“Oh, Betty, you are so impulsive,” sighed Mollie, as she was finally permitted a chair in the kitchen.  “If you don’t stop rushing around so you’ll have me worn to skin and bones—­”

“Goodness, have you got those things, too?” asked Betty, as she hurried busily from table to pantry and back again.  “Please don’t be so lazy, Mollie dear.  The boys will be here before we’re half ready, and we don’t want to lose a minute of this perfect day.”

Harder heart than Mollie’s must have softened at this appeal, and she set to work with a will preparing delicacies for this picnic with the boys—­perhaps the thought was accompanied by a strange, panicky sinking of the heart—­the very last picnic they would have together, at least until after the war.

“Did Allen have any more news for you, yesterday?” Mollie asked suddenly, following up this train of thought.

“No, nothing definite,” the Little Captain responded, deftly slipping currant jelly into layers of buttered biscuit.  “Of course, he said there were all sorts of rumors, but since they all came from equally good sources and no two of them pointed the same way, he wasn’t listening to any of them.  All they really know is that the regiment is all ready and equipped and will surely be on its way very soon.”

“I’m not even thinking of it,” said Mollie, slamming down the cover of the bread box by way of emphasis, as Amy and Grace came upon the scene.  “I don’t dare to let myself think,” she repeated.

“That’s right, dear, I wouldn’t either,” approved Grace, patting her encouragingly on the back as she passed on her way to the pantry.  “You want to get your mind used to it by degrees, otherwise the shock might be too great.  What’s that, Betty—­the sugar?  Surely.  Anything to be agreeable!” The last hamper had just been done up, filled to the brim with good things, when the boys arrived.

“Heavens, I’m a fright,” cried Grace, viewing herself in the kitchen mirror—­a mirror, by the way, which brought out all a person’s bad points with Puritan honesty.

“Go in and keep the boys quiet, Amy, that’s a dear,” she begged, then, seeing refusal in Amy’s eyes, added cajolingly:  “You always look as if you came out of a bandbox yourself, you know.  Please, dear—­”

But Amy was already half way up the backstairs and paused to make a face at her.

“Taffy!” she cried succinctly.

Five minutes later the three girls, in various attitudes of impatience, were waiting for Grace while she still primped before the mirror.

“Just one minute more I give you,” stated Mollie, regarding her wrist watch frowningly.

“Oh, Mollie, if you only wouldn’t talk so much,” sighed Grace, turning with an air of resignation from the mirror.  “As soon as you begin to talk everything goes wrong.  My gloves walk under the bed, and my hair stands on end—­”

“Goodness,” cried Mollie, looking injured, “anybody’d think I was a ghost.  I’ll stand for being called lots of things, but a phantom—­Ouch!  Now what’s the idea?” For Grace’s thumb and forefinger had come together in the fleshy part of her arm.