Joy's last name is Breynton, and Sarah is Sarah Rowe." Joy bowed in her prim, cityish way, and Sarah and Delia were so much astonished thereat that they forgot to bow at all, and Delia stared rudely at her black dress.

There was an awkward silence.
"Why don't you talk, somebody ?" broke out Gypsy, getting desperate.
"Anybody'd think we were three mummies in a museum." "I don't think you're very perlite," put in Winnie, with a virtuous frown; "if you don't let me be a dummy, too, I'll tell mother, and that would make four." This broke the ice, and Sarah and Delia began to talk very fast about Monday's grammar lesson, and Miss Cardrew, and how Agnes Gaylord put a green snake in Phoebe Hunt's lunch-basket, and had to stay after school for it, and how it was confidently reported in mysterious whispers, at recess, that George Castles told Mr.Guernsey he was a regular old fogy, and Mr.Guernsey had sent home a letter to his father--not Mr.
Guernsey's father, but George's; he had now, true's you live.
Now, to Joy, of course, none of this was very interesting, for she had not been into the schoolroom yet, and didn't know George Castles and Agnes Gaylord from Adam; and somehow or other it never occurred to Gypsy to introduce some subject in which they could all take part; and so somehow it came about that Joy fell behind with Winnie, and the three girls went on together all the way to Mr.Jones's grove.
"Isn't it splendid ?" called Gypsy, turning around.

"I'm having a real nice time." "Ye--es," said Joy, dolefully; "I guess I shall like it better when we get to the chestnuts." Nothing particular happened on the way, except that when they were crossing Mr.Jonathan's plowed field, Winnie stuck in the mud tight, and when he was pulled out he left his shoes behind him; that he repeated this pleasing little incident six consecutive times within five minutes, varying it by lifting up his voice to weep, in Winnie's own accomplished style; and that Joy ended by carrying him in her arms the whole way.
Be it here recorded that Joy's ideal of "cherubic childhood," Winnie standing as representative cherub, underwent then and there several modifications.
"Here we are!" cried Gypsy at last, clearing a low fence with a bound.
"Just see the leaves and the sky.

Isn't it just--oh!" It was, indeed "just," and there it stopped; there didn't seem to be any more words to say about it.

The chestnut-trees were clustered on a small, rocky knoll, their golden-brown leaves fluttering in the sunlight, their great, rich, bursting green burs bending down the boughs and dropping to the ground.