oices brought him
ashore in a flash. Peeping through the meshes of the hammock, he saw
the Marches coming out, as if bound on some expedition.

"What in the world are those girls about now?" thought Laurie, opening
his sleepy eyes to take a good look, for there was something rather
peculiar in the appearance of his neighbors. Each wore a large,
flapping hat, a brown linen pouch slung over one shoulder, and carried
a long staff. Meg had a cushion, Jo a book, Beth a basket, and Amy a
portfolio. All walked quietly through the garden, out at the little
back gate, and began to climb the hill that lay between the house and
river.

"Well, that's cool," said Laurie to himself, "to have a picnic and
never ask me! They can't be going in the boat, for they haven't got
the key. Perhaps they forgot it. I'll take it to them, and see what's
going on."

Though possessed of half a dozen hats, it took him some time to find
one, then there was a hunt for the key, which was at last discovered in
his pocket, so that the girls were quite out of sight when he leaped
the fence and ran after them. Taking the shortest way to the
boathouse, he waited for them to appear, but no one came, and he went
up the hill to take an observation. A grove of pines covered one part
of it, and from the heart of this green spot came a clearer sound than
the soft sigh of the pines or the drowsy chirp of the crickets.

"Here's a landscape!" thought Laurie, peeping through the bushes, and
looking wide-awake and good-natured already.

It was a rather pretty little picture, for the sisters sat together in
the shady nook, with sun and shadow flickering over them, the aromatic
wind lifting their hair and cooling their hot cheeks, and all the
little wood people going on with their affairs as if these were no
strangers but old friends. Meg sat upon her cushion, sewing daintily
with her white hands, and looking as fresh and sweet as a rose in her
pink dress among the green. Beth was sorting the cones that lay thick
under the hemlock near by, for she made pretty things with them. Amy
was sketching a group of ferns, and Jo was knitting as she read aloud.
A shadow passed over the boy's face as he watched them, feeling that he
ought to go away because uninvited; yet lingering because home seemed
very lonely and this quiet party in the woods most attractive to his
restless spirit. He stood so still that a squirrel, busy with its
harvesting, ran down a pine clo