"Let's play! Let's play!" the children shouted as if they hadn't also played in the winter. Play they did. Sometimes it was "Last Pair Out." In this the boys and girls formed pairs and stood behind each other. At a signal the last couples separated, each going on different sides of the line and trying to unite in front before being caught by the one who was "It." They danced "To-day is the First of May" in a double circle, and the "Ring Dance" to which they sang:
My love is like a strawberry,
So red and sweet is she:
And no one else may swing her round,
No one else 'cept me.
There was one little girl who was quite a leader in the games. Perhaps the reason was the enthusiastic way in which she played. She seemed to have two favorites: "Hide and Seek," in which the children counted out to see who was to be "It," and "Wolf." Both boys and girls played the latter as they did most of the other games. Juhani was the first to be the "Wolf," to the apparent joy of the leader, who took particular delight in teasing and escaping from him until he just ran her down and caught her.
Maja did not play this. She had found some children younger than herself whom she joined in making miniature farms out of stones and sand. The first building which she erected was not the dwelling-house but the Sauna or bath-house. Then followed the other farm buildings, and last the cattle had stones carefully selected for them.
The spring, ushered in with such hearty welcome, went with a surprising swiftness, and summer arrived with intense blue skies and floods of sunshine and flowers. This was the time of the white nights,—a happy holiday time,—when the sun shines for more than eighteen hours at a time and for the remainder of the twenty-four leaves generously its reflection behind.
"WOUND COLORED YARN AROUND THE RYE STALKS"
During this springtime weather Maja saw that there were fresh wild flowers—pansies, lilies of the valley, lilacs, or wild roses—daily in the living-room. She loved the spring particularly for these. "How I love the flowers!" she would exclaim enthusiastically to Juhani whenever she found a new one.
Juhani would smile slowly, look thoughtfully into the distance, and after a pause return: "I like the spring for many things, but best I think for the change in the forest." Maja knew that he meant the new bits of sunshine everywhere and the new growth of needles that glistened so green against the background of the dark pines, and all the new bird calls to be heard there.
In June the schools closed, and for a while nothing was talked of but the preparations for the great midsummer festival to be held on June twenty-fourth, John the Baptist Day.