bring any luncheon-baskets. I will see to all
that. This is to be an old-fashioned picnic, you know, and I shall
provide exactly the sort of things that we used to take

'When I was young and charming, many years ago.'"

"You are just as charming as you can be now," declared Belle,
enthusiastically.

"I do hope there won't be a fog," said Julia Prime, as she walked up the
Avenue with the others.

"I sha'n't care if there is," replied Berry. "I must say it sounds to me
like a very stupid plan,--no men, and nothing in particular to eat. It's
just like Mrs. Gray. Her ideas are so queer, as mamma says."

"I wonder you go if you feel that way about it," retorted Julia.

"I dare say I sha'n't. I have a strong presentiment that on that
particular day I shall have a headache."

And Berry did,--a "distracting" headache, as she wrote Georgie
over-night. She was the only member of the Early Dip Club who missed the
picnic. Headaches are sad but convenient things.

Eleven o'clock brought the girls to the Grays' front door, all ready for
their start, in various village carts and victorias. There was a little
re-distribution: Georgie and Gertrude fitted in with some of their
cronies, and Mrs. Gray took three girls besides Marian and Candace in
her wagonette. Frederic and the coachman stowed many small baskets and a
heap of wraps into the different rumbles and box seats, and they set
forth under the bluest of blue skies. It was a beautiful day, just warm
enough and not too warm; for a fragrant wind was blowing softly in from
the sea.

They had passed the first beach, which at that hour was black with
bathers and by-standers, and had climbed the hill-slope which separates
it from the second beach, when Marian suddenly cried, "Mamma, here we
are close to Purgatory; can't we stop just a minute and show it to
Candace?"

Mrs. Gray looked at her watch.

"Your minute will be at least a quarter of an hour, Marian," she said;
"but I think there is time enough. Would any of the rest of you like to
go?"

Girls always "want to go." There was a general disembarkation; and Mrs.
Gray led the way through a gate and across a rough field which stretched
along the top of a line of cliffs, steeper and bolder than those on the
Newport Point, and cut here and there into sudden sharp fissures.

The scanty grass, yellow with August sun, was broken everywhere by lumps
and boulders of that odd conglomerate which is known by the name o