ng howwibly hungry, dontcher know?"

"To see you eat strawberries up at Eve's house last Monday, I thought
you would never be hungry again--if you recovered," laughed Jess.

"Aw--now--Miss Josephine--weally, you know," gasped the dude. "You are
too, too cwuel!"

"Somebody throw that fellow overboard!" growled Chet. "He's getting
softer and softer every day."

"Never mind," whispered his sister, laughing, "he is dressed much less
gaudily to-day. What Bobby did to that sash of his last Monday seems to
have made Purt less vociferous in his sartorial taste."

"Gee, Laura!" cried Bobby Hargrew, from the next boat, "if Mammy Jinny
heard that, she sure would think that schools ought to teach only 'words
of one syllabub.'"

"Never mind Mammy Jinny," laughed Laura. "We've got some of Mammy's
finest efforts in pie and cake in our hamper. And I admit, like Purt, I
am hungry myself. Let's eat before we do another living thing!"

That was indeed a hilarious picnic. The girls had brought paper napkins
and tablecloths, as well as plenty of paper plates. No trouble about
washing dishes, or packing them home again, afterward. Chet had bought a
big tin pail and in this he made gallons of lemonade, and everybody ate
and drank to repletion.

"Now, if we were only at the park for just a little while, and could top
off on ice cream," said Lance, lying back on the greensward with a
contented sigh despite his spoken wish.

"I'd rather see that monkey again," laughed Jess. "That's the cutest
little beast."

"It weally is surprising how much the cweature knows," said Purt Sweet.
"It is weally almost human."

"So are you!" scoffed Lance. "It's an ugly little animal. Never did like
a monkey. And I think Tony Allegretto and his trained monkey are fakes.
We didn't see him do anything wonderful."

"Oh, they say that the monkey does lots of other tricks when Tony gets a
big crowd into his booth," said Laura.

"Now, who's for seeing the caves?" cried Chet, rising briskly. "You
girls declared you wanted to go 'way through the hill."

"Won't we get lost?" asked Nellie, timidly.

"Not a bit of it. It's a straight passage--nearly," said Chet. "Lance
and I have been through a couple of times. We come out into just the
prettiest little valley in the middle of the island--and not far from
the park, at that."

"But people _have_ been lost in the caves," objected one girl.

"Not of late years. There are side passages, I know, where a fellow