r you, Amy dear," cried Betty eagerly. "That's just exactly what I
was thinking. The dear old lady seemed so much better yesterday I thought
we might persuade her to share our picnic with us. How about it, Mollie?"

"Why, of course," answered the latter heartily, "I'd love to have her--if
she'd come."

"If she'd come?" repeated Amy, puzzled. "Why shouldn't she come--that is,
if she's feeling strong enough?"

"Well," explained Mollie, with a little smile as she recalled one of the
many unusual conversations she had had with the little old woman, "she
told me the other day that she 'hated them gasoline wagons worse than
poison,'--that the only reason she rode in ours was because she was
unconscious when we put her in and she couldn't help herself. And she
added somebody'd have to run over her again to make her do it a second
time."

Betty laughed gayly as she flung back the covers and slipped out of bed.

"Goodness, I don't wonder you were doubtful," she said. "Maybe she's
changed her mind by this time. Anyway, we can ask her and see."

"I think she's the most wonderful old person I ever saw," remarked Amy
thoughtfully, as they dressed hastily. "She must be pretty old, and yet
she says the funniest, wittiest things, and her eyes sparkle and twinkle
like a girl's."

"Well, I really think she looks older than she really is," said Grace
slowly and very judicially. "You know working on a farm in the hot sun the
way she did for years, isn't calculated to make a person look younger than
she is."

"Oh, and if we could only do something to find him for her!" sighed Amy
for--the girls did not know whether it was the fiftieth or the hundredth
time, they had given up counting.

"Well, wishing won't accomplish anything," said Mollie practically, as she
vigorously pulled on a shoe as if it were in some mysterious way
responsible for the unsatisfactory state of affairs. "I think some one
ought to nickname us the 'four Dianas.'"

"Well, of course Diana was very beautiful," said Grace, complacently
regarding her own pretty reflection in the mirror. "But if you meant that,
Mollie, of course the description applies to only one of us."

"Goose," remarked Mollie. "Of course I wasn't thinking of Diana's beauty.
I was merely thinking of her in the role of a fair huntress."

"Goodness, now she is insulting us!" cried Betty, turning upon her friend
with a melodramatic frown. "Do you mean to imply that one or all of us are
huntresse