l!" gurgled Morvyth.
"She's like a gramophone record that's rather blurred and has been set
too fast. Thank goodness, here's the wood! She can't recite while
she's climbing that stile."

Everybody decided that the wood was worth the walk. They spent a
delicious afternoon lying under the tall straight pines, with the
sweet-smelling needles for a bed, watching the delicate and illusive
effects of light filtering among the shimmering leaves of birches.

"I feel as if I ought to be picking something!" laughed Katherine,
throwing pine cones at Raymonde. "If I live to be a hundred, I'll
never forget this strawberry-gathering business. One got to do it
automatically."

"You know the story, don't you, of the old man who described himself
in the census as a picker?" said Miss Barton. "When he was asked to
explain, he said: 'Well, in June I picks strawberries, and then I
picks beans, and then I picks hops, then when them's over I picks
pockets, and then I gets copped and sent to quod, and picks oakum!' I
shouldn't wonder if some of your gipsy friends, Raymonde, could boast
of a similar record."

"I don't care--they're top-hole!" declared Raymonde, sticking up for
the tribe.

"Who wants tea?" said Miss Lowe. "We've asked Miss Nelson and Miss
Porter from the camp, and if we don't hurry back at once, we shall
find them waiting for us when we return, and slanging us for being
rude. Come along!"

Miss Lowe had casually informed Mrs. Marsden that she expected a few
friends to tea, but had not mentioned anything about special
preparation, thinking that they would carry the cups and saucers into
the garden, and have it under the trees. Little did they know the
surprise their enterprising landlady had in store for them. When they
arrived at the farm they found her, dressed in her best attire,
waiting at the door to receive them, and she proudly ushered them into
the sitting-room, where she had spread forth a meal such as might be
set before a particularly hungry assemblage of Sunday School
scholars.

A large ham, not yet quite cold, adorned one end of the table, and a
big apple-pie the other, while down the centre were seven round
jam-tarts, each measuring about seven inches in diameter. The cruets
had been put in the middle of the table instead of Miss Barton's bowl
of flowers, and there were several substantial platefuls of
currant-bread. It was an extremely warm afternoon, and even to
school-girl appetites the sight of such