Once in a great while Mr. Fingál was visible,--a bald, middle-aged man with a white, sad face, and eyes that never smiled, although his lips often did when he saw the clusters of admiring children hanging about his daughters. Judith held aloof from these gatherings at the Fingál house, her prejudice against the girls never weakening, although Cécile as well as Camilla had won over almost all the other girls of her grade. Judith showed the self-contained indifference which it was her habit to feel about matters which did not deeply stir her, and made no further attempts to analyze or even to voice her animosity beyond saying once, when asked to go with them on a drive, that she didn't like their "meechin' ways,"--a vigorous New England phrase which she had picked up from her mother. * * * * * About a month after the Fingál girls entered school, the project of a picnic took form among the girls of the Fifth A grade. One of them had an uncle who lived three or four miles from town on a farm which was passed by the inter-urban trolley line, and he had sent word that the children could, if they liked, picnic in his maple woods, which overhung the brown waters of the Piquota river. There was to be no recess that day in Five A, and the grade was to be dismissed half an hour earlier than usual, so that the girls could go out on the trolley in time to get the supper ready. The farmer was to bring them back by moonlight in his hay-wagon. The prospect seemed ideal. Five A hummed with excitement and importance as the various provisions were allotted to the different girls and the plans talked over. Sylvia was to bring bananas enough for the crowd; one of the German-American girls, whose father kept a grocery-store, promised pickles and olives; three or four together were to make the sandwiches, and Camilla Fingál was to bring along a big bag of the famous rich and be-raisined cookies that lived in the "cookie-jah." Sylvia, who always enjoyed prodigiously both in anticipation and in reality any social event, could scarcely contain herself as the time drew near with every prospect of fair weather. The morning of the day was clear and fine, a perfect example of early spring, with silvery pearls showing on the tips of the red-twig osiers, and pussy-willows gleaming gray along the margins of swampy places. Sylvia and Judith felt themselves one with this upward surge of new life. They ran to school together, laughing aloud for no reason, racing and skipping like a couple of spring lambs, their minds and hearts as crystal-clear of any shadow as the pale-blue, smiling sky above them. The rising sap beat in their young bodies as well as in the beech-trees through which they scampered, whirling their school-books at the end of their straps, and shouting aloud to hear the squirrel's petulant, chattering answer.