While Mrs. White was laughing over Dot's way of telling the news, the other children came up with Brown Betty and her brood.

"Dear, dear," said Mrs. White, "as the eggs have turned into turkeys I will let the money I promised turn into a picnic. Let me see, to-day is Tuesday. Will you be ready to go on Thursday?"

"Indeed we will!" cried the children. "Thank you so much."

On Wednesday morning Mary woke up very, very early.

Then Mary woke Betty and Peggy and little Dot.

They all dressed as quickly as they could and hurried out of doors. The sun was just rising and the sky was a beautiful red and gold. The dew sparkled on the gra.s.s, and in the tree tops the birds were just beginning to chirp and call.

"Where are you going, my pretty maids?" laughed Mr. White.

"We're 'going a-milking, sir, she said,'" Mary replied.

Then each little girl took a tin cup and followed Mr. White and Billy to the pasture where Bonny-Belle and Bess stood waiting. Billy let down the bars and the cows came into the barnyard. Mr. White milked Bonny-Belle and Billy milked Bess.

The little girls stood near and watched.

How Mr. White and Billy laughed when little Dot said, "Oh, is that the way you get milk on a farm? We get ours out of bottles."

Before milking time was over each little girl held her cup and had it milked full of fresh, new milk.

At first the children thought they would carry the cups home and drink the milk for breakfast. But they were so hungry they couldn't wait, so they drank it standing in the barnyard, with Bonny-Belle and Bess looking at them with soft, kind eyes.

That afternoon Mary had some work to do and Betty and Peggy went for a walk with their mothers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOT AND DON]

Little Dot was tired from her early morning visit to the barnyard. So she took a book of fairy stories and went out into the near-by field.

She settled herself cozily under a big maple tree and began to read.

After a little while the book slid from her hands. Her head nodded and nodded and then rested on the gra.s.s. Her eyes winked and winked and then closed.

She must have slept almost an hour when she woke with a start. Something very soft and moist was moving over her nose and cheeks. It felt almost as if her face were being washed with a sticky cloth.

Dot opened her sleepy blue eyes and looked right into the big brown eyes of Don, b.u.t.tercup's baby calf.

"Oh! Oh!" cried the little girl.

"Ma-a-a," replied Don as he frisked away.

"You are a dear little thing," Dot called after him, "but I wish you wouldn't kiss me with your tongue all over my face."

The morning of the picnic was bright and clear. There was great excitement in the kitchen and pantry. Mrs. White and Molly, the maid, were fixing the lunch, but the four little girls couldn't help popping in every few minutes to take a peep. The two other mothers peeped too.

What they saw made them wish that they were to be invited to the picnic.

But this time only the four little girls who had found Brown Betty were to go.

At last the lunch was packed in four baskets and off the children went.

On their way they found some wild strawberries. They stopped to pick them, and Mary showed the others how to make leaf baskets to hold berries. They gathered broad, flat leaves and fastened them together with little twigs.

Then they went on until at last they came to the loveliest spot you ever saw. It was an open s.p.a.ce with trees all around it. Near-by was a little bubbling spring.

The children set their baskets in the shade and began to romp and play.

They played "Hide-and-Go-Seek" and a new game which they called "Echo."

Can you guess how to play this game?

At last they grew tired and hungry and began to unpack their baskets and to put their lunch on a mossy spot near the brook. Such a feast you never saw! Everything a child likes best came out of those baskets. How the four children did eat and eat and eat! And when they had eaten and eaten and eaten until they could eat no more, there were still some good things left.

"Let's rest a while," said Mary, "and perhaps we'll be hungry again.

Shall I tell you a fairy story?"

"Oh, please do," said Betty; and Peggy and Dot echoed together, "Please do."

So Mary told them of a fairy ball where all the little fairies came out of their flower cups and danced by the light of the moon.

"Wouldn't this spot be a lovely place for a fairy ball?" said Peggy, when Mary had finished the story. "I wonder if there are any fairies in this wood."

"I know how we can find out," cried Betty. "We can give the fairies a party."

"But they only come out at night," said Dot, "so we couldn't see them."

"But," replied Betty, "we can make a feast for them; and, if the next morning we find the feast is gone, we shall know the fairies really came."

"Oh, let's do it," cried Dot and Peggy. And Mary said, "If we want the fairies to come we must make a magic ring of flowers." "That will be lots of fun," cried the children.

So for the rest of the afternoon they were very busy indeed.

They went to the meadow and gathered clover blossoms. Then they sat down on the moss and made a magic ring.

When the magic ring was placed around a lovely mossy spot they began to set the table for the feast.

"We'll give them cake and some ripe strawberries," said Betty.

"But fairies eat dewdrops served on rose leaves," said Peggy.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"When they come to a party given by little girls, they eat just what little girls give them. You'll see," said Betty. So the moss table was set with leaf plates, and on each plate were a ripe, red strawberry and a fairy-size piece of cake. When everything was ready the children danced around the magic ring three times to make it more magic. Then they packed their baskets and went home, feeling very tired but very happy and much pleased with the picnic.

That night Betty could not go to sleep for a long, long time. She lay in bed and watched the moonbeams.

"I wonder," she thought, "whether the fairies will come. I wonder whether the man in the moon is looking down at them now. I wonder"--and then she went to sleep and dreamed that she was dancing around and around the magic ring with the man in the moon. All around them fairies were sliding up and down from the tree tops to the mossy ground, on silver moonbeams.

The next day the children went to the woods to see whether the fairies had been there. Betty reached the spot first and cried out joyfully, "They came! They came!" And sure enough, the leaf plates were empty.

Every strawberry, every crumb of cake, was gone.

"The fairies really came," said the other little girls as they stood around the magic ring.