oubt if anybody enjoyed that luncheon unless it was
Grandma Cobb. She did not eat hygienic biscuits, but did eat cake and
pie in unlimited quantities. I was really afraid that she would make
herself ill with Mrs. Butter's fruit cake. One thing was a great
relief, to me at least: Flora Clark did not know the true story of
her jumbles until some time afterward. Mrs. White told her that the
pail had been upset and they were broken, and we were all so sorry;
and she did not suspect. We were glad to avoid a meeting between her
and Mrs. Jameson, for none of us felt as if we could endure it then.

I suppose the young folks enjoyed the picnic if we did not, and that
was the principal thing to be considered, after all. I know that
Harry Liscom and Harriet Jameson enjoyed it, and all the more that
it was a sort of stolen pleasure. Just before we went home I was
strolling off by myself near the brook, and all of a sudden saw the
two young things under a willow tree. I stood back softly, and they
never knew that I was there, but they were sitting side by side, and
Harry's arm was around the girl's waist, and her head was on his
shoulder, and they were looking at each other as if they saw angels,
and I thought to myself that, whether it was due to hygienic bread or
pie, they were in love--and what would Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson and
Caroline Liscom say?

III

MRS. JAMESON IMPROVES US

It was some time before we really understood that we were to be
improved. We might have suspected it from the episode of the hygienic
biscuits at the picnic, but we did not. We were not fairly aware of
it until the Ladies' Sewing Circle met one afternoon with Mrs. Sim
White, the president, the first week in July.

It was a very hot afternoon, and I doubt if we should have had the
meeting that day had it not been that we were anxious to get off
a barrel as soon as possible to a missionary in Minnesota. The
missionary had seven children, the youngest only six weeks old, and
they were really suffering. Flora Clark did say that if it were as
hot in Minnesota as it was in Linnville she would not thank anybody
to send her clothes; she would be thankful for the excuse of poverty
to go without them. But Mrs. Sim White would not hear to having the
meeting put off; she said that a cyclone might come up any minute in
Minnesota and cool the air, and then think of all those poor children
with nothing to cover them. Flora Clark had the audacity to say tha