“What in the world are those girls about now?” thought Laurie, opening his sleepy eyes to take a good look, for there was something rather peculiar in the appearance of his neighbors.  Each wore a large, flapping hat, a brown linen pouch slung over one shoulder, and carried a long staff.  Meg had a cushion, Jo a book, Beth a basket, and Amy a portfolio.  All walked quietly through the garden, out at the little back gate, and began to climb the hill that lay between the house and river.

“Well, that’s cool,” said Laurie to himself, “to have a picnic and never ask me!  They can’t be going in the boat, for they haven’t got the key.  Perhaps they forgot it.  I’ll take it to them, and see what’s going on.”

Though possessed of half a dozen hats, it took him some time to find one, then there was a hunt for the key, which was at last discovered in his pocket, so that the girls were quite out of sight when he leaped the fence and ran after them.  Taking the shortest way to the boathouse, he waited for them to appear, but no one came, and he went up the hill to take an observation.  A grove of pines covered one part of it, and from the heart of this green spot came a clearer sound than the soft sigh of the pines or the drowsy chirp of the crickets.

“Here’s a landscape!” thought Laurie, peeping through the bushes, and looking wide-awake and good-natured already.

It was a rather pretty little picture, for the sisters sat together in the shady nook, with sun and shadow flickering over them, the aromatic wind lifting their hair and cooling their hot cheeks, and all the little wood people going on with their affairs as if these were no strangers but old friends.  Meg sat upon her cushion, sewing daintily with her white hands, and looking as fresh and sweet as a rose in her pink dress among the green.  Beth was sorting the cones that lay thick under the hemlock near by, for she made pretty things with them.  Amy was sketching a group of ferns, and Jo was knitting as she read aloud.  A shadow passed over the boy’s face as he watched them, feeling that he ought to go away because uninvited; yet lingering because home seemed very lonely and this quiet party in the woods most attractive to his restless spirit.  He stood so still that a squirrel, busy with its harvesting, ran down a pine close beside him, saw him suddenly and skipped back, scolding so shrilly that Beth looked up, espied the wistful face behind the birches, and beckoned with a reassuring smile.

“May I come in, please?  Or shall I be a bother?” he asked, advancing slowly.

Meg lifted her eyebrows, but Jo scowled at her defiantly and said at once, “Of course you may.  We should have asked you before, only we thought you wouldn’t care for such a girl’s game as this.”

“I always like your games, but if Meg doesn’t want me, I’ll go away.”

“I’ve no objection, if you do something.  It’s against the rules to be idle here,” replied Meg gravely but graciously.