Chapter NINETEEN: May-Baskets

The clock in the hall chimed four as the sun peeped over the hills and into the windows of the Forget-me-not room, where Jeannette and Elizabeth were sleeping soundly.

Birds were already twittering sleepily, and the lilac-plumes along the pathway nodded to the syringa-bushes opposite, as if to wish a gay good morning. A fat robin went running across the dewy lawn, busily searching for his early-morning breakfast, while a plump gray squirrel did the acrobatic feats that constituted his “daily dozen” on the limb of the big oak-tree that tapped and whispered against the bedroom window.

Suddenly through the early-morning silence came the tinkle of a banjo and the soft strum-strum of a ukelele, punctuated at intervals by snorts and giggles and a mysterious banging and clashing. Jeannette turned over uneasily, and Polly Wiggles sat up in bed with a jerk, rubbing sleepy, bewildered eyes and pushing back tangled curls from her face.

“For goodness’ sake, Jet, wake up,” she whispered imperatively, leaning over to the other twin bed and giving her drowsy sister a soft pinch. “Listen to that clashing and banging. What can it be?”

Jeannette stirred restlessly and opened one sleepy eye. “It’s--why, it’s music,” she replied in a much surprised tone of voice, stifling a yawn and listening to the plunk-plunk-plunk beneath the windows. “Why, Wiggles, if it isn’t May Day!”

“So it is,” responded the May Queen, putting one foot out of bed and groping about for her blue bedroom slippers. “‘The more haste, the less speed,’” she quoted with a little giggle, as she dived under the bed and emerged triumphantly with the elusive slippers in her grasp. “Look how light it is, Jet; it must be time to get up. I’m going to see what that noise is, anyway; it sounds like a circus. Where _is_ my kimono?”

“What in the world is going on at this early hour!” exclaimed Grandmother Carr’s astonished voice from the hall. “It’s only four o’clock in the morning, and I thought by that racket it was eight at least.”

“Children,” called Mrs. Eaton, appearing through the doorway, struggling into her dainty yellow kimono, “it’s those ridiculous boys, and I do believe they’re giving you a serenade. We’re all so wide-awake that we might just as well get up and peep out at them. Slip into your kimonos and slippers.”

Dr. Eaton thrust a tousled head through the door. “The young rascals,” he yawned, “the idea of waking up respectable people at this unearthly hour. I suppose this is in honor of the May Queen; that’s what I get for entertaining royalty unawares. Just look what you’ve let us in for, Woggsie. Come along, Cubby; I’ll hold you up so you can see.”

Jeannette sighed blissfully as she scrambled into her blue kimono and donned slippers with pompons to match. “I never dreamed that anything so grown-uppy would happen to us, did you, Wiggles? It’s just lovely being in a May Frolic.”

“Listen, oh, listen,” laughed Grandfather, joining the “nightgown brigade,” as Dr. Eaton called it, and followed by Grandmother and Aunt Elsie in the first things they could lay their hands on. “I thought I heard a familiar note. They’re starting the music of “For I’m to be Queen of the May,’ sure as I live.”

Polly Wiggles and Jeannette dashed to the window and peeped through the curtains, stifling giggles that nearly overcame them, as they looked in round-eyed amazement at the group below.

Gabriel and Dick, with cheeks puffed to the bursting-point, were playing away as if their lives depended upon it, on combs over which tissue paper had been placed. Donald was strumming on a banjo, and Billy and Allan joined in with thumps and chords on their “ukes,” while Hugh gave an occasional bang on a dish-pan he carried as a drum, or a clash to a pair of pot-lids he was using as cymbals. What he lacked in music he made up in volume, and his rat-a-tat-tat had awakened others in the neighborhood as well. Next door, at Sweet Briar, Marion and Kitty, who were staying with Alice over night, were peeking out at the serenaders in amazement, while heads were popping from the windows at White Birches to see what all the music was about.

The combs played the melody through once, and then were laid aside. Then, accompanied by the banjo in Donald’s capable hands, and punctuated by resounding clashes on the pot-lids from Hugh, all six boys sang the following ridiculous parody, giving careful enunciation to each word while the audience listened with eager ears:

“We woke to call you early, call you early, Wiggles dear,
To-day will be the gladdest time of all the bright New Year;
Of all the bright New Year, Wiggles, so merry and so gay,
For you will be Queen of the May, Wiggles; you will be Queen of the
May.

“You slept so sound all night, Wiggles, we knew you’d never wake,
Unless we called you loudly as the day began to break;
So up we jumped to waken you before the peep of day,
For you’re to be Queen of the May, Wiggles; you’re to be Queen of the
May.

“Jeannette will go out with you as you hasten to the green,
And Marion and Alice, too, will see you crowned the Queen;
The lads and lasses from the school will march with May-poles gay,
And you will be Queen of the May, Woggsie; you will be Queen of the
May.

“So jump from out your bed, Woggsie, and rub your sleepy eyes.
Oh, Marion, and Kitty-Cat, and Alice, too, arise,
And gobble down your breakfast fast, it’s time you were away,
For you’re to be Queen of the May, Woggsie; you’re to be Queen of the
May.

“Arise, fair Queen, we beg of you, and don your dainty gown,
Come polish up your scepter bright and freshen up your crown;
Get out your ermine mantle that’s in moth-balls packed away,
For you’re to be Queen of the May, Wiggles; you’re to be Queen of the
May.

“We’ve gathered buds for you, Wiggles, the best that we could get;
Alas, the dew was heavy, so our feet got sopping wet,
So, if we’ve caught our death, Wiggles, and cough our lives away,
It’s ’cause you’re Queen of the May, Wiggles; ’cause you’re Queen of
the May.”

A final clash on the dish-pan brought to a close the parody which Billy had written, amid the laughter of the girls and the hollow coughs of the mischievous boys.

Dr. Eaton leaned perilously far over the sill. “As a physician,” he remarked gravely, but with a twinkle in his blue eyes, “I recommend bed for three hours for you all. The May Queen and her Maid of Honor wish me to extend their thanks for this delightful and unexpected early-morning concert. But, as beauty sleep is needed even by royalty, we will bid you a fond--and _hasty_--farewell.”

“Here, Woggsie, toss this out to them,” whispered Mrs. Eaton, handing her a box of home-made fudge that had been on the table.

Polly Wiggles’ face dimpled with amusement as she popped her head cautiously between the curtain-frills. “Here’s some medicine for your coughs,” she twinkled. “Catch! But look out that it doesn’t give you nightmares,” she warned hastily, as six pairs of hands grasped eagerly at the coveted prize which Hugh dexterously caught by ingeniously holding his dish-pan up to receive it.

“Not to be taken except after meals,” sang out Dr. Eaton, popping his head out again. “Now skip, you young rascals, and let me finish my early-morning nap in peace and quiet.”

“That prescription holds good for these fair damsels, too,” Mrs. Eaton announced firmly, as, catching up the sleepy Cubby, whose head was nodding like a drowsy poppy, she shooed the girls across the room to bed, to finish their morning snooze.

“To bed, to bed, you sleepy-head,
Or else you may expect
A pale-eyed fright your mirror bright
To-morrow will reflect,”

Aunt Elsie chanted as she scurried back to the Rosery.

“More truth than poetry to that,” Grandpa called over his shoulder. “It would never do to look like pale, hollow-eyed ghosts for the Frolic, that’s sure; so scamper back to bed, chicks, and don’t let us hear a peep out of you till seven-thirty at least.”

“Yes, and eight would be better,” yawned Dr. Eaton drowsily. “Sweet dreams, youngsters.”

It was hard to settle down again after the exciting interruption. Jeannette and Polly Wiggles kept breaking into stifled giggles at the recollection of the funny picture Hugh had made, with his heavy auburn hair standing up every which-way as he clashed away on the pot-lids,--and Gabriel’s ear-splitting squeaks and squeals on the comb.

“Isn’t it nice that Donald has got so well acquainted with the boys,” whispered Wiggles with satisfaction, as she burrowed into her soft pillow and tried to compose herself for sleep. “I just know I’ll never sleep another wink, for I feel wide-awake as an owl. I do wonder what our chariot looks like, don’t you? Donald said yesterday that they had just finished it, but he wouldn’t tell me a thing about it,--mean thing.”

Jeannette cuddled down comfortably and stared at the border of butterflies on the blue walls above. A question flashed in her mind at sight of the painted blossoms.

“Do you s’pose any one will hang May-baskets for us?” she breathed cautiously, twisting about to glance at the other bed. “Do you s’pose----?”

What she supposed did not interest Wiggles at all, for she had gone fast asleep, and though Jeannette had firmly intended remaining awake so as to be down bright and early, when she opened her eyes again there was a tantalizing odor of hot muffins in the air, and Aunt Elsie stood in the doorway, laughing at her drowsy face.

“You’d better ‘up with the lark,’ Jet,” she said, adding in a louder tone as she ran on down the hall, “Polly Wiggles has one sock on already, and the front porch is simply _crammed_ with May-baskets.”

“Hurry up and let Mother fix your hair before she goes down,” advised Polly Wiggles, appearing suddenly with every glistening curl in place, and trying to fasten her pink-gingham frock with fingers that quivered with excitement. “I’ll wait for you, and then, before we look at our baskets, let’s skip out the back way and leave the baskets for the girls over at Sweet Briar. It will be lots more fun to wait and see our own when we come back.”

“All right,” agreed Jeannette, disappearing in haste. “James promised to leave Miss Helen’s, and all the others for those that lived at a distance, the first thing this morning,” she called back, as her sister saved time by pulling back the covers of both beds and hanging the two blue kimonos in the closet.

Twenty minutes later the baskets had been hung, and, crouched behind the briar-rose bushes that formed a thick hedge all about the place, they had the satisfaction of watching Marion, Alice, and Kitty pounce upon them with cries of delight, while they looked unsuspectingly right over the spot where their laughing friends were concealed, as they anxiously scanned the road.

“They never dreamed who left them,” Jeannette said with a little skip, as she rose from her hiding-place after the girls had given up and gone back in the house. “Let’s hustle now; I’m dying to see what’s at home for us.”

The front porch of The Lilacs was filled from steps to doorway, and, as the two girls scampered up the pathway, a sudden stir and rustle, followed by flying footsteps around the back of the house, showed that some one had been there in their absence. There were baskets of every kind and description, some marked with Jeannette’s and some with Elizabeth’s name, while Cubby proudly carried in six of her very own.

“Bring them in the dining-room where we may all see them,” called Mrs. Eaton as she poured the coffee. “Breakfast is ready, girls. What a beautiful display!” she added admiringly, gazing at the arm-loads of blossomy baskets that Grandfather and Aunt Elsie were helping arrange on the tea-wagon and serving-table that Hannah had hastily cleared.

“I really don’t believe I want any breakfast,” began Polly Wiggles.

“Breakfast first, and baskets next,” ordered her father firmly, giving her curls a playful pull as she hovered like some new species of bright-hued butterfly over the flowers. “We look like a busy florist’s shop. In ten minutes the table may be in demand as a resting-place for more posies, and if many more baskets come in, we shall have to move out to make room for them. So come along, youngsters, and eat a good breakfast while you can.”

“I’m really not a bit hungry,” protested Jeannette, seating herself reluctantly, and languidly spooning her grapefruit.

“Remember that luncheon will not be till after one, as the parade only starts at twelve-thirty,” warned Mrs. Eaton, buttering a muffin for the wee bear.

“Yes, and the luncheon will be a cold one,” added Dr. Eaton, looking up from his bacon and eggs. “Now I want you to eat a good hot breakfast like healthy, hungry girls, and not a nibble here and there like--like----”

“’Quirrels,” prompted Cubby brightly, twisting about to gaze lovingly at her own pretty baskets. “’Quirrels like to nibble, Daddy.”

“So squirrels do,” agreed her father with a shake of his head. “And so do Cubby bears, and medium-sized bears, and great big bears as well.”

“What a hard-hearted man you are,” mourned Polly Wiggles with an affectionate glance. “Here you are, cruelly ordering about a Queen, when I should by rights be seated on a golden throne, eating----”

“Bread and honey,” piped up Cubby, who knew her Mother Goose.

“Yes, honey, and nightingale tongues and delicacies like that,” agreed Polly Wiggles recklessly. “Not bacon and eggs--oh, my, no! My appetite is too delicate.” She paused to butter a second muffin as she spoke, while Cubby listened with rapture to this nonsensical talk. “Then if Dr. Eaton, my court physician, ordered such coarse, common food,” she resumed scornfully, “I would merely say with a wave of my golden scepter, ‘Off with his head,’ and my subjects would fly to do my bidding.”

“I’d probably order a tonic for that delicate appetite,” returned Dr. Daddy cheerfully, quite unmoved by Jeannette’s beseeching glance as Hannah served her with cocoa. “Drink your cocoa, Jet, and, speaking of flying, I must haste away to see some patients, so farewell, my fairy fays; I’ll see you later.”

Breakfast at last came to an end, and the children flew to examine the lovely flower-laden baskets.

“Here, let’s divide them,” Polly Wiggles suggested, clearing a space for her own share and inspecting the attached cards. “Gracious, Jet, you popular young lady; here’s five--seven--ten baskets for you, all beauties, and two apiece for Grandma and Mother, and three for Aunt Elsie.”

“I never dreamed there would be so many, did you? Nevertheless it seems to me you have the lion’s share yourself,” Jeannette returned gayly. “Twelve baskets, no less, and oh, Wiggles, just look at that gorgeous basket of Aunt Elsie’s. It’s the loveliest I’ve ever seen.”

“I wonder who sent it?” demanded the May Queen with a roguish smile, as she eyed approvingly the dainty white basket filled with glowing, velvety Jack roses. “It’s a perfect beauty. Look, Jet, the handle is made out of pussy-willows. Did you ever see anything so dear?”

“There’s a card, too,” announced Jeannette, pouncing upon it before Aunt Elsie had the chance. “Oh, ho, I thought so. It says, ‘Bob,’ and, though my manners forbid my looking, I’ll bet a cookie that there is a written message on the other side.”

“Look at her blush,” twinkled Polly Wiggles mischievously, adding in a confidential aside to Jeannette, as Aunt Elsie hastily claimed her baskets and bore them up-stairs to the privacy of her own room, “Do you know, I think that Mr. Burnett likes Aunt Elsie, ’cause, ever since he rescued Cubby, he keeps coming here all the time. He says he comes to see Daddy,” she finished scornfully, “but almost always Daddy’s out, and I notice he stays and talks to Aunt Elsie.”

“Polly Wiggles, I didn’t think anything could be lovelier than my lilac basket, but this one of yours is perfectly exquisite,” Grandmother Carr said, speaking up from the window-seat, where she and Mrs. Eaton had comfortably ensconced themselves to act as audience to the “flower-show.” She held up, as she spoke, a graceful birch-bark basket shaped like a canoe, in which were growing delicate maidenhair ferns and yellow and lavender wild orchids.

Mrs. Eaton gave an exclamation of delight and stooped to examine it more closely. “This looks like the young naturalist’s handiwork,” she cried admiringly, as she touched the nodding moccasin-flowers with caressing fingers.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s from Gabriel,” returned Polly Wiggles, giving it a swift glance, “’cause no one else could ever find those flowers. But look at Jeannette’s, it’s lovely, too.”

Jeannette exhibited with pride a round birch-bark basket filled with tiny woodland ferns and pearly-white hyacinths whose fragrance filled the dining-room.

“Sure there are no snakes concealed within either one?” inquired Grandpa, shrinking away in mock alarm. “Or spiders, or angleworms, or any other of those dear little creatures that you girls so adore?”

Wiggles dimpled at a sudden recollection as she thrust her rosy face amid the fragrant blossoms and drew a breath of sweetness from their perfumed bells.

“Gabriel promised cross-his-heart that he wouldn’t,” she retorted, jumping up to examine a lavender-fluted creation brimming with pink and orchid sweet peas. “But, Grandfather, wouldn’t it have been _dreadful_ if we had found that snake in one of these lovely baskets, as he had planned at first?” Her tone was tragic, and her grandfather chuckled at the idea. “Just imagine Grandmother’s face if it had slithered out----”

“Ugh, don’t speak of it,” shuddered Jeannette, making a wry face at the idea. “It makes me feel shivery even to talk about it. Look at this darling basket woven of green reeds and filled with daffodils, instead. Isn’t it a picture?”

Her grandfather privately thought that the two graceful girls in their dainty morning-dresses were the prettiest part of the picture, but he duly admired the daffodils, while Wiggles hopped up and down on one foot, and shook with some sudden amusement.

“Oh, Jet, I’m certain-sure that’s the one Hugh made for you, and you alone,” she teased, inspecting the pretty basket critically. Then she clasped her hands and posed dramatically. “He did it with his lily-white hands, all for you,” she declaimed; breaking off hurriedly as Jeannette, with a very red face, chased her around the table. “Help, help, the Queen is being assassinated. Ouch, let go of my hair.”

“Then don’t be a silly,” retorted Jeannette, firmly clutching the thick black curls that held her agile sister an unwilling captive, while Mrs. Eaton and Grandmother shook with laughter. “Mother says it’s silly to act sentimental about boys----”

“And so it is,” acknowledged Polly Wiggles, frankly catching her sister in an unguarded moment and whisking under her arm and out of reach. “But I don’t mean it in that silly way.”

“Just the same, it _is_ silly,” insisted Jeannette loftily, “’cause you know as well as I do, Elizabeth Eaton, that we’re all good friends and he likes us all.”

But Polly Wiggles was in a teasing mood. “Of course he likes us all,” she persisted, “and I don’t mean a silly sentimental like--But everybody knows that Hugh thinks you’re the nicest girl he knows. Why, even Marion said herself that you were the only one he was going to make a May-basket for. However, if you prefer to think it was from some unknown admirer--” She paused abruptly at sound of the front-door bell, and darted out into the hall, followed by Jeannette, where they nearly collided with fat Mandy, whose face was all agrin as she waddled toward the dining-room with more flower-baskets.

“The most scrumptious baskets of all is these Ah’m totin’ in,” she breathed gustily, as she placed them carefully on the table and stood with arms akimbo to admire the offerings to her “babies.” “And pell-mell down the road like a skyclome went dat yeller-haired Harrison boy, pert as a cricket, while dat handsome-looking Prince Donald, who is Miss Marie’s own boy, was a-dodgin’ and slippin’ round back of the trees over yonder, but I seen him jest the same.”

Nothing could induce Mandy to call Donald anything but Prince Donald or Prince Charming after having heard the children’s chatter about the Enchanted Palace. “’Cause he holds hisself like a Prince and walks proud like one,” she had insisted when Mrs. Eaton questioned her about it. “He’s the one dat ought to be May King, even if he don’t go to dat school, though, I must say, dat Allan Harrison is a fine looker, too. But any one with two eyes can see dat Miss Marie’s boy is quality through and through, and has hobnobbed with the best in the land, yas, ma’am.”

“These certainly are the handsomest baskets of all,” admitted Grandpa Carr, as every one came hurrying to see them.

There were two baskets for Elizabeth and one for Jeannette, and it was hard to choose the prettiest. Jeannette’s basket was of pale-blue wicker, overflowing with pink sweet peas and blue forget-me-nots, while huge bows of shimmering blue-satin ribbon fluttered from the handle, which was twined with pink buds.

Elizabeth’s basket was of wicker, too, but it was the most delicate shade of pink, and shaped like a big heart. Inside were hundreds of tiny pink Sweetheart roses and sprays of valley lilies that showered their perfumed sweetness through all the room. A twisted garland of moss rosebuds and smilax outlined the basket and formed the handle, while, tied to the top with long streamers of airy pink gauze, was a little verse which Polly Wiggles read aloud:

“A poet might try to write verses most fair,
In praise of your dimples, your eyes, and your hair,
But on this glad day,
Allegiance I pay,
And render you homage, fair Queen of the May.”

“Now who has an unknown admirer, I’d like to know?” jeered Jeannette, doubling up with mirth at her sister’s blushing confusion. “No one has written poetry about my dimples and hair, and--and--I’m ‘going into the garden and eat worms,’” she finished laughingly. “Now, do let’s see this basket that’s shrouded in tissue paper. It looks interesting.”

“Oh it _is_ lovely,” squealed Wiggles, holding up a melon-shaped basket made entirely out of purple double violets and lined with lemon-yellow tea-roses. “Dear me, I don’t know which is prettier. Just look at these yellow and violet gauze butterflies on the handle, Mother; their wings quiver like honest-truly butterflies.”

“And, bless my soul, if there isn’t another rhyme,” Grandma Carr added, pointing to a twist of paper thrust in the midst of the dewy violets. “Your friends seem to be poetically inclined. Read it out, my dear.”

“Yes, _do_ read it out,” implored Billy and Dick, appearing suddenly from the kitchen with their hands filled with cookies from Mandy’s cookie-jar. “’Scuse us, Aunt Jean and Grandma, for helping ourselves, but we made ourselves at home ’cause we were hungry, and we knew you wouldn’t want us to starve on your doorsteps.”

Mrs. Eaton laughed at their nonsense, while Polly Wiggles hastily pocketed the first note and tried to keep the other from Billy’s grasp.

“No fair, no fair, go ’long with you,” she cried, as Dick joined the attacking party. “It’s the Queen’s privilege to read her notes in private.”

“You won’t be Queen till this afternoon,” objected Dick as an excuse. “Ah, be a sport.”

“Yes, be a sport,” mimicked Billy teasingly, as he captured the paper and waved it tantalizingly above her head. “As your older male relative I consider this my solemn duty. It hurts me more than it does you, but you know,

“My own convenience counts as nil;
It is my duty, and I will,’”

he quoted from the Bab Ballads in self-defense. “Now, let me see.” He glanced at the note in his hand with a ferocious frown. “Ah, ha, I thought so; some miserable unworthy knave is writing to our noble Queen in verse, without the Lord Chancellor’s permission. Call forth the guard!”

“Oh, Billy, let me see it,” coaxed Polly Wiggles imploringly. “I don’t believe it says a single thing.”

“You don’t? Well, keep your hands off and I’ll read it out loud. Just listen to this tender effusion:

“My every thought a butterfly,
That, wafted by my eager sigh,
Would spread its wings of palest hue,
And far away would fly--to you.”

“What do you think of that, Aunt Jean? No one sends me things like that,” put in Dick plaintively. “Who sent it?”

“How should I know?” retorted Polly Wiggles coolly, much amused because she knew that both boys were racking their brains to try and think who it might be.

“I think it’s lovely,” said Jeannette loyally. “It’s lots better than most valentines.”

“But I refuse to allow my youthful cousin to receive such missives,” returned Billy with a grandfatherly air, as he pocketed the note for his own private purposes, hoping he would be able to find out whose handwriting it was. “Now, what I really came to say was, that it is eleven o’clock, and Marion called out to say that she and Alice and Kitty would be over in fifteen minutes, as they were going to dress here. So unless our fair Queen wants to be left behind, methinks she’d better skedaddle and don her glad rags. Don said the chariot would be at the gate for you at twelve, and three-quarters of an hour will be far too short a time for you girls to primp.”

Polly Wiggles swept a low curtsy. “The Queen will bid you all good day, she goes to don her fine array; in coronation robes of state, she’ll meet you later at the gate. But she would warn that you, as well, had better hustle home pell-mell, and don your suits of Lincoln green, or else I fear you’ll not be seen, as Courtiers your Queen to aid, a-marching in the big parade,” she chanted extemporaneously as she mounted the stair-case.

It was not until she reached the top, and the ringing of the doorbell announced the arrival of the Maids of Honor, that Billy discovered that the note which he had tucked in his pocket--was gone.