hours from
now. Hope they serve it as soon as we get there. Do you suppose there
will be enough to go around? How far did you say it was, Myra? Forty
miles?"

Laughing and joking, the dozen hungry, breakfastless girls hurried into
their coats and veils, seized their pitifully small allotment of
doughnuts and cookies, and boisterously climbed aboard the autos
waiting for them.

"Only ten minutes late by actual count," Mr. Haskell complimented them,
as the merry crowd poured out of the door.

"Well, well, that's doing fine! How did it happen?"

"It's all Myra's fault," began Vera plaintively, but Myra, fearful that
she was about to be betrayed, hastily asked, "Where is the dinner, Dad?
Didn't mother tell you to bring----"

"Some stuffed squabs, fruit and cake? Yes, she did; and it's packed in
that trunk hitched onto the step there. You'll have to sit on it, I
guess. There doesn't seem to be quite room enough to accommodate all
the crowd."

This arrangement just suited Myra, who loved to romp like her brothers;
so she gleefully perched on top of the long, flat chest strapped on one
side of the auto, and the procession slowly set out on its long journey.

"My! but it's a beautiful day," sighed Tabitha at length, her eyes
wandering from the fog-wet landscape below to the sky above, where the
blue was already chasing away the gray, as the sun struggled up behind
the eastern hills.

"Didn't I tell you so?" crowed Gwynne, regretfully studying the last
bite of a doughnut before popping it into her mouth. "It doesn't rain
in California. Is this the river we cross eighteen times, Myra, in
order to reach your ranch?"

"Only eight," mumbled Myra, with her mouth full of cookie crumbs.
"This is it. Allow me to introduce you to the great----"

"Great!" echoed Tabitha, looking down at the shallow, sluggish stream
with critical eyes. "Is it _really_ a river? Looks to me like the
little puddles we used to sail boats in after a heavy rain-storm back
home when I was a little tot."

"It isn't very awe-inspiring now, is it? But you should see it in the
spring after the rains. It certainly can play havoc then. Changes its
channel every two or three years, and causes all sorts of damage. What
is the matter ahead there?" Their auto had slowed down suddenly, and
now came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the road. "What has
happened, Dad?"

"Carson's auto is stuck in the mud."

"Mud?"

"Well, the river-bed,