Mrs. Green, within, was generously busy with biscuits, cold chicken,
doughnuts fried since sunrise, and coffee richly compounded with cream
and sugar, which a great tin can stood waiting to receive and convey,
and which was at length to serve as cooking utensil in reheating upon
the fire of coals the picnickers would make up under the very tassel of
Feather-Cap.
The great wagons were drawn up also before the piazza of the hotel; and
between the two houses flitted the excursionists, full of the bright
enthusiasm of the setting off, which is the best part of a jaunt,
invariably.
Leslie Goldthwaite, in the hamadryad costume, just aware--which it was
impossible for her to help--of its exceeding prettiness, and of glances
that recognized it, pleased with a mixture of pleasures, was on the
surface of things once more, taking the delight of the moment with a
young girl's innocent abandonment. It was nice to be received so among
all these new companions; to be evidently, though tacitly, _voted_ nice,
in the way girls have of doing it; to be launched at once into the
beginning of apparently exhaustless delights,--all this was superadded
to the first and underlying joy of merely being alive and breathing,
this superb summer morning, among these forests and hills.
Pages:
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147