inifred, my dear," sniffed Miss Standish, "you may remember that it
was only this morning when _I_ asked when we were going to Flying
Point that you answered, 'Never, I hope--I detest picnics.'"

"Did I?" laughed Winifred; "well, it's true, and I cannot deny it."

"I must agree with you there," said Ben. "A picnic is an occasion
when all the food is picked and all the china nicked."

"A picnic," said Winifred, "is a place where you can accumulate an
indigestion without incurring an obligation. In this, it is an advance
upon a tea-party."

"Picnicking with people you know is a bore, Picnicking with people you
don't know is a feat of endurance," echoed Flint.

"Professionally, I am in favor of them," threw in Dr. Cricket. "I
often feel like saying, with the old Roman, 'This day's work shall
breed prescriptions.'"

"Oh, come now!" said Brady, "you're all trying to be clever. This is
only talk. I think a picnic is great fun, especially a tea-picnic,
where you boil coffee, and light a camp-fire, and perch about on the
rocks over the water. You would appreciate that last privilege, if you
lived out on the prairies, where there is no water, and the rocks are
all imported."

"Bully for you!" shouted Jimmy Anstice, who had been sitting by with
his hands clasped over the knees of his stockings to conceal the holes
from his sister's observant eye, but none the less eagerly following
the conversation. "You're a peach; and why can't we go to-night?"

"That boy is all right," said Brady, smiling. "He knows enough to
take the current when it serves. Off with you, Jim, while the tide is
out, and dig your basket of clams! Come on, Flint, and we will join
them at the Point! How will you go, and when?"

"I think we'd better go up in the Whites' sail-boat. There'll be room
for one of you," said Miss Standish, looking meaningly at her nephew,
for she had not yet forgiven Flint's indifference.

"That's good," Flint said cheerfully. "You take Brady. He's better
ballast; and I'll row up in my dory."

"A good excuse for coming late and leaving early," said Winifred,
mockingly.

Flint bowed and smiled imperturbably, without troubling himself to
offer a contradiction.

Miss Standish swept past him with her Plymouth Rock manner. "I will go
and look after the supper," she remarked, and added, as she reached
the door, "however much people may sniff, there's nobody, so far as I
know, who is superior to food."

Nepaug picnic suppers