"Oh, Cousin Jerry! Did you have a picnic planned!" eagerly asked Nora, leaving her place at the table to join Jerry on the big couch.

"I did but I haven't," he replied, with pretended disappointment. "What good are picnics for Girl Scouts? They want big game with real guns and elephant meat for supper," he finished pompously.

"Oh, Cousin Jerry!" pouted Nora. "If you really had a picnic planned couldn't we have it, and couldn't I invite my Scout friends?"

"'Course you could, Kitten," Jerry gave in. "I'll fix up the finest little picnic those Scouts ever heard tell of. Just you wait and see."

"But we are going to celebrate privately this evening, Nora," Ted added.

"How would you like to go to a picture play?"

"Oh, I'd love it, of course. I do so love motion pictures, and the Misses Baily are so fussy about letting any of us go."

"I'll bet," agreed Jerry. "Want you to see Mother Goose and Little Jack Horner----"

"Both of which are each," interrupted Ted. "Guess you had better read up your nursery rhymes, Jerry."

"Well, I didn't take your college course, Theodora, but I went to Sunday School a lot--had to," he admitted, shamelessly.

"Then, it's all settled for this evening," continued Ted, quite as if there had been no break in the conversation. "We will ride into Lenox and see the 'movies.' I know it's a good picture this week and it isn't Mother Goose either."

"Glad of that. I hate the old lady myself," scoffed Jerry. "This afternoon I must go out to moorlands, Ted," he said next, seriously.

"Suppose you and Nora take the day off and loaf? You did a lot of hard work this morning----"

"But I want to finish pegging off the west end," Ted interrupted.

"Oh, could I help you, Cousin Ted?" begged Nora. "I would just love to do some real surveying."

"And I would love to have you, certainly. We will rest for one full hour, then I'll let you carry the chains and drops, and off we go to the West End. How's that?"

"Lovely. Will Cap come?"

"Sartin sure," declared Jerry. "I never let the youngsters go out on location without the big dog, do I Cap?"

Cap brushed his plumy tail against Jerry's elbow and made eyes at his master, agreeing with everything he said, as usual.

Later, when the hour's rest had been taken, Nora and Cousin Ted made their way to the grounds that were to be surveyed. Nora carried the "chain" which she wanted to call a tape line until Ted explained that carpenters had tape lines and surveyors used "chains," and the term really meant an exact land measurement. The heavy instruments were already in position, and when the work of measuring the land with her eye, as Nora declared the process to be, was actually begun, the apprentice was quite fascinated.

"Now, show me the cobweb," she insisted as Ted adjusted the delicate eye piece.

"There. Do you see that mark outside the little drop of alcohol?" asked Ted.

"The very small line like that on Miss Baily's thermometer?"

"Yes, the line that frames the drop," explained Ted, "that's the finest substance we can get, and it's cobweb."

Nora peered through the telescope. She was seeing a drop of alcohol shift from level to level as Ted moved the transit, but she was thinking of the night she discovered the cobwebs in the attic. Somehow attic fancies clung to her, tenaciously, and had she been at all superst.i.tious she surely would have called the attic unlucky. Just see the trouble that Fauntleroy acting got her into.

"It wouldn't take many webs to make such tiny marks," she said finally, as Ted moved off to "spot a tree." "I guess I won't have to gather many for Cousin Jerry for that little marking."

Ted had moved off and with her small hatchet was hacking a piece out of the bark of a tree--spotting it, as she termed it. Then she returned to the telescope and sought the level.

"What's the little weight on the string?" Nora next asked.

"Oh, that's our plumb-bob," replied the surveyor. "Bob shows us just when a line is straight. Now watch."

Over a peg in the ground Ted swung the heavy little pendulum, first to right then to the left, and so on until it fell directly on the mark.

"Now see, that is plumb," said Ted.

Nora gazed intently at the drop. "Everything has to be just exactly, hasn't it?" she queried, wondering why. "First, you strain your alcohol with cobwebs, then you drop your bob on the little peg straight as the string----"

"That is just where we get the expression from," her companion a.s.sured her. "Nothing can be straighter."

"And how do you get the mark on the tree?"

"Look through the gla.s.s again."

So the first lesson in surveying went on. It was fascinating to Nora, and when Ted decided enough land had been "chained off" Nora wanted to mark a few trees for her own use.

"Couldn't I chop a nick in this one? It is so beautiful, and when we come another day I can add another nick--just like a calendar."

Mrs. Manton readily agreed, so long as Nora did not use a mark that might confuse the surveyors; and so interesting was the work, time flew and the afternoon was soon waning.

While in the woods more than once Nora had reason to be thankful for her practical Scout uniform, for she climbed trees, sought wild grapes from high limbs, gathered wild columbine and enjoyed the wildwoods as only a novice can. Birds scarcely flew from the path, and she marvelled they were so tame, but Ted explained they had no cause for fear, as the woods were their own and danger would be a new experience to them.

When finally Cap came back from his rambles and it was decided that no more surveying nor "play-veying" should be indulged in, instruments were gathered again, and reluctantly Nora followed Mrs. Manton out into the path, newly beaten down by those who had been following spots, bobs, cobwebs, chains, telescopes, compa.s.ses, transits and all the other skilled implements used.

"Are you really a surveyor?" she asked Ted, just wondering what she would call herself in Barbara's letter.

"Yes, that or a civil engineer," replied Ted. "That is really what I studied in the famous college course Jerry is always teasing about."

"It is sort of artist work, isn't it?"

"A wonderful sort. Just see what good times I have out among birds, flowers, wildwoods, and the whole clean, untamed world," said Theodora Manton. "Some women may like indoors, but give me the woods and the fields and all of this," she finished, sweeping her free brown hand before her with a gesture that encompa.s.sed glorious creation.

Nora pondered. How many worlds were there after all? How different this was from that which she knew at school? Would she ever enjoy the other now, after all this? She glanced at her scratched hands and smiled. What manicuring would erase those, and yet how precious they would seem when Cousin Jerry would hear what she had done to help with his wonderful surveying?

"And we must fix up and look pretty for tonight," said her companion, as if reading Nora's thoughts. "I so seldom want to go out evenings I really have to think what to wear."

"Do we dress up?" queried Nora.

"A little, that is we don't wear these," indicating the khaki. "But all the Lenox folks are professionals in one line or the other, and you know dear, they always claim a social code of their own."

Nora was not positive she entirely understood, but she guessed that professionals, if they were anything like her Cousin Ted, would wear just such clothes as they liked best and felt most comfortable in, and she wondered how such would look in a theatre.

"Another rest, then an early dinner and we'll be off," announced Mrs.

Manton when they reached the Nest. "Nora darling, you have made me very happy today," the brown eyes embraced Nora while the hands were still burdened with instruments. "I will write at once to your mother and ask her----"