e nicest flowers are to be found in the lanes and
meadows."

"Susan must help to weave the garlands," said another.

"Susan must be Queen of the May!" shouted several together.

"Why does she not come?" grumbled Philip.

Rose, who was Susan's special friend, now came forward to remind them
that when Susan was late it was always because she was needed at home.

"Go, Rose, and tell her to make haste," cried the impatient Philip.
"Attorney Case is dining at the Abbey to-day, and if he comes home and
finds us here, perhaps he will drive us away. He says this bit of
ground belongs to his garden, but that is not true, for Farmer Price
says we have all as much right to it as he has. He wants to rob us of
our playground. I wish he and Bab, or Miss Barbara, as I suppose we
must now call her, were a hundred miles away, I do. Just yesterday she
knocked down my ninepins on purpose as she passed with her gown
trailing in the dust."

"Yes," cried Mary, "her gown is always trailing. She does not hold it
up nicely like Susan, and in spite of all her fine clothes she never
looks half so neat. Mamma says she hopes I shall grow like Susan, and
so do I. I should not like to be vain like Barbara were I ever so
rich."

"Rich or poor," said Philip, "it does not become a girl to be vain,
much less bold, as Barbara was the other day. She stood at her
father's door, and stared at a strange gentleman who stopped near by,
to let his horse drink. I know what he thought of Bab, by his looks,
and of Susan too; for Susan was in her garden, bending down a branch
of the laburnum-tree, looking at its yellow flowers which had just
come out, and when the gentleman asked her how many miles it was to
the next village, she answered him modestly, not bashfully as if she
had never seen any one before, but just right. Then she pulled on her
straw hat that had fallen back while she was looking up at the
laburnum, and went her way home, and the gentleman said to me after
she was gone, 'Pray, who is that neat, modest girl?' But I wish,"
cried Philip, interrupting himself, "I wish Susan would come!"

Barbara, still crouching on the other side of the hedge, heard
everything that was said.

Susan was all this time, as her friend Rose had guessed, busy at home.
She had been kept by her father's returning later than usual. His
supper was ready for him nearly an hour before he came home, and Susan
swept the hearth twice, and twice put on wood to make a cheerfu