e old straw, did not
obtain the full beauty of the spring day. She had protested against the
straw-ride.

"The children really ought to wait until the season for such things,"
she had told Madame, quite boldly; and Madame had replied that she was
well aware of it, but the children wanted something of the sort, and the
hay was not cut, and straw, as it happened, was more easily procured.

"It may not be so very musty," said Madame; "and you know, my dear,
straw is clean, and I am sorry, but you do seem to be the one to ride
with the children on the straw, because"--Madame dropped her voice--"you
are really younger, you know, than either Miss Acton or I."

Poor Miss Parmalee could almost have dispensed with her few years
of superior youth to have gotten rid of that straw-ride. She had no
parasol, and the sun beat upon her head, and the noise of the children
got horribly on her nerves. Little Lucy was her one alleviation. Little
Lucy sat in the midst of the boisterous throng, perfectly still, crowned
with her garland of leaves and flowers, her sweet, pale little face
calmly observant. She was the high light of Madame's school, the effect
which made the whole. All the others looked at little Lucy, they talked
to her, they talked at her; but she remained herself unmoved, as a high
light should be. "Dear little soul," Miss Parmalee thought. She also
thought that it was a pity that little Lucy could not have worn a white
frock in her character as Queen of the May, but there she was mistaken.
The blue was of a peculiar shade, of a very soft material, and nothing
could have been prettier. Jim Patterson did not often look away from
little Lucy; neither did Arnold Carruth; neither did Bubby Harvey;
neither did Johnny Trumbull; neither did Lily Jennings; neither did many
others.

Amelia Wheeler, however, felt a little jealous as she watched Lily. She
thought Lily ought to have been queen; and she, while she did not dream
of competing with incomparable little Lucy, wished Lily would not always
look at Lucy with such worshipful admiration. Amelia was inconsistent.
She knew that she herself could not aspire to being an object of
worship, but the state of being a nonentity for Lily was depressing.
"Wonder if I jumped out of this old wagon and got killed if she would
mind one bit?" she thought, tragically. But Amelia did not jump. She
had tragic impulses, or rather imaginations of tragic impulses, but she
never carried them out. It