CHAPTER XIX
THE PICNIC
"Did you bring plenty of olives?"
"And I do hope we didn't forget the cheese crackers!"
"Oh, everything is here--more than we'll eat, I think, by the weight ofthe baskets."
"Where did I put--oh, here they are!"
This last, with a sigh of relief, as she found her package of candy,came from Grace. Mollie, Amy and Betty had, in turn, been heard from inthe aforequoted remarks.
"It's a glorious day; isn't it?" questioned Grace as she walked onbeside Amy.
"Yes, but not so nice that you need forget you're carrying only a box ofchocolates," remarked Betty, pointedly. "Take one of these baskets."
"Oh, excuse me," apologized Grace, and she turned quickly, wincing a bitas she did so.
"Those same ridiculous shoes!" cried Mollie.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Grace Ford."
"Why? They're the most comfortable ones I have, to go tramping about in,and they're so stained from the salt water that they can't be damagedany more. Just right for the picnic, I think."
"Yes, but you walk worse than a Chinese woman before the binding of feetwas forbidden. Don't let her carry anything spillable, Betty, or wewon't have all the lunch we count on," Mollie urged.
"Oh, is that so!" exclaimed Grace, with as near an approach to"snippiness" as she ever permitted herself.
"Oh, I'll carry the basket," said gentle Amy, always anxious to avoid aquarrel.
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" insisted Betty, who had, like theLittle Captain she was, arranged the commissary department on lines sheintended to see carried out.
"Oh, well, if we're going, let's go!" exclaimed Mollie. "We're wastingthe best part of the day getting ready."
It was the day after Mollie had proposed that the outdoor girls go on alittle picnic, and her plan had been enthusiastically adopted. As shehad said, the affair of the diamonds was getting on the nerves of themall. They had stuck too close to the house, and there was a "jumpiness"and fault-finding spirit seldom manifested by the four chums.
They were to take their lunch, and spend the day on the beach, or in thescrubby woods, not far away, taking to a boat if they felt so inclined.
The boys had offered to take them out for a cruise in the _Pocohontas_,but the girls felt that they would rather be by themselves on thisoccasion.
Accordingly lunch baskets had been packed and now this glorious summermorning they were about to start. The boys, their kind offer refused,had gone off on a fishing jaunt--that is, all but Will, and he had notreturned from Boston. Grace had a hasty note from him in which he statedthat work connected with his new duties would keep him busy for a weekor so, after which he hoped to join his friends at Edgemere.
"No news of a diamond robbery around Boston," he wrote, in a letter."I've written to a fellow in New York about it, though. Sometimes thepolice keep those things out of the papers for reasons of their own.Maybe they think the robbers won't know the diamonds have been taken, ifnothing is printed about it, at least that's the way it looks."
At any rate Will reported no news, and Mr. Nelson had pretty much thesame story to tell. His wife had written to him about the men in thecellar, and he had advised getting some fisherman of the neighborhood tostay on guard every night, until he could come down to Ocean View again.
"We might get Old Tin-Back," suggested Betty.
"It would only make me nervous," her mother said. "I don't believe themen will bother us again."
"Well, they won't find the diamonds down cellar if they do pay usanother visit," Betty had said. She had, after some thought, hidden theprecious stones in her own room, wrapping the box in some sheets ofasbestos, which Allen had left over after putting some on the muffler ofthe motor boat.
"The asbestos will protect the diamonds in case of fire," Betty said,"and I'll protect them in case of thieves. Anyhow, no one, not even theservants, know where they are, and it would take a good while to findthem in my room."
For she had discovered an ingenious little hiding place for themysterious black box.
The boys, after the scare of the men in the cellar, had offered to takethe diamonds up to Boston, or some other city near Ocean View, and putthem in the vault of some bank.
"But you might be robbed on the train, going up," objected Betty. "We'llkeep them here until the secret is discovered. That will be the bestthing to do."
"And that may never be," Allen had said, for he had long since given upthe cipher. Nor had experts, to whom he had submitted it, been able tofurnish a clue to its solution.
So, while the boys had gone out fishing in the motor boat, the girlsprepared for their picnic, leaving the diamonds at home.
Percy Falconer had declined the boys' invitation to go fishing, and whenBetty heard him say that he feared to go out on the water she had lookedat her chums with hopeless despair on her face.
"What if he wants to come on the picnic with us?" she whispered toGrace.
"We--we'll run away from him!" had been the ultimatum. But Percy did notpluck up enough courage to trust himself, the only youth, with fourgirls.
"I'll go for a run in my car, and may pick you up and bring you backlater," he said, with a glance at his wrist watch. He was still a guestat Edgemere.
"Well, let's start!" called Betty, and the four girls set off down thebeach.
"Why are you going that way?" asked Grace, as Mollie and Betty, who hadtaken the lead, started along a certain path amid the sand dunes.
"Just for fun," answered Betty. "I have a fancy for looking again at theplace where we found the diamonds."
"We can't seem to get rid of them, day or night--sleeping or waking,"spoke Amy. "Isn't it dreadful how they follow one?"
"Well, I, for one, don't want to get rid of them," Mollie said, with alaugh. "They are far too pretty and valuable to lose sight of. Though ofcourse I want whoever owns them to get his property back."
"Even those horrid men?" asked Grace.
"Well, if they have a right to the diamonds, the fact of their beinghorrid, as you call it, should not deprive them of the stones," Bettysaid.
"We ought to get a reward, anyhow," spoke Amy.
"That's right, little girl!" exclaimed Betty. "Well, I do wish it wassettled, one way or the other. Having fifty thousand dollars' worth ofdiamonds, more or less, in one's possession isn't calculated to make onesleep nights. And I just would love one of those big sparklers in aring. I think----"
But Betty did not complete her sentence. There was a rattling sound onthe farther side of a sand dune around which the girls were just thenmaking their way. Some gravel and shells seemed to be sliding down thedeclivity.
"What's that?" asked Grace, shrinking back against Betty.
"I don't know," answered the Little Captain. "Maybe the wind."
But it was not the wind, for, a moment later, the wrinkled face of theaged crone of the fisherman's cabin peered at the girls from over therushes that grew in the sand hill.
"Oh, excuse me, my dears," she said in her cracked voice. "I didn't seeyou. Out for a walk again; aren't you, my dears? Won't you come up to mycottage, and have a glass of milk?"
"No, thank you," Betty answered, and she could not help being "short,"as she said afterward. "We are going on a little picnic."
She swung around into another path between the dunes, and changed hermind about going to look at the hole near the broken spar, where thediamonds had been found.
"Oh, I wonder if she heard us?" whispered Mollie, as they lost sight ofthe old crone around the rushes and dunes.
"I hope not," said Betty, and her usually smiling face wore a worriedlook.