e in with a bigger box, looking as if he had done
nothing but go a Maying all his days.

"Don't believe it!" cried Jill, hugging her own treasure jealously.
"It's only another joke. I won't look," said Molly, still struggling to
make her cambric roses bloom again.

"I know what it is! Oh, how sweet!" added Merry, sniffing, as Ed set the
box before her, saying pleasantly,--

"You shall see first, because you had faith."

Up went the cover, and a whiff of the freshest fragrance regaled the
seven eager noses bent to inhale it, as a general murmur of pleasure
greeted the nest of great, rosy mayflowers that lay before them.

"The dear things, how lovely they are!" and Merry looked as if greeting
her cousins, so blooming and sweet was her own face.

Molly pushed her dingy garlands away, ashamed of such poor attempts
beside these perfect works of nature, and Jill stretched out her hand
involuntarily, as she said, forgetting her exotics, "Give me just one to
smell of, it is so woodsy and delicious."

"Here you are, plenty for all. Real Pilgrim Fathers, right from
Plymouth. One of our fellows lives there, and I told him to bring me a
good lot; so he did, and you can do what you like with them," explained
Ed, passing round bunches and shaking the rest in a mossy pile upon the
table.

"Ed always gets ahead of us in doing the right thing at the right time.
Hope you've got some first-class baskets ready for him," said Gus,
refreshing the Washingtonian nose with a pink blossom or two.

"Not much danger of _his_ being forgotten," answered Molly; and
every one laughed, for Ed was much beloved by all the girls, and his
door-steps always bloomed like a flower-bed on May eve.

"Now we must fly round and fill up. Come, boys, sort out the green and
hand us the flowers as we want them. Then we must direct them, and, by
the time that is done, you can go and leave them," said Jill, setting
all to work.

"Ed must choose his baskets first. These are ours; but any of those you
can have;" and Molly pointed to a detachment of gay baskets, set apart
from those already partly filled.

Ed chose a blue one, and Merry filled it with the rosiest may-flowers,
knowing that it was to hang on Mabel's door-handle.

The others did the same, and the pretty work went on, with much fun,
till all were filled, and ready for the names or notes.

"Let us have poetry, as we can't get wild flowers. That will be rather
fine," proposed Jill, who liked ji