CHAPTER XII. FLOWERS O’ MAY

Accordingly we went a-maying, following the lure¹ of dancing winds to a certain westward² sloping hill lying under the spirit-like blue of spring skies, feathered over with lisping young pines and firs, which cupped little hollows and corners where the sunshine got in and never got out again, but stayed there and grew mellow³, coaxing⁵ dear things to bloom long before they would dream of waking up elsewhere.

‘Twas there we found our mayflowers, after faithful seeking. Mayflowers, you must know, never flaunt⁶ themselves; they must be sought as becomes them, and then they will yield up their treasures to the seeker—clusters of star-white and dawn-pink that have in them the very soul of all the springs that ever were, re-incarnated in something it seems gross to call perfume, so exquisite⁷ and spiritual is it.

We wandered gaily⁸ over the hill, calling to each other with laughter and jest, getting parted and delightfully⁹ lost in that little pathless wilderness¹⁰, and finding each other unexpectedly in nooks and dips and sunny silences, where the wind purred and gentled and went softly. When the sun began to hang low, sending great fan-like streamers of radiance up to the zenith, we foregathered in a tiny, sequestered¹¹ valley, full of young green fern, lying in the shadow of a wooded hill. In it was a shallow pool—a glimmering¹² green sheet of water on whose banks nymphs might dance as blithely¹³ as ever they did on Argive hill or in Cretan dale. There we sat and stripped the faded leaves and stems from our spoil, making up the blossoms into bouquets¹⁴ to fill our baskets with sweetness. The Story Girl twisted a spray of divinest pink in her brown curls, and told us an old legend of a beautiful Indian maiden¹⁵ who died of a broken heart when the first snows of winter were falling, because she believed her long-absent lover was false. But he came back in the spring time from his long captivity¹⁶; and when he heard that she was dead he sought her grave to mourn her, and lo, under the dead leaves of the old year he found sweet sprays of a blossom never seen before, and knew that it was a message of love and remembrance from his dark-eyed sweet-heart.

“Except in stories Indian girls are called squaws,” remarked practical Dan, tying his mayflowers together in one huge, solid, cabbage-like bunch. Not for Dan the bother of filling his basket with the loose sprays, mingled¹⁷ with feathery elephant’s-ears and trails of creeping spruce, as the rest of us, following the Story Girl’s example, did. Nor would he admit that ours looked any better than his.

“I like things of one kind together. I don’t like them mixed,” he said.

“You have no taste,” said Felicity.

“Except in my mouth, best beloved,” responded Dan.

“You do think you are so smart,” retorted Felicity, flushing with anger.

“Don’t quarrel this lovely day,” implored¹⁸ Cecily.

“Nobody’s quarrelling, Sis. I ain’t a bit mad. It’s Felicity. What on earth is that at the bottom of your basket, Cecily?”

“It’s a History of the Reformation in France,” confessed poor Cecily, “by a man named D-a-u-b-i-g-n-y. I can’t pronounce it. I heard Mr. Marwood saying it was a book everyone ought to read, so I began it last Sunday. I brought it along today to read when I got tired picking flowers. I’d ever so much rather have brought Ester Reid. There’s so much in the history I can’t understand, and it is so dreadful to read of people being burned to death. But I felt I OUGHT to read it.”

“Do you really think your mind has improved any?” asked Sara Ray seriously, wreathing the handle of her basket with creeping spruce.

“No, I’m afraid it hasn’t one bit,” answered Cecily sadly. “I feel that I haven’t succeeded very well in keeping my resolutions.”

“I’ve kept mine,” said Felicity complacently¹⁹.

“It’s easy to keep just one,” retorted Cecily, rather resentfully.

“It’s not so easy to think beautiful thoughts,” answered Felicity.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world,” said the Story Girl, tiptoeing to the edge of the pool to peep at her own arch reflection, as some nymph left over from the golden age might do. “Beautiful thoughts just crowd into your mind at times.”

“Oh, yes, AT TIMES. But that’s different from thinking one REGULARLY at a given hour. And mother is always calling up the stairs for me to hurry up and get dressed, and it’s VERY hard sometimes.”

“That’s so,” conceded the Story Girl. “There ARE times when I can’t think anything but gray thoughts. Then, other days, I think pink and blue and gold and purple and rainbow thoughts all the time.”

“The idea! As if thoughts were coloured,” giggled²⁰ Felicity.

“Oh, they are!” cried the Story Girl. “Why, I can always SEE the colour of any thought I think. Can’t you?”

“I never heard of such a thing,” declared Felicity, “and I don’t believe it. I believe you are just making that up.”

“Indeed I’m not. Why, I always supposed everyone thought in colours. It must be very tiresome²¹ if you don’t.”

“When you think of me what colour is it?” asked Peter curiously²².

“Yellow,” answered the Story Girl promptly²³. “And Cecily is a sweet pink, like those mayflowers, and Sara Ray is very pale blue, and Dan is red and Felix is yellow, like Peter, and Bev is striped.”

“What colour am I?” asked Felicity, amid the laughter at my expense.

“You’re—you’re like a rainbow,” answered the Story Girl rather reluctantly. She had to be honest, but she would rather not have complimented Felicity. “And you needn’t laugh at Bev. His stripes are beautiful. It isn’t HE that is striped. It’s just the THOUGHT of him. Peg²⁴ Bowen is a queer sort of yellowish green and the Awkward Man is lilac. Aunt Olivia is pansy-purple mixed with gold, and Uncle Roger is navy blue.”

“I never heard such nonsense,” declared Felicity. The rest of us were rather inclined to agree with her for once. We thought the Story Girl was making fun of us. But I believe she really had a strange gift of thinking in colours. In later years, when we were grown up, she told me of it again. She said that everything had colour in her thought; the months of the year ran through all the tints²⁶ of the spectrum²⁷, the days of the week were arrayed as Solomon in his glory, morning was golden, noon orange, evening crystal blue, and night violet. Every idea came to her mind robed in its own especial hue²⁸. Perhaps that was why her voice and words had such a charm, conveying to the listeners’ perception such fine shadings of meaning and tint²⁵ and music.

“Well, let’s go and have something to eat,” suggested Dan. “What colour is eating, Sara?”

“Golden brown, just the colour of a molasses cooky,” laughed the Story Girl.

We sat on the ferny bank of the pool and ate of the generous basket Aunt Janet had provided, with appetites sharpened by the keen spring air and our wilderness rovings. Felicity had made some very nice sandwiches of ham which we all appreciated except Dan, who declared he didn’t like things minced²⁹ up and dug out of the basket a chunk³⁰ of boiled pork which he proceeded to saw up with a jack-knife and devour³¹ with gusto.

“I told ma to put this in for me. There’s some CHEW to it,” he said.

“You are not a bit refined,” commented Felicity.

“Not a morsel³², my love,” grinned Dan.

“You make me think of a story I heard Uncle Roger telling about Cousin Annetta King,” said the Story Girl. “Great-uncle Jeremiah King used to live where Uncle Roger lives now, when Grandfather King was alive and Uncle Roger was a boy. In those days it was thought rather coarse for a young lady to have too hearty³³ an appetite, and she was more admired if she was delicate about what she ate. Cousin Annetta set out to be very refined indeed. She pretended to have no appetite at all. One afternoon she was invited to tea at Grandfather King’s when they had some special company—people from Charlottetown. Cousin Annetta said she could hardly eat anything. ‘You know, Uncle Abraham,’ she said, in a very affected³⁴, fine-young-lady voice, ‘I really hardly eat enough to keep a bird alive. Mother says she wonders how I continue to exist.’ And she picked and pecked until Grandfather King declared he would like to throw something at her. After tea Cousin Annetta went home, and just about dark Grandfather King went over to Uncle Jeremiah’s on an errand. As he passed the open, lighted pantry window he happened to glance in, and what do you think he saw? Delicate Cousin Annetta standing³⁵ at the dresser, with a big loaf of bread beside her and a big platterful of cold, boiled pork in front of her; and Annetta was hacking³⁶ off great chunks³⁷, like Dan there, and gobbling them down as if she was starving. Grandfather King couldn’t resist the temptation. He stepped up to the window and said, ‘I’m glad your appetite has come back to you, Annetta. Your mother needn’t worry about your continuing to exist as long as you can tuck away fat, salt pork in that fashion.’

“Cousin Annetta never forgave him, but she never pretended to be delicate again.”

“The Jews don’t believe in eating pork,” said Peter.

“I’m glad I’m not a Jew and I guess Cousin Annetta was too,” said Dan.

“I like bacon, but I can never look at a pig without wondering if they were ever intended to be eaten,” remarked Cecily naively³⁸.

When we finished our lunch the barrens were already wrapping themselves in a dim, blue dusk and falling upon rest in dell and dingle. But out in the open there was still much light of a fine emerald-golden sort and the robins³⁹ whistled us home in it. “Horns of Elfland” never sounded more sweetly around hoary⁴⁰ castle and ruined fane than those vesper calls of the robins from the twilight⁴¹ spruce woods and across green pastures lying under the pale radiance of a young moon.

When we reached home we found that Miss Reade had been up to the hill farm on an errand and was just leaving. The Story Girl went for a walk with her and came back with an important expression on her face.

“You look as if you had a story to tell,” said Felix.

“One is growing. It isn’t a whole story yet,” answered the Story Girl mysteriously.

“What is it?” asked Cecily.

“I can’t tell you till it’s fully grown,” said the Story Girl. “But I’ll tell you a pretty little story the Awkward Man told us—told me—tonight. He was walking in his garden as we went by, looking at his tulip beds. His tulips are up ever so much higher than ours, and I asked him how he managed to coax⁴ them along so early. And he said HE didn’t do it—it was all the work of the pixies who lived in the woods across the brook⁴². There were more pixy babies than usual this spring, and the mothers were in a hurry for the cradles. The tulips are the pixy babies’ cradles, it seems. The mother pixies come out of the woods at twilight and rock their tiny little brown babies to sleep in the tulip cups. That is the reason why tulip blooms last so much longer than other blossoms. The pixy babies must have a cradle until they are grown up. They grow very fast, you see, and the Awkward Man says on a spring evening, when the tulips are out, you can hear the sweetest, softest, clearest, fairy music in his garden, and it is the pixy folk singing as they rock the pixy babies to sleep.”

“Then the Awkward Man says what isn’t true,” said Felicity severely⁴³.