It's Tuesday.

Chapter 3 : Supper on the Hill

THAT SUMMER they started having picnics. At first the picnics were not real picnics; not the kind you take out in a basket. Betsy’s father, serving the plates at the head of the table, would fill Betsy’s plate with scrambled eggs and bread and butter and strawberries, or whatever they had for supper. Tacy’s father would do the same. Holding the plate in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, each little girl would walk carefully out of her house and down the porch steps and out to the middle of the road. Then they would walk up the hill to that bench where Tacy had stood the first night she came. And there they would eat supper together.

Betsy always liked what she saw on Tacy’s plate. In particular she liked the fresh unfrosted cake which Tacy’s mother often stirred up for supper for her big family. Tacy knew that Betsy liked that cake, and she always divided her piece. And if baked beans or corn bread or something that Tacy liked lay on Betsy’s plate, Betsy divided that too.

While they ate they watched the sun setting behind Tacy’s house. Sometimes the west showed clouds like tiny pink feathers; sometimes it showed purple mountains and green lakes; sometimes the clouds were scarlet with gold around the edges. Betsy liked to make up stories, so she made up stories about the sunset. When she couldn’t think what to say next, Tacy helped her.

Betsy always put herself and Tacy in the stories. Like this:

One night two little girls named Betsy and Tacy were eating their supper on the hill. The hill was covered with flowers. They smelled sweet and were pink like the sky. The sky was covered with little pink feathers.

“I wish,” said Tacy, “that I had a feather for my hat.”

“Do you really?” asked Betsy.

“Certainly I do,” said Tacy.

“I’ll get you one,” said Betsy.She stood up on the bench. They were through eating their suppers and had put their plates down in the grass. Betsy stood up on the bench and reached her hand out for a feather.

Tacy said, “You can’t reach that feather. It’s way over our house.”

Betsy said, “I can so.”

She reached and she reached; and the first thing she knew one of the feathers had come near enough for her to touch it. But when she took hold of it, instead of coming down, it began pulling her up.

Tacy saw what was happening, and she took hold of Betsy’s feet. She was just in time too. In another minute Betsy would have been gone. Up, up, up they went on the feather into the sky.

They floated over Tacy’s house. The smoke was coming out of the chimney where her mother had cooked supper. Far below were Tacy’s pump and barn and buggy shed. They looked strange and small.

Betsy and Tacy could see Betsy’s house too. They could look all the way down Hill Street. They could see Mr. Williams milking his cow. And Mr. Benson driving home late to supper.

Betsy said, “Wouldn’t our fathers and mothers be surprised, if they could look up here and see us sitting on a feather?” For by this time they had climbed up on the feather and were sitting on it side by side. They put their arms around each other so that they wouldn’t fall. It was fun sitting up there.

“I wish Julia and Katie could see us,” said Tacy. Julia and Katie were like most big sisters. They were bossy. Of course they were eight, but even if they were eight, they weren’t so smart. They didn’t know how to float off on a feather like Betsy and Tacy were doing.

“We’d better not let anyone see us, though,” Betsy decided. “They’d think it was dangerous. They wouldn’t let us do it again, and I’d like to do it every night.”

“So would I,” said Tacy. “Tomorrow night, let’s float down over the town and see Front Street where the stores are.”

“And the river,” said Betsy.

“And the park,” said Tacy. “Page Park with the white fence around it and the picnic benches and the swings.”

“We may even go there to eat our supper some night,” Betsy said. “Let’s go some night when your mother has baked cake.”

“Do you suppose we could hold on to our plates?” asked Tacy. “When we were riding on this feather?”

“We’d have to hold tight,” Betsy said, and they looked down. It made them dizzy to look down, they were so high up.

Tacy began to laugh. “We’d have to be careful not to spill our milk,” she said.

“We might spill our milk on Julia and Katie,” Betsy cried.

“I wouldn’t care if we did.”

“It would make them mad, though.”

And at the thought of spilling milk on Julia and Katie and making them mad, they laughed so hard that they tipped their feather over. It went over quick like a paper boat, and they started falling, falling, falling. But they didn’t fall too fast. It was delicious the way they fell…like a swallow sinking down, down, down…to the very bench where they had been sitting.

Only now the sunset had dimmed a little and the grass was cold with dew and down in their dooryards Betsy’s mother and one or two of Tacy’s brothers and sisters were calling, “Betsy!” “Tacy!” “Betsy!” “Tacy!”

Betsy and Tacy looked at each other with shining eyes.

“Don’t forget it’s a secret,” Betsy said, “that we can go floating off whenever we like.”

“I won’t forget,” said Tacy.

“Tomorrow night we’d better bring jackets, if we’re going down to Front Street. I felt a little cold sitting up on that feather, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Tacy, wriggling her bare toes. “I wished I was wearing my shoes.”

“Betsy!” called Betsy’s mother.

“Tacy!” called four or five of Tacy’s brothers and sisters.

“We’re coming,” called Betsy and Tacy, and they picked up their plates and glasses and came slowly down the hill.

That was the kind of picnic they went on at first. Later, when they grew older, they packed their picnics in baskets.