elp matters. Queer, how nice boys could have such
frumpy people! And Ted Gordon had been a perfectly nice boy. The
picture proved that. But Aunt Jessica had been right about the
flowers. The big woman and the farmer proved _that_. Altogether
Elliott's mind was a queer jumble.

"She said she'd send back the basket to-morrow, Aunt Jessica," she
reported. "Said she wanted to sit and look at it for a while just as
it was. And Miss Gordon asked me to tell you that whenever you were
ready for the picnic you must let her know and she would send around
their limousine."

"If that isn't just like Harriet Gordon!" laughed Laura. "She is the
wittiest girl! Didn't you like her, Elliott?"

Elliott's eyes opened wide. "What is there witty in saying she would
send their limousine?"

Tom snorted. "Wait till you see it!"

"Why, she meant their hay-wagon! We always use the Gordon hay-wagon
for this midsummer picnic. That's a custom, too."

Everybody laughed at the expression on Elliott's face.

"Not up on the vernacular, Lot?" gibed Stannard.

"When is the picnic to be, Mother?" asked Laura.

"How about to-morrow?"

"Better make it the day after," Father Bob suggested, and they all
fell to discussing whom to ask.

So far as Elliott could see they asked everybody except townspeople.
The telephone was kept busy that night and the next morning in the
intervals of Mother Jess's and the girls' baking. Elliott helped pack
up dozens of turnovers and cookies and sandwiches and bottled quarts
of lemonade.

"The lemonade is for the children," said Laura. "The rest of us have
coffee. Don't you love the taste of coffee that you make over a fire
that you build yourself in the woods?"

"On picnics I have always had my coffee out of a thermos bottle," said
Elliott.

"Oh, you poor _thing_! Why, you haven't had any good times at all,
have you?"

Laura looked so shocked that for a minute Elliott actually wondered
whether she ever really had had any good times. Privately she wasn't
at all sure that she was going to have a good time now, but she kept
still about that doubt.

"Aren't you afraid it may rain to-morrow?" she asked.

"No, indeed! It never rains on things Mother plans."

And it didn't. The morning of the picnic dawned clear and dewy and
sparkling, as perfect a summer day as though it had been made to the
Camerons' order. By nine o'clock the big hay-wagon had appeared,
driven by Mr. Gordon himself, who said he was going to