at all
over my hair. Ugh! there goes another," and she squirmed so she knocked
off the things in her neighbor's as well as her own lap.

"Oh dear me! Keep your feet to yourself, Alexia Rhys," said the
neighbor; "there goes my egg in all the dirt--and I'd just gotten it
shelled."

"All the easier for the bugs," observed Alexia sweetly; "see, they're
already appropriating it. And I guess you'd kick and wriggle if some one
put jelly cake down your back," returning to her grievance,--"slippery,
slimy jelly cake," twisting again at the remembrance.

"Well, you needn't kick the things out of my lap. I didn't put the jelly
cake down your back," retorted the neighbor, beginning to shell her
second egg.

Oh dear! was ever anything quite so good in all this world as that feast
at the "Salisbury picnic!"

"I didn't suppose those baskets could bring out so much, nor such
perfectly delicious things," sighed Polly Pepper, in an interval of rest
before attacking one of Philena's chocolate cakes.

"Polly, Polly Pepper," called a girl opposite, "give me one of your
little lemon tarts. You did bring 'em this year, didn't you?" anxiously.

"Yes, indeed," answered Polly; "why, where are they?" peering up and
down the festal, not "board," but tablecloth.

"Don't tell me they are gone," cried the girl, leaning over to look for
herself.

"I'm afraid they are," said Polly; "oh, I'm so sorry, Agatha!"

"You should have spoken before, my child," said a parlor boarder, who
had eaten only three of Mrs. Fisher's tarts, and adjusting her
eyeglasses.

"Why, I've only just gotten through eating bread and butter," said
Agatha. "I can't eat cake until that's done."

"A foolish waste of time," observed the parlor boarder; "bread and
butter is for every day; cake and custards and flummery for high
holidays," she added with quite an air.

"Hush up, do," cried Alexia, who had small respect for the parlor
boarders and their graces, "and eat what you like, Penelope. I'm going
to ransack this table for a tart for you, Agatha."

She sent keen, bird-like glances all up and down the length of the
tablecloth. "Yes, no--yes, it is." She pounced upon a lemon tart hiding
under a spray of sweet fern, and handed it in triumph across. "There you
are, Agatha! now don't say I never did anything for you."

"Oh, how sweet!" cried Agatha, burying her teeth in the flaky tart.

"I should think it was sour," observed Amy Garrett; "lemons usually
are."

"D