“May’s got a beau,
Oh, oh, oh,
May’s got a beau
Oh, oh, oh!”
“Mamma! Make him stop! He thinks he’s so funny!” May wailed, and burst into a storm of tears.
Old Major ambled along. It was late, so late that the tollgate was lifted for the night, and Lily was fast asleep in the back of the carriage. Maggie was driving. They didn’t like to keep Albert up now that he had all the work to do.
“ ‘Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,’ ”
Maggie sang to herself, silently, inside her head. Then she thought of Aunt Priscilla and her pale blue tail. May was still shaking with sobs—what had been the matter with them all? Such a fuss about that Mr. Post—but she was ashamed of herself for having been so cross and bossy.
The sky was swarming with stars—so many, so bright, it made you feel—oh—funny, to look at them. Mm‑m, how sweet! Those were the mock-orange bushes in Miss Perry’s yard. Queer how their fragrance made you feel so happy and yet as if you wanted to cry at the same time. Another smell, not so nice—the tavern pigpen. Pee-yugh!
XIII
He came on Saturday afternoon long before anyone expected him. Mamma was lying down, May was tying a rose-colored velvet ribbon around her curls, and Maggie, who had been helping Martha preserve strawberries, was trying to get the stains off her fingers with the grated lemon rinds left from the lemon-icing cake Mamma had made that morning. It was Lily, strolling around the corner from the kitchen with her mouth full of buttered biscuit, who saw him on his bicycle with the huge front wheel and the tiny back one come wobbling up the drive between the pine trees.
“Is this the Campions’ house?” he shouted.
Lily, crimson with embarrassment, made muffled sounds and would have run away, if Edward hadn’t fallen off cheerfully into a bed of peonies.
“My bicycle’s new, and I don’t know how to ride it very well yet. I hope you’ll excuse my smashing your flowers.”
Lily swallowed her mouthful of biscuit with a gulp that forced the tears into her eyes, and became vehement through shyness.
“Oh, my yes, we hate those peonies. Mamma’ll be glad you fell off in them—oh, I didn’t mean that! I mean she hates these, we all do, the pretty ones are all down in the garden, the big white ones with the pink bottoms—”
Oh, what had possessed her? What would he think of her? As soon as the others came down, she rushed off and flung herself into a game of solitary croquet, pretending to be deeply absorbed, and passing from one agony of blushes to another.
They had set up a target on the lawn near the beech tree. Edward and May shot against Maggie and Victor, and Mamma sat in a rustic chair, watching them, chaperoning the young people. The pleated ruffles of her skirt flowed out on the grass beside her, crisp fan after fan. In her spreading white, with her cooing voice, she was like one of Victor’s pigeons. How nice the girls looked, she thought, in their tight basques and three-ruffled skirts, their bustles, and sashes, their trains and long tight sleeves. Fashions had never been so pretty. Nobody would have dreamed that Maggie’s tobacco-brown dress had started life as a crinoline skirt of Aunt Priscilla’s. But how sunburned the child was! She must wear her hat more, and rub cucumbers on her face at night.
Maggie shot well when she got over trying to hide her stained fingers. Edward had to work hard to beat her. He looked at her with dawning interest as she drew her bow. Her straight, strong body in its tight brown sheath, like a young tree; her face, the golden rose of peaches above the white of her stiff little linen turn-back collar; her hair in a thick bang over her dark eyebrows and clear light eyes.
Over and over again May had to jerk him back to her.
“Oh! Oh!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, a bee! Oh, make it go away!”
But she was really calling:
“Come back to me! Don’t be Maggie’s! Come back to me!”
For she was nineteen, a whole year older than Mamma had been when she was married, and she was terrified sometimes for fear life had passed her by.
When they were tired of archery, they went up on the porch and ate cherries. Albert had brought a big basket of them, great shining black worlds, each bursting with the sun, the rain, the earth; each holding hidden in its seed a tree with roots and branches, with snowdrifts of blossoms, and green leaves, and a universe of crimson black worlds each hiding in its heart another tree.
“Just throw your stones into the lily-of-the-valley bed—we always do,” said Maggie. She and Edward ate their cherries, ever so many of them. May put hers on for earrings, and decorated Edward, too; and Victor threw his into the air and caught them in his mouth.
Mamma had slipped away, and presently there came a tinkling, and she brought out a frosty pitcher of raspberry shrub, and the fresh lemon-icing cake. She and May tried to act as if it happened every afternoon, but Victor, who was showing off by walking on the porch railing, nearly fell over in his delight, and shouted rapturously to the round blue figure knocking the croquet balls about.
“Lil-lee!”
“What-ee?”
“Cake and raspberry shru-hub!”
Conversation, that had been wandering happy and silly and free, resumed its ball and chain.
“This is a wonderful view of the river you have, Mrs. Campion.”
“Yes, we’re very fond of our view. Do you like Delaware, Mr. Cobb?”
“Mr. Post, Mamma!”
“Oh, me! How silly of me! What do you suppose made me call you Mr. Cobb? Of course, there was Papa’s friend with the red hair who had the racehorses, Carrot-Top Cobb they used to call him; but you aren’t a bit like him, with your dark hair and everything. Heigho! I haven’t thought of him
