obliged to make our repast of hygienic bread.  I had a fear lest Mrs. Jameson might try to force us to do so.  However, all she did was to wait until we were fairly started upon our meal, and then send around her children with her biscuits, following them herself with the most tender entreaties that we would put aside that unwholesome food and not risk our precious lives.  She would not, however, allow us to drink our own coffee—­about that she was firm.  She insisted upon our making some hygienic coffee which she had brought from the city, and we were obliged to yield, or appear in a very stubborn and ungrateful light.  The coffee was really very good, and we did not mind.  The other parcel which she had brought contained a health food, to be made into a sort of porridge with hot water, and little cups of that were passed around, Mrs. Jameson’s face fairly beaming with benevolence the while, and there was no doubt that she was entirely in earnest.

Still, we were all so disturbed—­that is, all of us elder people—­that I doubt if anybody enjoyed that luncheon unless it was Grandma Cobb.  She did not eat hygienic biscuits, but did eat cake and pie in unlimited quantities.  I was really afraid that she would make herself ill with Mrs. Butter’s fruit cake.  One thing was a great relief, to me at least:  Flora Clark did not know the true story of her jumbles until some time afterward.  Mrs. White told her that the pail had been upset and they were broken, and we were all so sorry; and she did not suspect.  We were glad to avoid a meeting between her and Mrs. Jameson, for none of us felt as if we could endure it then.

I suppose the young folks enjoyed the picnic if we did not, and that was the principal thing to be considered, after all.  I know that Harry Liscom and Harriet Jameson enjoyed it, and all the more that it was a sort of stolen pleasure.  Just before we went home I was strolling off by myself near the brook, and all of a sudden saw the two young things under a willow tree.  I stood back softly, and they never knew that I was there, but they were sitting side by side, and Harry’s arm was around the girl’s waist, and her head was on his shoulder, and they were looking at each other as if they saw angels, and I thought to myself that, whether it was due to hygienic bread or pie, they were in love—­and what would Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson and Caroline Liscom say?

III

MRS. JAMESON IMPROVES US

It was some time before we really understood that we were to be improved.  We might have suspected it from the episode of the hygienic biscuits at the picnic, but we did not.  We were not fairly aware of it until the Ladies’ Sewing Circle met one afternoon with Mrs. Sim White, the president, the first week in July.