“Mary Elizabeth,” she answered, and did not ask me my name. This was her pathetic way of deference to me because my clothing and my “station” were other than hers. I went on to the house, but I went, looking back. “Mother,” I said, “who is she? The little girl out there.” While she put up my lunch in the Indian basket, Mother told me how Mary Elizabeth had come that morning asking for something to do. She had set her to work, and meanwhile she was finding out who she was. “I gave her something to eat,” Mother said. “And I have never seen even you so hungry.” Hungry and having no food. I had never heard of such a thing at first hand--not nearer than in books and in Sunday school. But ... hungry that way, and in our yard! It was chiefly this that accounted for my invitation to her--this, and the fact that, as she came to the door to tell my Mother good-bye and to take what she had earned, she gave me again that slow, understanding-me smile. Anyway, as we walked toward the gate, I overtook her with my Indian basket. “Don’t you want to come to the picnic with us?” I said. She stared at me. “What do you do?” she asked. “Why,” I said, “a picnic? Eat in the woods and--and get things, and sit on the grass. Don’t you think they’re fun?” “I never was to one,” she answered, but I saw how she was watching me almost breathlessly. “Come on, then,” I insisted carelessly. “Honest?” she said. “Me?” When she understood, I remember how she walked beside me, looking at me as if she might at any moment find out her mistake. Delia, waiting impatiently at our gate with her own basket,--somehow I never waited at the gates of others, but it was always they who waited at mine,--bade me hurry, stared at Mary Elizabeth, and serenely turned her back on her. “This,” I said, “is Mary Elizabeth. I asked her to go to our picnic. She’s going. I’ve got enough lunch. This is Delia.” I suppose that they looked at each other furtively--so much of the stupidity of being a knight with one’s visor lowered yet hangs upon us--and then Delia plucked me, visibly, by the sleeve and addressed me, audibly, in the ear. “What’d you go and do that for?” said she. And I who, at an early age, resented being plucked by the sleeve as a bird resents being patted on the head, or the wall of any personality trembles away when it is tapped, took Mary Elizabeth by the hand and marched on to meet the Rodmans and Calista.