There is nothing so racket-breeding as a perfect day
amid perfect scenery.
The four revelers had paddled down into the lake, on a day's
picnicking. They had come from far up the Ramapo river; beyond
Suffern. And the long downstream jaunt had made them hungry.
Wherefore, as they reached mid-lakes they began to inspect the
wooded shores for an attractive luncheon-site. And they found
what they sought.
A half-mile to southward, a gently rolling point of land pushed
out into the lake. It was smooth-shaven and emerald-bright. It
formed the lower end of a lawn; sloping gently downward, a
hundred yards or more, from a gray old house which nestled
happily among mighty oaks on a plateau at the low hill's summit.
The point (with its patch of beach-sand at the water's edge, and
with comfortable shade from a lakeside tree or so), promised an
ideal picnic-ground. The shaven grass not only offered fine
possibilities for an after-luncheon snooze; but was the most
convenient sort of place for the later strewing of greasy
newspapers and Japanese napkins and wooden platters and crusts
and chicken bones and the like.
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