reading," interposed Vane. "We
should have tried our pens in your behalf, Mistress Primrose, but I knew
nothing of this birthday except just as we met, so I can only offer
second-hand, but then 'tis by a famous fellow:

"'May never was the month of love,
For May is full of flowers,--
But rather April wet by kind,
For love is full of showers.'"

"Am I such a crying girl?" Primrose's face was a study in its struggle
not to smile.

"And here is another." Andrew Henry half turned:

"'When April nods, with lightsome smiles
And Violets all a-flower;
Her willful mood may turn to tears
Full twice within an hour.'"

"Then I am very fickle--and bad tempered, and--and----" There was deep
despair in the voice.

"And Primrose, an April girl who can have whatever mood she chooses,"
said Wharton. "I wish I had known one was to bring posies of thought and
I would have looked up one. How I envy those people who can write
acrostics or sudden verses, and all I know seem to have gone from me."

Primrose made a mocking courtesy. "Thank you. We can all go and gather
violets. I know a stretch of woods the British left standing, where the
grass is full of them. And a bit of stream that runs into the
Schuylkill. Oh, and a clean, well-behaved mead-house where one can get
delightful cheesecake. Now that we have reached the summit, look about
the town. A square, ugly little town, is it not?"

"It is not ugly," Polly protested resentfully.

The rivers on either side, the angle with docks jutting out, and
creeping up along the Delaware, Windmill Island and the Forts; the two
long, straight streets crossing at right angles, and even then rows of
red-brick cottages, but finer ones as well, with gardens, some seeming
set in a veritable park; and Master Shippen's pretty herd of deer had
been brought back. There were Christ Church and St. Peter's with their
steeples, there were more modest ones, and the Friends' meeting house
that had held many a worthy.

"It is well worth seeing," said Betty Mason. "Some of the places about
make me think of my own State and the broad, hospitable dwellings."

"Oh, but you should see Stenton and Clieveden! and the Chew House at
Germantown is already historical. There is to be a history writ of the
town, I believe, and all it has gone through!" exclaimed Polly.

Then they begin to come down in a kind of winding fashion. Women are out
making gardens and tying up vine