THE PICNIC
"Did you bring plenty of olives?"
"And I do hope we didn't forget the cheese crackers!"
"Oh, everything is here--more than we'll eat, I think, by the weight of
the baskets."
"Where did I put--oh, here they are!"
This last, with a sigh of relief, as she found her package of candy,
came from Grace. Mollie, Amy and Betty had, in turn, been heard from in
the aforequoted remarks.
"It's a glorious day; isn't it?" questioned Grace as she walked on
beside Amy.
"Yes, but not so nice that you need forget you're carrying only a box of
chocolates," remarked Betty, pointedly. "Take one of these baskets."
"Oh, excuse me," apologized Grace, and she turned quickly, wincing a bit
as she did so.
"Those same ridiculous shoes!" cried Mollie.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Grace Ford."
"Why? They're the most comfortable ones I have, to go tramping about in,
and they're so stained from the salt water that they can't be damaged
any more. Just right for the picnic, I think."
"Yes, but you walk worse than a Chinese woman before the binding of feet
was forbidden. Don't let her carry anything spillable, Betty, or we
won't have all the lunch we count on," Mollie urged.
"Oh, is that so!" exclaimed Grace, with as near an approach to
"snippiness" as she ever permitted herself.
"Oh, I'll carry the basket," said gentle Amy, always anxious to avoid a
quarrel.
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" insisted Betty, who had, like the
Little Captain she was, arranged the commissary department on lines she
intended to see carried out.
"Oh, well, if we're going, let's go!" exclaimed Mollie. "We're wasting
the best part of the day getting ready."
It was the day after Mollie had proposed that the outdoor girls go on a
little picnic, and her plan had been enthusiastically adopted. As she
had said, the affair of the diamonds was getting on the nerves of them
all. They had stuck too close to the house, and there was a "jumpiness"
and fault-finding spirit seldom manifested by the four chums.
They were to take their lunch, and spend the day on the beach, or in the
scrubby woods, not far away, taking to a boat if they felt so inclined.
The boys had offered to take them out for a cruise in the _Pocohontas_,
but the girls felt that they would rather be by themselves on this
occasion.
Accordingly lunch baskets had been packed and now this glorious summer
morning they were about to start. The boys, their kind offer refused,
had gone off on a fishing jaunt--that is, all but Will, and he had not
returned from Boston. Grace had a hasty note from him in which he stated
that work connected with his new duties would keep him busy for a week
or so, after which he hoped to join his friends at Edgemere.
"No news of a diamond robbery around Boston," he wrote, in a letter.
"I've written to a fellow in New York about it, though. Sometimes the
police keep those things out of the papers for reasons of their own.
Maybe they think the robbers won't know the diamonds have been taken, if
nothing is printed about it, at least that's the way it looks."
At any rate Will reported no news, and Mr. Nelson had pretty much the
same story to tell. His wife had written to him about the men in the
cellar, and he had advised getting some fisherman of the neighborhood to
stay on guard every night, until he could come down to Ocean View again.
"We might get Old Tin-Back," suggested Betty.
"It would only make me nervous," her mother said. "I don't believe the
men will bother us again."
"Well, they won't find the diamonds down cellar if they do pay us
another visit," Betty had said. She had, after some thought, hidden the
precious stones in her own room, wrapping the box in some sheets of
asbestos, which Allen had left over after putting some on the muffler of
the motor boat.
"The asbestos will protect the diamonds in case of fire," Betty said,
"and I'll protect them in case of thieves. Anyhow, no one, not even the
servants, know where they are, and it would take a good while to find
them in my room."
For she had discovered an ingenious little hiding place for the
mysterious black box.
The boys, after the scare of the men in the cellar, had offered to take
the diamonds up to Boston, or some other city near Ocean View, and put
them in the vault of some bank.
"But you might be robbed on the train, going up," objected Betty. "We'll
keep them here until the secret is discovered. That will be the best
thing to do."
"And that may never be," Allen had said, for he had long since given up
the cipher. Nor had experts, to whom he had submitted it, been able to
furnish a clue to its solution.
So, while the boys had gone out fishing in the motor boat, the girls
prepared for their picnic, leaving the diamonds at home.
Percy Falconer had declined the boys' invitation to go fishing, and when
Betty heard him say that he feared to go out on the water she had looked
at her chums with hopeless despair on her face.
"What if he wants to come on the picnic with us?" she whispered to
Grace.
"We--we'll run away from him!" had been the ultimatum. But Percy did not
pluck up enough courage to trust himself, the only youth, with four
girls.
"I'll go for a run in my car, and may pick you up and bring you back
later," he said, with a glance at his wrist watch. He was still a guest
at Edgemere.
"Well, let's start!" called Betty, and the four girls set off down the
beach.
"Why are you going that way?" asked Grace, as Mollie and Betty, who had
taken the lead, started along a certain path amid the sand dunes.
"Just for fun," answered Betty. "I have a fancy for looking again at the
place where we found the diamonds."
"We can't seem to get rid of them, day or night--sleeping or waking,"
spoke Amy. "Isn't it dreadful how they follow one?"
"Well, I, for one, don't want to get rid of them," Mollie said, with a
laugh. "They are far too pretty and valuable to lose sight of. Though of
course I want whoever owns them to get his property back."
"Even those horrid men?" asked Grace.
"Well, if they have a right to the diamonds, the fact of their being
horrid, as you call it, should not deprive them of the stones," Betty
said.
"We ought to get a reward, anyhow," spoke Amy.
"That's right, little girl!" exclaimed Betty. "Well, I do wish it was
settled, one way or the other. Having fifty thousand dollars' worth of
diamonds, more or less, in one's possession isn't calculated to make one
sleep nights. And I just would love one of those big sparklers in a
ring. I think----"
But Betty did not complete her sentence. There was a rattling sound on
the farther side of a sand dune around which the girls were just then
making their way. Some gravel and shells seemed to be sliding down the
declivity.
"What's that?" asked Grace, shrinking back against Betty.
"I don't know," answered the Little Captain. "Maybe the wind."
But it was not the wind, for, a moment later, the wrinkled face of the
aged crone of the fisherman's cabin peered at the girls from over the
rushes that grew in the sand hill.
"Oh, excuse me, my dears," she said in her cracked voice. "I didn't see
you. Out for a walk again; aren't you, my dears? Won't you come up to my
cottage, and have a glass of milk?"
"No, thank you," Betty answered, and she could not help being "short,"
as she said afterward. "We are going on a little picnic."
She swung around into another path between the dunes, and changed her
mind about going to look at the hole near the broken spar, where the
diamonds had been found.
"Oh, I wonder if she heard us?" whispered Mollie, as they lost sight of
the old crone around the rushes and dunes.
"I hope not," said Betty, and her usually smiling face wore a worried
look.