“I’m not it!” shrieked Joyce, racing past her.

“I’m not it!” echoed Betty, darting ahead of them both, and reaching the ponies first.

“Eugenia’s last!  She is the pop-eyed monkey!” cried Joyce, cheerfully, looking back with a laugh as she began to untie Calico.  Eugenia switched her skirts disdainfully through the hall, and mounted in dignified disgust.

“You’re elegant, I must say!” she exclaimed, scornfully.  “I wouldn’t play such a kid game!” Nevertheless, she dashed down the avenue at the top of her speed, when Joyce called out, tantalisingly, “The last one through the gate is a jibbering ornithorhynchus!” In her zeal not to be dubbed such a title for the rest of the day as a jibbering ornithorhynchus, Betty urged Lad along until she nearly bounced out of her saddle, and the letter lay on the hall table, forgotten by both the girls who had promised to post it.

It was a devious way to the ruins of the old stone mill,—­down unfrequented roads, through meadow gates, and over a narrow pasture lot, then up a little hill and into a cool beech woods, where the peace of the summer reigned unbroken.  Piloted by Lloyd, they reached the place just as Mrs. Sherman drove in from the opposite side of the woods.

The vacant windows of the old mill seemed staring in surprise at the gay party gathering on the hill above it, although it should have been accustomed to all kinds of picnics by this time, considering the number of generations it had watched them come and go.  Nobody could tell how long it had been since the mill wheel turned its last round and the miller ground his last grist, but if the stones could babble secrets like the little spring, trickling down the rocky bank, they would have had many an interesting tale to tell of all that had happened in their hearing.

There were many names and initials carved in the bark of the old beech-trees.  Malcolm found his father’s and mother’s on one, as he wandered around with Eugenia, and set to work to cut his own underneath.  Eugenia seated herself on a rock near by, to watch him.  Keith and Rob, and the other boys who had been invited to the picnic, busied themselves by dragging up sticks and logs for a big bonfire.  The girls began a game of “I spy” behind the great rock where the columbines clambered in the spring, and spread their blossoms like butterflies poised on an airy stem.

“Come on, Eugenia,” they called, but she shrugged her shoulders with what the girls called a “young ladified air,” and turned to Malcolm with a coquettish glance of her big black eyes.

“I know whose initials you are going to cut with yours,” she said.

“Whose?” asked Malcolm, digging away at a capital M.

“Oh, I’ll not tell, but I know well enough.  There’s only one that you could cut, you know.”

“You needn’t be so sure about that,” said Malcolm, loftily.  “I know plenty of names that I wouldn’t mind cutting here in this tree with mine.”