s absent, but we
suspected nothing. She said that Hannah would put up the luncheon, and
that she had looked up the food value of chestnuts and that it was
enormous. She particularly requested that Aggie should not bake a cake
for the picnic, as has been her custom.

"Cakes," she said, "are a reckless extravagance. In butter, eggs and
flour a single chocolate layer cake could support three men at the
front for two days, Lizzie," she said.

I repeated this to Aggie, and she was rather resentful. Aggie, I regret
to say, has rather a weakness for good food.

"Humph!" she said, bitterly. "Very well, Lizzie. But if she expects me
to go out like Balaam's ass and eat dandelions, I'd rather starve."

Neither Aggie nor I is inclined to be suspicious, and although we
noticed Tish's rather abstracted expression that morning, we laid it to
the fact that Charlie Sands had been talking about going to the American
Ambulance in France, which Tish opposed violently, although she was more
than anxious to go herself.

Aggie put in her knitting bag the bottle of blackberry cordial without
which we rarely travel, as we find it excellent in case of chilling, or
indigestion, and even to rub on hornet stings. I was placing the
suitcase, in which it is our custom to carry the chestnuts, in the back
of the car, when I spied a very small parcel. Aggie saw it too.

"If that's the lunch, Tish," she said, "I don't know that I care to go."

"You can eat chestnuts," said Tish, shortly. "But don't go on my
account. It looks like rain anyhow, and the last time I went to the farm
in the mud I skidded down a hill backwards and was only stopped by
running into a cow that thought I was going the other way."

"Nonsense, Tish," I said. "It hasn't an idea of raining. And if the
lunch isn't sufficient, there are generally some hens from the Knowles
place that lay in your barn, aren't there?"

"Certainly not," she said stiffly, although it wasn't three months since
she had threatened to charge the Knowleses rent for their chickens.

Well, I was puzzled. It is not like Tish to be irritable without reason,
although she has undoubtedly a temper. She was most unpleasant on the
way out, remarking that if the Ostermaiers's maid continued to pare away
half the potatoes, as any fool could see around their garbage can, she
thought the church should reduce his salary. She also stated flatly that
she considered that the nation would be better off if some one would