"Better. I'll bet pickled cherries!" Lavender had spied the row of glistening glass jars on the table. "And they're licking good." Sidney took the checkered apron Aunt Achsa handed her and tied it about her slim person, then they sat down upon the step in the sunshine and fell to their task. From the shade of the lilac bush Nip and Tuck regarded them with their inscrutably wise eyes. Without doubt Nip and Tuck knew why Sidney's voice lifted so gaily as the red juice trickled down her brown arms. When Mr. Dugald returned for dinner he had to hear how nearly Sidney had come to going home. "Why, that's the worst thing I've heard," he exclaimed with exaggerated alarm, "Now, you wouldn't really go and do that, would you?" His eyes laughed above the serious twist of his lips; Sidney wondered if he was remembering that first night of her coming. "I think we ought to celebrate this crisis through which we have lived," he declared. "What say to a picnic supper over at the backside and a call upon Captain Nelson. He'll be expecting us about this time. If I commandeer Pete Cady's Ford you can go, too, Aunt Achsa." When he was in his rollicking mood Aunt Achsa could never resist her Mr. Dugald. Though she'd as soon trust herself in one of "them ar-y-planes" as in Pete Cady's Ford, which only went under stress of many inward convulsions and ear-splitting explosions, she accepted Mr. Dugald's invitation and fell at once to planning the "supper," though their dinner was not yet cleared away. "I'll write a letter and mail it and then stop and tell Mart. Mart may go, may she not?" Sidney asked anxiously. Yes, Mart must go, too. Plainly the occasion _was_ a momentous one. And to Trude Sidney wrote, hastily, for Lavender was waiting and there would be time for a swim on the _Arabella_ before they started off in the Ford. "--Aunt Achsa and Lavender both want me to stay _very_ much. They like me and I am just one of the family. I help Aunt Achsa too, in a great many ways and Lavender and I are like pals--it's just as though I had a brother which I never thought would be any fun but now I know it would be a lot especially if the brother was a twin. You must not worry when I do not write often for there is so much to do that I don't have a bit of time--" And in her excited state of mind Sidney forgot to tell Trude about her shorn braids. CHAPTER XIII PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS