“To Crow Roost and be done with it!” said Dick.

“All right,” assented several voices.

“Crow Roost, Bob, by the lightning express,” said Dick, with enthusiasm.

“But, as you were so particular,” said Sarah to Bob, “we’re going to be, too.  We aint going to give you any lunch unless you pay for it.”

“Not a mouthful,” said Clara.

“Not even a crumb,” said Constance.

Nobody saw any dismay in Bob’s face.

I don’t intend to tell you about all the sayings and all the laughter of those boys and girls on their way to Crow Roost.  They wouldn’t like to have me, and you wouldn’t.  Bob Trotter ran over a good many grubs and way-side stumps, and at every jolt Constance screamed, and Dick scolded and then laughed.  Mat Snead spoke three words.  She and Valentine had been sitting as though in profound meditation for some forty minutes, when he said:  “Quite a ride!”

“Very; no, quite,” she answered, in confusion.

Sarah Ketchum said everything that Mat didn’t say.  She was Mat’s counterpart.

All grew enthusiastic as they approached the woods, and when the wagon stopped they poured over the side in an excited way.

“What shall we do with the lunch-basket?”

“Leave it in the wagon,” said Sarah Ketchum, whose counsel, Kit said, was as free as the waters of the school pump.

Clara objected to leaving it.  Bob would eat everything up.  “Let’s take it along.”

“Why, no,” said Julius.

He was the largest of the boys, and, according to the knightly code, he remembered the carrying of the basket would devolve upon him.

“Yes, we must carry it along,” Sarah Ketchum insisted.  “Bob sha’n’t have a chance at that basket if I have to carry it around on my back.”

Constance, too, said, “Take it along.”

“It’s easy enough for you girls to insist on having the basket toted around,” said Dick, “because girls can’t carry anything when there are boys along; but suppose you were a poor little fellow like Jule.”

“I wont have to climb the trees with it on my back, will I?” said Julius.  “I’ll tell you,” he continued, lowering his tone—­Bob had heard all the preceding remarks—­“we’ll hang our basket on a hickory limb.  It will be safe from hogs, and the leaves will hide it from Bob.”

This proposition was approved, and the basket was carried off a short distance and slyly swung into a sapling.  Then the eight went scurrying through the woods, leaving Bob with the horses.  Wherever they saw a lemon-tinted tree-top against the sky or crowded into one of those fine autumn bouquets a clump of trees can make, there rushed a squad of boys, each with his basket, followed by a squad of girls, each with her basket.

But in a very short time the girls were tired and the boys hungry.  All agreed to go back to the lunch.  So back they hurried, the nuts rolling about over the bottoms of the baskets.  Julius had the most nuts; he had eleven.  Mat had the smallest number; she had one.