that he had been most attentive to Mary of
late. Mrs. Norris at first refused to go, but Mary insisted.

"You will have to watch the fire, Gumgum, while we are off looking for
sticks and things." And so she had gone, after all.

Mrs. Norris's ideas of a picnic were large, the heritage of a day that
knew few tins and miraculous powders that bloom into omelettes. She
scorned them and brought along a generous store of raw steak and bacon
and potatoes. A picnic without a fire and roasting meat was too
namby-pamby for words; and though she would not now undertake to cook
the food herself, because of a certain eccentricity of the knee joints,
and since her daughter, despite her domestic science, declined to do so,
she had brought along Julia the cook. Nothing but the big limousine
would do for such an undertaking, and, as it was, Furbush had to nurse
the steak in his lap. Mrs. Norris would have reached the picnicking
ground in a procession of buggies, but at that Mary protested so
vigorously that she was forced to resign.

The picnic place was a pretty, slightly inaccessible rock overlooking a
creek. Though actually not far from Woodbridge, as the road was
overgrown and the turns sharp the motor had to proceed with a
deliberation which made the trip justifiably difficult. The rock itself
was about a hundred yards from the road; and since there was scarcely
any path through the woods to it, there were made possible the pretty
callings and hallooings, fallings-down and pickings-up, without which no
picnic is quite perfect. Mrs. Norris, as a matter of fact, did more than
her share of this. She had not gone more than thirty steps into the wood
before she was completely lost; and by the time she had been safely
brought to the rock her hat was well over on one side, her hair
streaming down, and the torn fringe of her petticoat dragging along
behind in the dirt. Julia and Horace, the chauffeur, however, had gone
directly to the rock without the preliminary vagaries vouchsafed to
their superiors, and by the time Mrs. Norris was finally captured they
had succeeded in getting the supper well under way.

Upon her arrival Mrs. Norris announced her intention of roasting a
potato.

"Gumgum, please sit down," begged her daughter. "You are only upsetting
everything," and she laid an unfilial hand upon her mother's arm.

"I am going to roast a potato," Mrs. Norris cried, shaking herself free
and seizing upon a pared potato. "Tommy, get