Sarah and Maud, with Emmy Lou led by either hand between them, followed Albert Eddie with their own. After which, St. Simeon's, having brought all baskets to a common center beneath a tree in the neighborhood of the ice-water barrel, went off and left them.
"I'm going with a little girl who asked me," Maud told Sarah. "We won't go too far or the mother of the little pigs will chase us."
"Albert Eddie, I told the ladies that you would get the wood for a fire so we can put the coffee on," said Sarah. "When you come back from that you can take the bucket and bring us the ice-water from the barrel for the lemonade."
Sarah's glance came next to Emmy Lou, no mixer in the world of Sunday school at best, as Sarah before this had observed. Sarah frowned perturbedly. Some are picnickers by intuition, for example Maud and the little girl gone off together; others come to it through endeavor. It was seven-year-old Emmy Lou's first picnic, and she in her sprigged muslin stood looking to Sarah.
Sarah was a manager, but having yet to manage for Emmy Lou her frown was perturbed. Then her face cleared. She fetched a flat if a trifle over-mossy stone and put it down on the outskirts of the baskets grouped beneath the sheltering tree, and near the ice-water barrel. "There, now! You can sit down here and look after the baskets till I get back," she told Emmy Lou and was gone.
There is virtue in coming to a picnic. Aunt Cordelia plainly gave one to understand so.
"Why don't you go play with the others, little girl?" asked a lady who was tying on a gingham apron as she hurried by. "Go over to the swings and see-saws."
But Emmy Lou, no picnicker by intuition, nor as yet by any other mode of arrival, was grateful that she had to stay with the baskets, and, had the lady paused long enough for a reply, could say so.
Was there virtue in coming to the picnic for Albert Eddie too? Emmy Lou on her stone under the tree guarding baskets saw him come back with his load of firewood. She saw him next carrying the bucket of water from the barrel.
And here some ladies approaching the baskets beside Emmy Lou beneath the tree, and casting appraising eyes over the outlay, began to help themselves to the same! To this basket, and that basket, and carry them away! One even approached and laid hands on Emmy Lou's own! It took courage to speak, but she found it.