or boys; Snip and Moppet for dogs; and the cunningest wee
little mite of a pussykin, named Whitetoes, for cats. Not that cats and
dogs are exactly _children_, either, but they are just as good, and
sometimes better. I'm sure I would rather play any time with Snip and
Whitetoes than with that horrid Randolph. He is the very unpolitest boy
I ever knew. Let me tell you something he did yesterday, and then I
guess you will agree with me. We seven children and the dogs had planned
a beautiful picnic down on "the island," as we call it.

You know the geography says (or you _would_ know if you had ever been to
school, poor child!) that "an island is a portion of land entirely
surrounded by water." Well, _this_ "portion of land" runs out ever so
far into the sea, and has a pretty grove on it; and at high tide the
water covers the little strip of land where it really joins the beach,
so that for a little while it _is_ an island, but the rest of the time
it is a _peninsula_. That is a big word, and you don't know a bit what
it means, and I can't tell you now; you shall learn about it when we
begin our lessons.

But, oh dear, I was going to tell you about the picnic, and Randolph
Peyton, the great disagreeable boy. Somehow or other, when I begin to
write to you, there are so many things to essplain that I never seem to
"come to the point," as papa says.

We had planned to start at eight o'clock, but what with Moppet's running
away, and Snip's taking a nap behind a hay-cock down in the orchard,
where we only found him by accident at the very last minute, we were
not fairly on our way till almost nine. The boys carried the lunch
baskets, Fan wheeled her baby carriage, with poor invalid Jane lying
back on the pillows, looking too forlorn for anything, but really Fan
seems to love her even more than she loved Lucille; and I do think,
considering what Jane has been through, that she is the very best child
in the world.

Sometimes when I look at her woe-begone face, and her poor little head
without a single hair on it (she wears a lace cap, but we can see the
_bald_ right through), and remember her cheeks as they used to be, and
her lovely golden curls, and then think how gentle and kind she is,
never complaining, nor speaking a single cross word, I can't help
saying' right out to her, "You poor little dear thing. Solomon was right
when he said 'Handsome is, that handsome does.'" Well, Fan wheeled her
along, and I carried Moppet cur