The picnic was in Leonard’s grove, and young and old were asked.  The seventeenth-of-June picnic is a regular institution in our village.  I went with Louisa, and little Alice in her new white muslin dress; the child had been counting on it for weeks.  We were nearly all assembled when the Jamesons arrived.  Half a dozen of us had begun to lay the table for luncheon, though we were not to have it for an hour or two.  We always thought it a good plan to make all our preparations in season.  We were collecting the baskets and boxes, and it did look as if we were to have an unusual feast that year.  Those which we peeped into appeared especially tempting.  Mrs. Nathan Butters had brought a great loaf of her rich fruit cake, a kind for which she is famous in the village, and Mrs. Sim White had brought two of her whipped-cream pies.  Mrs. Ketchum had brought six mince pies, which were a real rarity in June, and Flora Clark had brought a six-quart pail full of those jumbles she makes, so rich that if you drop one it crumbles to pieces.  Then there were two great pinky hams and a number of chickens.  Louisa and I had brought a chicken; we had one of ours killed, and I had roasted it the day before.

I remarked to Mrs. Ketchum that we should have an unusually nice dinner; and so we should have had if it had not been for Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson.

The Jamesons came driving into the grove in the Liscom carryall and their buggy.  Mr. Jacob Liscom was in charge of the carryall, and the Jameson boy was on the front seat with him; on the back seat were Grandma, or Madam Cobb, and the younger daughter.  Harry Liscom drove the bay horse in the buggy, and Mrs. Jameson and Harriet were with him, he sitting between them, very uncomfortably, as it appeared—­his knees were touching the dasher, as he is a tall young man.

Caroline Liscom did not come, and I did not wonder at it for one.  She must have thought it a good chance to rest one day from taking boarders.  We were surprised that Mrs. Jameson, since she is such a stout woman, did not go in the carryall, and let either her younger daughter or the boy go with Harry and Harriet in the buggy.  We heard afterward that she thought it necessary that she should go with them as a chaperon.  That seemed a little strange to us, since our village girls were all so well conducted that we thought nothing of their going buggy-riding with a good young man like Harry Liscom; he is a church member and prominent in the Sunday-school, and this was in broad daylight and the road full of other carriages.  So people stared and smiled a little to see Harry driving in with his knees braced against the dasher, and the buggy canting to one side with the weight of Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson.  He looked rather shamefaced, I thought, though he is a handsome, brave young fellow, and commonly carries himself boldly enough.  Harriet Jameson looked very pretty, though her costume was not, to my way of thinking, quite