"I do," said Derrice, springing up and catching her hat from the pony who had been standing with pink ribbons hanging foolishly over his ears. "Won't you come, Miss Gastonguay?" "Not to that place." "Why not?--the river is superb from there." Miss Gastonguay obstinately shook her head. Never again in her life would she look on the old red-shingled building. "Perhaps I'll come to meet you," she said, when Derrice made no pretence at concealing her disappointment. "I guess you'd better stay behind, too, Hippolyta," said Captain White to his flushed spouse. "You look as if you'd been having a staring match with old Sol and he'd beaten you. What are you for, Justin?" "Nothing, but to be let alone," said the young man, enjoyably. He had stretched himself out on the bench behind the giant tree, and only his head was visible to the people on the other side of it. "Take off your glasses and rest your eyes," said Derrice, going to him and putting his spectacles in his pocket. "We won't be long," and, surreptitiously kissing the ear in which she whispered the words, she hurried after her escort, who was walking briskly along with both elbows cutting the air in his usual fashion. "They're as lively as two mosquitoes," observed Mrs. White, amiably. "And I'm as sleepy as an owl," said Miss Gastonguay. "I haven't been resting well lately. If you'll hold your tongue for ten minutes, Hippolyta Prymmer, or rather White, I believe I'll drop off," and she drowsily laid her head against the hard tree trunk. "I guess I'll copy you," said Mrs. White, phlegmatically, but in making her arrangements for a nap she selected a spot where pine-needles most thickly strewed the ground. Justin laughed in his sleeve, but in two minutes he, too, had joined the ladies in a brief nap, and only the pony was left to gaze amiably from one sleeper to another, and guard them from intruders. CHAPTER XXVI. THE PICNIC AND THE OLD PRISON WELL. Derrice and Captain White jogged merrily on. "Do you know what makes Justin so sluggish?" asked the latter, after a time. "Yes, he sat up last night with that poor sick man." "Sick!--crazy drunk," reflected her companion. "Justin don't tell her everything, and thank Heaven she ain't curious. She don't guess Bob Wallis put in the night trying to brain her husband with the lamp, and run him through with the poker, and play any other pesky tricks on him that came in his mind. Justin had to keep his eyes open to keep alive. Soho, this is a bad world," and he gazed keenly into the depths of the underwood, where he thought he saw a pair of liquid brown eyes. It was Orono, Miss Gastonguay's pet moose, whose age was seven months, and whose weight was four hundred pounds. He would, however, not come at Derrice's coaxing, and they plunged deeper and deeper into the thicket after him.