As Wallie observed them while waiting his opportunity to get a dill pickle or whatever crumb they might leave him, he thought grimly that if they had been without food for twenty-four hours instead of less than half a dozen, they would have been close to cannibalism. He, for one, would not care to be adrift in an open boat with Mrs. Budlong--hungry and armed with a hatchet--while Stott, he was sure would murder him for a frankfurter in those circumstances.
Aunt Lizzie, to whom accidents of an unusual nature seemed always to be happening, wandered off with a wedge of pie and a cup of coffee and sat down on an ant-hill.
While she sipped her coffee and drank in the scenery simultaneously, the inhabitants of the hill came out in swarms to investigate the monster who was destroying their home. They attacked her with the ferocity for which red ants are noted, and she dropped her pie and coffee and ran screaming to the wagon.
Fearful that she would be pursued by them, she got into the surrey, where she became involved in a quarrel with Miss Mercy, who was eating her lunch there.
Miss Mercy caught a butterfly that lighted on a seat-cover and pulled off first one wing and then the other in spite of Aunt Lizzie's entreaties. She dropped it on the bottom of the surrey and put her astonishingly large foot upon it.
"There," she snickered, "I squashed it."
Aunt Lizzie, to whom anything alive was as if it were human, wrung her hands in anguish.
"I think you are horrid!"
"What good is it?"
"What good are you, either? I shan't ride with you." Aunt Lizzie climbed into the third seat of the surrey, where she refused to answer Miss Mercy when she spoke to her.
The rest and food freshened the party considerably but by four o'clock they were again hungry and drooping in their saddles. Only Mr. Stott, endowed, as it seemed, with the infinite wisdom of the Almighty, retained his spirits and kept up an unending flow of instructive conversation upon topics of which he had the barest smattering of knowledge. Constantly dashing off on his part to investigate gulches and side trails caused Wallie's smouldering wrath to burn brighter, as the buckskin hourly grew more jaded.
Complaints increased that their horses were hard-gaited, and the voices of the ladies held plaintive notes as they declared their intention of riding in the surrey when they overtook it. Pinkey was stopped finally, and his passengers augmented by the addition of Mrs. Stott, Miss Gaskett, and Mrs. Budlong, who carefully folded their jackets to sit on.