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 s