s tellin' t' other one--what folks did when
they's little, and afore that, hundreds o' years ago, how the folks then
used to get all the children together and go out in the country and put
up a great big high pole, and put a lot o' flowers on a string and wind
'em roun' the pole; and then all the children would take hold o' han's
and dance roun' the pole, and one o' the children was chose to be queen,
and had a crown made o' flowers on her head, and the rest o' the
children minded her."

"You'd like _that_,--to be queen and have the rest mind you, Becky,
wouldn't you?" laughed one of the company.

"I bet I would," owned Becky, frankly.

"But what about the baskets?" asked somebody else.

"Oh, the kids," said Becky, forgetting in her present absorbed interest
the term "children,"--which she had learned to use since she had come up
daily from the poor neighborhood where she lived,--"the kids use to fill
a basket with flowers and hang it on the door-knob of somebody's
house,--somebody they knew,--and then ring the bell and run. Golly!
guess _I_ should hev to hang it _inside_ where I lives. I couldn't hang
it on no outside door and hev it stay there long,--them thieves o' alley
boys would git it 'fore yer could turn. I guess, though, they was
country kids who used to hang 'em; but the lady said she was goin' to
try to start 'em up again here in the city."

"What kind o' baskets were they?" asked Lizzie, suddenly sitting up with
a new air of attention.

"Oh, ho!" laughed one of the girls; "Lizzie wants to hang a basket for
somebody _she_ knows!"

"Hush up!" said Lizzie, turning rather red. Then, addressing Becky
again: "Did the lady who was telling about 'em have a basket with her?
Did you see it?"

"No, but she hed a piece o' that pretty wrinkly paper jes' like the
lamp-shades in the winders, and she said the baskets was made o' that,
and she was buyin' some ribbon to match for handles and bows."

"Oh, I _wish_ I could see one of 'em," said Lizzie.

"I went to a kinnergarden school wonst when I was a little kid," struck
in Becky here, "and we was put up there to makin' baskets out o' paper."

"Could you do it now?" asked Lizzie, eagerly.

"Mebbe I could," answered Becky, warily; "but it's a good bit ago."

"When you were young," cried one of the company with a giggle.

"Yes, when I was young," repeated Becky, in exact imitation of the
speaker, whose voice was very flat and nasal.

Everybody laughed, and on