulating herself on the end of the feast, which about this time should be somewhere in sight, when a goggle-eyed bug, at least so it seemed to her distraught vision, pranced with agile steps directly for her lap, to disappear at once. And it got on to her nerves.

"Oh--_ow_! Take it off." Miss Anstice let her plate fly, and skipped to her feet. But looking out for the goggle-eyed bug, she thought of little else, and stepped into some more of the jelly cake--slipped, and precipitated herself into the middle of the feast.

XIV MISS SALISBURY'S STORY

"Oh Miss Anstice!" cried the "Salisbury girls," jumping to their feet.

"_Sister!_" exclaimed Miss Salisbury, dropping her plate, and letting all her sweet, peaceful reflections fly to the four winds.

"I never did regard picnics as pleasant affairs," gasped Miss Anstice, as the young hands raised her, "and now they are--quite--quite detestable." She looked at her gown, alas! no longer immaculate.