on't try to be clever, Amy child," said Alexia, "it isn't expected at
a picnic."

"It's never expected where you are," retorted Amy sharply.

"Oh dear, dear! that's pretty good," cried Alexia, nowise disconcerted,
as she loved a joke just as much at herself as at the expense of any
one else, while the others burst into a merry laugh.

"There's one good thing about Alexia Rhys," the "Salisbury girls" had
always said, "she can take any amount of chaff, and not stick her finger
in her eye and whimper."

So now she smiled serenely. "Oh dear, dear! I wish I could eat some
more," she said. "I haven't tasted your orange jelly, Clem, nor as much
as looked at your French sandwiches, Silvia. What is the reason one can
eat so very little at a picnic, I wonder?" She drew a long breath, and
regarded them all with a very injured expression.

"Hear that, girls!" cried Silvia; "isn't that rich, when Alexia has been
eating every blessed minute just as fast as she could!"

"I suppose that is what we all have been doing," observed Alexia
placidly.

Miss Salisbury had been a happy observer of all the fun and nonsense
going on around her, and renewing her youth when she had dearly loved
picnics; but it was not so with Miss Anstice. At the foot of the festal
tablecloth, she had been viewing from the corners of her eyes the
inroads of various specimens of the insect creation and several other
peripatetic creatures that seemed to belong to no particular species but
to a new order of beings originated for this very occasion. She had held
herself in bravely, although eating little, being much too busy in
keeping watch of these intruders, who all seemed bent on running over
her food and her person, to hide in all conceivable folds of her white
gown. And she was now congratulating herself on the end of the feast,
which about this time should be somewhere in sight, when a goggle-eyed
bug, at least so it seemed to her distraught vision, pranced with agile
steps directly for her lap, to disappear at once. And it got on to her
nerves.

"Oh--_ow_! Take it off." Miss Anstice let her plate fly, and skipped to
her feet. But looking out for the goggle-eyed bug, she thought of little
else, and stepped into some more of the jelly cake--slipped, and
precipitated herself into the middle of the feast.

XIV MISS SALISBURY'S STORY

"Oh Miss Anstice!" cried the "Salisbury girls," jumping to their feet.

"_Sister!_" exclaimed Miss Salisbury, dr