bout them at once, go where they will. Poor Miss Lydia was
afraid of her quick speech and brusque ways and decided opinions, and
spent more hours than usual upstairs alone in her own little room, and
wore her best cap whenever she appeared below, as a sort of mute appeal
to the young lady's indulgence. But Gerald, in her robust health, had no
sympathy whatever with invalids as a class, and for "chronic nerves" she
had an absolute contempt, unmitigated by even the best cap's gay ribbons.
"It's altogether a matter of will," she asserted. "People needn't be ill
if they are only resolved not to be so."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Lane, who had chanced to overhear; and there was a
trifle more tenderness than usual in her manner when she went up later to
put the mid-day cup of beef-tea into her sister's thin hands, and stood
looking compassionately down at her. "Nothing is easier than to insist
that a thing is so and so, just because there's no way to prove that it
isn't so."

"How you do always talk in proverbs, Sister Sophy!" said Miss Lydia,
admiringly. "I only wish Solomon could have heard you. I do believe he
would have put some of them in."

"He would have been far too busy taking down Mrs. Upjohn's fine speeches
to mind _me_," grunted Mrs. Lane. "And I never did think much of Solomon,
anyway. He was too much of a Mormon with his hundred wives and that. Want
any thing else, Lyddy?"

"No, thank you. The house is very nice and still this morning. There's
a picnic up at the Dexter's farm, isn't there? I suppose they've all
gone to it."

"Of course. Who ever heard of a picnic unless Phebe went along to do all
the fussing and mussing that everybody else shirks? Don't tell _me_
there's any fun in a picnic,--going off in the woods like that, to do for
yourself what you'd sell the clothes off your back to have somebody else
do for you at home, and eating all kinds of heathenish messes with your
fingers because you've forgotten the forks. But what people like let them
have. They'll get experience out of it if nothing better. And of course
Phebe had to go."

True enough, Phebe was as essential to any picnic as the feast, though
much less obtrusively so, and Gerald watched her friend's quiet
helpfulness with lazy interest. She herself was stretched at ease on the
clean, fresh grass under some glorious old trees. The place chosen was a
lovely spot at the head of the lake; the drive there had been long and
hot, and now she lay enjoyi