l wanted.

The maidens gave vent to their high spirits by chasing each other among
the rocks, gathering shells and seaweed for the construction of those
ephemeral little ornaments--fair, but frail--in which the sex delights,
singing, laughing, quoting poetry, attitudinizing upon the peaks and
ledges of the fine old boulders--mossy and weedy and green with the wash
of a thousand storms, worn into strange shapes, and stained with the
multitudinous dyes of mineral oxidization--and, in brief, behaved
themselves with all the charming _abandon_ that so well becomes young
girls set free, by the _entourage_ of a holiday ramble, from the buckram
and clear-starch of social etiquette.

Meanwhile Ned and Charley smoked the pensive cigar of preparation in a
sheltered corner, and gazed out seaward, dreaming and seeing nothing.

Erelong the breeze and the romp gave the young ladies not only a
splendid color and sparkling eyes, but excellent appetites also. The
baskets and hampers were speedily unpacked, the table-cloth laid on a
broad, flat stone, so used by generations of Brant House picnickers, and
the party fell to. Laura's beautiful hair, a little disordered, swept
her blooming cheek, and cast a pearly shadow upon her neck. Her bright
eyes glanced archly out from under her half-raised veil, and there was
something inexpressibly _naive_ in the freedom with which she ate,
taking a bird's wing in her fingers, and boldly attacking it with teeth
as white and even as can be imagined. Notwithstanding all the mawkish
nonsense that has been put forth by sentimentalists concerning feminine
eating, I hold that it is one of the nicest things in the world to see a
pretty woman enjoying the creature comforts; and Byron himself, had he
been one of this picnic party, would have been unable to resist the
admiration that filled the souls of Burnham and Salsbury. Hattie Chapman
stormed the fortress of boned turkey with a gusto equal to that of
Laura, and made highly successful raids upon certain outlying salads
and jellies. The young men were not in a very ravenous condition; they
were, as I have said, a little nervous, and bent their energies
principally to admiring the ladies and coquetting with pickled oysters.

When the repast was over, with much accompanying chat and laughter, Ned
glanced significantly at Charley, and proposed to Laura that they should
walk up the beach to a place where, he said, there were "some pretty
rocks and things, you