Before they had finished breakfast, there was a loud trampling of hoofs outside, announcing a cavalcade—Hester Herrick on her pinto pony, Dr. Minturn with her, and Olaf riding behind leading a packhorse.
“It is the day of all days for a picnic,” Hester announced. “All the time you have been here, we have talked of going to Eagle Rock, and you promised to come with me the first day I could arrange it. Christina will spend the day with Miss Deems, this horse that Olaf is on will do for Nancy to ride; and everything we could possibly need is packed on old Martha here. Dr. Minturn rode by our house this morning, and thought he would come over with me; though he is in a hurry to get to the village. He will come back this evening after we have got home to make your aunt a real, proper visit. Do say you will come.”
Her eagerness and the inviting beauty of the day were not to be denied, so that in a moment Nancy and Beatrice were running to and fro in hasty preparation.
“Bring warm coats and your swimming suits and hurry,” Hester directed. “Olaf will saddle Buck while you are getting ready.”
It was well that Olaf was there to deal with Beatrice’s pony, for with the gathered energy of two days’ vacation, Buck went through all the tricks in his repertoire during the cinching of the saddle. He was off down the trail like an arrow the moment his mistress was in the saddle, leaving the others trailing far behind. They came together soon, however, and climbed merrily upward, looking back at the valley mapped out below them and at the bare, brown slopes of the range opposite. They looked so near in the clear air that Beatrice shouted, “to see if there would be an echo.”
“Hardly,” commented Hester, “for they are twenty miles away.”
Beatrice tried many times, as they went along, to think of some question to put to Hester that might bring forth information about John Herrick, but no matter how often she led up to it, she was never able to think what to say. She had told Nancy of that strange scene in the moonlight, and she was afraid now of her sister’s blunt frankness, should the talk touch upon that matter of which both their minds were so full. In the end, therefore, she said nothing.