The cool morning disappeared in a sultry noon. They waited dinner as long as their hunger made it possible, but Mr. Hugh did not come. Then, as is usual at picnics, outdoors and dinner combined to bring sleep. Not that any one travelled all the way to dreamland, but they all sat about in blissful silence, watching the shadows among the trees and the silent molting birds flit shyly in and out, for only the locusts serenaded them. August is the voiceless summer month in the woods; the spring song is over, and the young of the year are not yet trying their throats, as they do in autumn. “Four o’clock!” said Miss Jule, sitting up suddenly, and giving her ticking-covered hay pillow a vigorous punch--Miss Jule always had a dozen of such for piazza, hammock, and excursion purposes. “I think we had better make a start; for if I’m not mistaken, there are what Martin calls ‘dunderheads’ in the west, and we do not wish to end the day by running all the seven miles home, to escape a wetting.” When the wagons were loaded, and they all gathered in the open preparatory to starting, the wind had veered, and the black clouds were hurrying off toward salt water again. “Do you think we might ride our wheels home?” said Anne to Miss Jule. “See, the road is shady for a mile farther up, and then it loops around the Ridge to the turnpike, and it is down grade all the rest of the way.” “Yes; please do let us ride,” said Elsa Willoughby; “for I sat so long on that rock sketching that I need stretching all over.” Miss Jule thought a minute, looked at the sky, and said: “The shower has gone round. It’s a lonely road, to be sure; but with six of you together no harm can happen, and even if you loiter, you will be at home before supper time.” So the brake and Miss Jule started off one way and the girls on their wheels the other. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX THE HERB WITCH Miles are always longer when you travel them than when you talk of them. For this reason, as well as for the fact that Anne had miscalculated the distance, the up-grade road to Pine Ridge seemed endless. When they had travelled less than half the way, Anne’s cyclometer said two miles, and Miss Letty’s wheel began to bump and act badly. She stopped to find the cause, thinking that the front tire needed blowing up; but to her dismay she found that it was hopelessly punctured by a bent horse-shoe nail! Anne tried to mend it with some plaster from her tool kit; but it was old, dry, and would not stick. If they turned back, the road home would be even longer than to keep on; so, after a long consultation, held under a sign-post that offered no consolation, as the bridge on the cross-road to which it pointed was known to be up, they agreed that there was nothing to be done but to keep on and lead the wheel, Elsa Willoughby and Anne offering to walk to hear Miss Letty company; the others to ride ahead and explain the delay.