Part 14 (1/2)

So far as Elliott could see they asked everybody except townspeople.

The telephone was kept busy that night and the next morning in the intervals of Mother Jess's and the girls' baking. Elliott helped pack up dozens of turnovers and cookies and sandwiches and bottled quarts of lemonade.

”The lemonade is for the children,” said Laura. ”The rest of us have coffee. Don't you love the taste of coffee that you make over a fire that you build yourself in the woods?”

”On picnics I have always had my coffee out of a thermos bottle,” said Elliott.

”Oh, you poor _thing_! Why, you haven't had any good times at all, have you?”

Laura looked so shocked that for a minute Elliott actually wondered whether she ever really had had any good times. Privately she wasn't at all sure that she was going to have a good time now, but she kept still about that doubt.

”Aren't you afraid it may rain to-morrow?” she asked.

”No, indeed! It never rains on things Mother plans.”

And it didn't. The morning of the picnic dawned clear and dewy and sparkling, as perfect a summer day as though it had been made to the Camerons' order. By nine o'clock the big hay-wagon had appeared, driven by Mr. Gordon himself, who said he was going to turn over the reins to Mr. Cameron when they reached the Gordon farm. Two more horses were hitched on and all the Camerons piled in, with enough boxes and baskets and bags of potatoes, one would think, to feed a small town, and away the hay-wagon went down the hill, stopping at house after house to take in smiling people, with more boxes and baskets and bags.

It was all very care-free and gay, and Elliott smiled and chattered away with the rest; but in her heart of hearts she knew that there wasn't one of these boys and girls who squeezed into the capacious hay-wagon to whom she would have given a second glance, before coming up here to Vermont. Now she wondered whether they were all as negligible as they looked. And pretty soon she forgot that she had ever thought they looked negligible. It was the jolliest crowd she had ever been in. One or two were a bit quiet when they arrived, but soon even the shyest were talking, or at least laughing, in the midst of the happy hubbub. It seemed as though one couldn't have anything but a good time when the Camerons set out to be jolly. Alma Gordon and the little Bliss girls were the last to squeeze in and they rode away waving their hands violently to a short, fat woman and a tall, fat girl, who waved briskly from the brick house's front door.

Then Mr. Cameron turned the horses into a mountain road and they began to climb. Up and up the wagon went with its merry load, through towering woods and open pastures and along hillsides where the woods had been cut and a tangle of underbrush was beginning to spring up among the stumps. And the higher the horses climbed the higher rose the jollity of the hay-wagon's company. The sun was hot overhead when they stopped. There were gray rocks and a tumbling mountain brook and a brown-carpeted pine wood. Everybody jumped out helter-skelter and began unloading the wagon or gathering fire-wood or dipping up water, or simply scampering around for joy of stretching cramped legs.

It was surprising how soon a fire was burning on the gray stones and coffee bubbling in the big pail Mother Jess had brought; surprising, too, how good bacon tasted when you broiled it yourself on a forked stick and potatoes that you smooched your face on by eating them in their skins, black from the hot ashes that the boys poked them out of with green poles. Elliott knew now that she had never really picnicked before in her life and that she liked it. She liked it so much that she ate and ate and ate until she couldn't eat another mouthful.

Perhaps she ate too much, but I doubt it. It is much more likely to have been the climb that she took in the hot suns.h.i.+ne directly after that dinner, and the climb wouldn't have hurt her, if she had ended the dinner without that last potato and the extra turnover and two cookies; or if she had rested a little before the climb. But perhaps, it wasn't either the dinner or the climb; it may have been the pink ice-cream of the evening before; or that time in the celery patch, the previous morning, when she had forgotten her hat and wouldn't go back to the house for it because Henry hadn't a hat on, and why should a girl need a hat more than a boy? Or it may have been all those things put together. She certainly had had a slight headache when she went to bed.

Whatever caused it, the fact was that on the ride home Elliott began to feel very sick. The longer she rode the sicker she felt and the more appalled and ashamed and frightened she grew. What could be going to happen to her? And what awful exhibition was she about to make of herself before all these people to whom she had felt so superior?

Before long people noticed how white she was and by the time the wagon reached the brick house at the cross-roads poor Elliott hardly cared if they did see it. Her pride was crushed by her misery. Mrs. Gordon and Harriet came out to welcome Alma home and they hesitated not a minute.

”Have them bring her right in here, Jessica. No, no, not a mite of trouble! We'll keep her all night. You go right along home, you and Laura. Mercy me, if we can't do a little thing like this for you folks! She'll be all right in the morning.”

The words meant nothing to Elliott. She was quite beyond caring where she went, so that it was to a bed, flat and still and unmoving. But even in her distress she was conscious that, whatever came of it, she had had a good time.

CHAPTER VIII

A BEE STING

Elliott was wretchedly, miserably ill. She despised herself for it and then she lost even the sensation of self contempt in utter misery. She didn't care about anything--who helped her undress or where the undressing was done or what happened to her. Mercifully n.o.body talked; it would have killed her, she thought, to have to try to talk. They didn't even ask her how she felt. They only moved about quietly and did things. They put her to bed and gave her something to drink, after which for a time she didn't care if she did die; in fact, she rather hoped she would; and then the disgusting things happened and she felt worse and worse and then--oh wonder!--she began to feel better.

Actually, it was sheer bliss just to lie quiet and feel how comfortable she was.

”I am so sorry!” she murmured apologetically to a presence beside the bed. ”I have made you a horrid lot of trouble.”

”Not a bit,” said the presence, quietly. ”So don't you begin worrying about that.”

And she didn't worry. It seemed impossible to worry about anything just then.

”I feel lots better,” she remarked, after a while.

”That's right. I thought you would. Now I'm going to telephone your Aunt Jessica that you feel better, and you just lie quiet and go to sleep. Then you will feel better still. I'll put the bell right here beside the bed. If you want anything, tap it.”