“I wish I could be a knight,” sighed Betty to herself, moved to large ambitions by the boy’s words, and discontented with her own small sphere.  How manly he looked in the moonlight, his handsome face aglow with the thought of his noble purposes!

“It’s funny,” said Keith, looking down at her, “you’re the only person that I ever talked to about such things, but Aunt Allison.  You seem to understand in the same way that she does.  I believe you’d have made a good knight yourself if you had lived in those days, because that is one of the things they had to vow, to keep a promise to the utmost.”

Betty smiled happily, but made no answer.  Rob joined them just then, and they fell to talking of childish things again,—­games and pets, and things they had done, and places they had been.  Next morning in her “Good times” book, Betty carefully wrote every word she could remember that Keith had said the evening before, about knights and knightly deeds.  It was a half-hour that she loved to think about.

Miss Allison had invited them all to a picnic at the old mill on the following day.  They were to go in the afternoon and come back by moonlight.  It was not quite four o’clock when Mrs. Sherman stepped into the carriage at the door, followed by Eliot with an armful of wraps, which might be needed later in the evening.  Every spare inch of the carriage was packed with things for the picnic.  A huge lunch hamper stood on the front seat beside the coachman, and he could scarcely find room for his feet for the big freezer of ice-cream that took up so much space.  Rugs, cushions, and camp-stools were tucked in at every corner, and Mrs. Sherman held Joyce’s mandolin in her lap.

“Oh, girls!” she called, leaning out of the carriage and looking up at the second story windows.  “Can I trust one of you to post the letter that I have left on the hall table?”

Two bright faces appeared at the same instant at different windows, and two voices called in the same breath, one answering, “Yes, godmother,” and the other, “Yes, Cousin Elizabeth.”

“I would take it myself,” said Mrs. Sherman, “if I were going past the post-office, but I have to drive a roundabout way to the Ross place, to get some berries I engaged for the picnic.  It is very important that the letter should go on to-night’s mail train, and if one of you will drop it in the box as you go by, I’ll be so much obliged.”

“Yes’m, I’ll do it,” answered each girl again, almost in the same breath.  With a nod and a smile to them, Mrs. Sherman told Alec to drive on.  The ponies, already saddled and bridled, were waiting in front of the house.  The girls were to ride by the MacIntyre place and escort Miss Allison’s carriage to the picnic-ground, and had promised to be there at four, but the hall clock struck the hour before the last dress was buttoned and the last ribbon tied.

“Do you heah that?” cried the Little Colonel, in a panic of haste, as the musical chime sounded through the house.  “It will nevah do to keep Miss Allison waitin’!  Come on!” she exclaimed, adding, as she flew through the upper hall, “The last one down the stairs is a pop-eyed monkey!”