e morning at the
breakfast table. "We must have one before we go back to town. Let's
ask the Gays and the Hildreths and Warren and Richard--next week will
be a good time."

And then for a few days a round of emergency calls kept him so busy he
forgot that such things as picnics were ever held.

Bringing the car around a few mornings later, intending to take his
mother and Winnie in to look at the remodeled house, he found Sarah and
Shirley placidly seated behind the wheel when he came out from
breakfast.

"You can't go this time--there isn't room," he informed them
pleasantly. "Hop out--here come Mother and Winnie."

"You said we could go next time and this is next time," insisted Sarah.

There were tears of disappointment in Shirley's eyes, but she climbed
out of the car in response to a second look from Doctor Hugh. Sarah,
however, clung to the wheel and had to be lifted out bodily.

"You're too old to act like this," said her brother sternly. "It is
important that Mother and Winnie go with me this morning--they were
going yesterday and then I had to put them off to go in to the
hospital; suppose Mother scowled the way you do, Sarah, when things
didn't go to suit her."

Rosemary came out to see them off and Mrs. Willis and Winnie waved as
though nothing had happened. Doctor Hugh suddenly swooped down upon
Sarah, lifted her high in his arms and kissed her. With another swift
kiss for Shirley, he was back in the car before the angry Sarah could
recover from her astonishment. The car rolled down the road and left
her standing glaring after it.

Sarah was exceedingly put out and she did not attempt to disguise her
state of mind. Rosemary, finding it impossible to win her to a more
reasonable point of view, went indoors to finish the odds and ends of
work Winnie had had to leave undone. This left Shirley to Sarah, and
Sarah was like the disgruntled sailor who deliberately incites mutiny.

"I want to be _bad_!" she told Shirley passionately. "Let's think of
something awful and go do it!"

Shirley could not think of anything, unfortunately, that is
unfortunately from Sarah's point of view.

"I know!" cried that small sinner, after a moment's thought. "We can
go in the tool house."

Sarah had remembered what Warren had said when they first came to the
farm--that the tool house was forbidden ground. He had also warned
them against going into the windmill.

"Come on, Shirley," cried the naughty Sar