She flopped down on the grass in front of them with Buzzy at her side. “I love a good long hike,” Kit went on. “Especially when I feel bothered or indignant. We’ve kept up the hiking club ever since the roads opened up, Jean. It’s more fun than anything out here. I never realized there was so much to know about just woods and fields until Sally taught me where to hunt for things. Do you like to hike, Ralph?”
“I don’t know. Not too long. I think I’d rather ride.”
“Me, too,” Doris said flatly. She had been working in the garden and had come up when she heard Kit and Buzzy’s voices. “I don’t see a bit of fun dragging around like Kit does, through the woods and over swamps, climbing hills, and always wanting to get to the top of the next one.”
“Oh, but I love to,” Kit replied. “Maybe I’ll be a mountain climber yet. Kids, you don’t grasp that there is something strange and interesting in my own special temperament. The longing to attain, the--the insatiable desire to seize adventure and follow her fleeing footsteps, the longing to tap the stars on their foreheads and let them know I’m here.”
Ralph laughed at her. “Well, even if I don’t share such desires with you, Kit, how about all of us going for a picnic one of these days. It seems to me that the ground isn’t too wet for one, and it would do us all good to stop worrying about Billie since there is nothing we can do to hasten his recovery. Do you agree, Buzzy?”
“That’s a swell idea, Ralph,” he replied, chewing on a blade of grass. “Why not make it tomorrow. I’ll ask Mom to pack us up some food.”
“No, leave that to us, Buzzy,” Jean interrupted. “We’ve got some steaks in the house that are just asking to be broiled outdoors over a charcoal fire. With those and some fruit and coffee, we should have enough. Let’s plan to leave here around five and make an evening of it.”
“What good times a large family can have,” Ralph said as he slipped his arm through Jean’s on a walk through the garden later. “Sometimes I wish I had been lucky enough to have had brothers and sisters. You feel so odd when you are all the family yourself.”
The next evening Kit, Buzzy, Jean, and Ralph hiked down the river to a small beach that seemed to all of them ideal for a picnic. It was Buzzy who had suggested the spot. He said he and the other boys used to go there a lot in the summer to fish and swim. While the boys built the fire, Kit and Jean walked on down the river a little way.
