Page:A Little Country Girl - Coolidge (1887).djvu/192

 the drawing-room window, where she had been standing unperceived for a moment or two.

"Oh, Mrs. Gray, are you there?" and the girls hastened to the window. Some of them kissed her; and all, except perhaps Berry Joy, looked glad to see her, for she was a general favorite with her daughters' friends.

"Tell us about the picnics you used to have when you were young," said Julia Prime, balancing herself on the window-sill and keeping fast hold of Mrs. Gray's hand.

"There is not much to tell, Julia. They would seem tame affairs enough to you modern young people, I suppose. We hadn't any men with us as a general thing, except an occasional brother or cousin, and we didn't carry half as much to eat as seems to be considered necessary now-a-days. Then we did all the work ourselves instead of taking cooks and footmen to do it for us; but for all that, we thought them most delightful. For one thing, we always went to some really interesting place, such as the Glen, or the Dumpling Rocks, or the Paradise Valleys."