Grif gets it," said
Jill, as the applause subsided, for the boys pronounced it "tip-top."

"Don't care, he gets the worst of it any way, for there is a pin in that
rose, and if he goes to smell the mayflowers underneath he will find a
thorn to pay for the tack he put in my rubber boot. I know he will play
me some joke to-night, and I mean to be first if I can," answered Molly,
settling the artificial wreath round the orange-colored canoe which held
her effusion.

"Now, Merry, read yours: you always have sweet poems;" and Jill folded
her hands to listen with pleasure to something sentimental.

"I can't read the poems in some of mine, because they are for you; but
this little verse you can hear, if you like: I'm going to give that
basket to Ralph. He said he should hang one for his grandmother, and I
thought that was so nice of him, I'd love to surprise him with one all
to himself. He's always so good to us;" and Merry looked so innocently
earnest that no one smiled at her kind thought or the unconscious
paraphrase she had made of a famous stanza in her own "little verse."

"To one who teaches me
The sweetness and the beauty
Of doing faithfully
And cheerfully my duty."

"He will like that, and know who sent it, for none of us have pretty
pink paper but you, or write such an elegant hand," said Molly, admiring
the delicate white basket shaped like a lily, with the flowers inside
and the note hidden among them, all daintily tied up with the palest
blush-colored ribbon.

"Well, that's no harm. He likes pretty things as much as I do, and I
made my basket like a flower because I gave him one of my callas, he
admired the shape so much;" and Merry smiled as she remembered how
pleased Ralph looked as he went away carrying the lovely thing.

"I think it would be a good plan to hang some baskets on the doors of
other people who don't expect or often have any. I'll do it if you can
spare some of these, we have so many. Give me only one, and let the
others go to old Mrs. Tucker, and the little Irish girl who has been
sick so long, and lame Neddy, and Daddy Munson. It would please and
surprise them so. Will we?" asked Ed, in that persuasive voice of his.

All agreed at once, and several people were made very happy by a bit of
spring left at their doors by the May elves who haunted the town that
night playing all sorts of pranks. Such a twanging of bells and
rapping of knockers; such a scampering of feet in the dark;