They all wore white shirtwaists, white skirts, white shoes, and white linen tennis hats. They looked rather like a party of sunny angels as they boarded their car. They realized that they made a good appearance, but they were not prepared for the effect they had upon a certain motherly-looking woman who watched them file in and take their seats. She gazed at them very hard and her mouth curved into the most wistful smile the girls had ever seen, and tears came suddenly to her eyes as she glanced hastily away. The other people in the car breathed deep in sympathy. But the girls could no more have understood the vivid impression of youth and loveliness they had given than they could have deciphered the Rosetta stone. In their hearts were only the most prosaic thoughts of dainty little sandwiches and stuffed olives, with an undernote of healthy happiness and rampageous good spirits.
"What can be more beautiful than a group of young girls?" a woman was saying to her neighbor. "Aren't they just ideal, all in white that way--those pretty girlish dresses and those white shoes and stockings--"
If she had known the girls' most eager thought in connection with those white shoes and stockings was to throw them as far away as possible onto a rock in the river they had set out to explore, and in regard to those white dresses, their dearest wish was to fasten them up about their knees while, with all manner of joyous shouts and yells they should go wading below a waterfall.
As they approached the suburban stop where they had been advised to get off, as being near the river they were going to, they gathered up their boxes of luncheon and crowded to the door of the car, humming very softly one of their favorite school songs.
And when the car stopped and let them off in a beautiful strip of country woodland, their voices came out louder and they went swinging along in the direction of the stream whose cool rippling music they were so eager to hear. They had to climb several fences, but they had been told that these woods were always open to school and college girls, for there was a larger college nearer than Andrews, and the girls haunted the place. There was nobody in sight to-day, however, and they scrambled to the top of gateways and then jumped down into each other's arms, knocking each other down and laughing and shouting until the woods echoed with their noise.