hat Auntie
Gibbs made for _me_. Chicken sandwiches, oh boy! And Auntie Gibbs'
chicken sandwiches are the best ever, aren't they?"

"We ought to know," laughed Bet. "We've eaten about a ton of them.
--Here Kit, do help yourself. Have another egg."

Kit had never tasted such a lunch. And it was all put up in such an
appetizing way, it seemed a pity to disturb it. Everything was wrapped
in wax paper or put up in small jars. There was actually a dish of
crisp salad. There were stuffed olives and Bet grasped the jar with a
little cry:

"Let's see if it is Auntie Gibbs' special. Oh girls, it is, it is!
Auntie Gibbs' stuffed olives!"

"Well she _has_ outdone herself!" Joy was munching an olive as she
showered praise on the old housekeeper at the Manor.

"You know, Kit," explained Bet, "these stuffed olives are Auntie Gibbs'
own invention and what goes into the filling of them, no one knows but
herself. It's her secret!"

"And it's a secret to the death!" laughed Shirley. "She says she'll
never tell and when she dies she will bequeath the recipe to her best
friend. Won't that sound funny in a will?"

Kit laughed heartily at these new friends and Bet continued: "Oh yes,
Auntie Gibbs makes a sort of religion out of her cooking. And when she
hits upon something especially good, she guards the recipe as if it
were a treasure and freezes up hard if anyone asks her how she made it."

"I wonder why?" ventured Kit.

"She says if everybody makes the same thing, it's no treat."

"This is very different from an Arizona picnic, girls," exclaimed Kit
suddenly.

"Do tell us about it, Kit. What did you eat?"

"We mostly had Arizona strawberries and mountain trout," chuckled Kit
and was pleased to see Bet's face express disbelief.

"Why, I didn't know you had strawberries in Arizona."

"And where do you get trout in that hot desert country, when the
streams all go dry half the time?" asked Shirley.

Kit laughed with all her might. "There I knew I'd get caught at that
old joke. Well you see it's this way. Arizona strawberries are the
little red Mexican beans, which we pretty nearly live on out there.
And the mountain trout are the strips of bacon that are fried to go
with them."

"Oh you mean thing, trying to fool us like that!" shouted Joy, who had
been sitting still so long that she had grown tired. Now she danced
away down the path with a sandwich held above her head.

"What else would you have for a l