MAY DAY
It was May Day, and all the children who went to school in the little brick schoolhouse at the foot of the hill were going "Maying."
Every sunny morning in April they had begged their teacher to go with them to the woods to gather flowers; but Miss Heath kept telling them to wait until the days were a little warmer, and the woods less damp.
"By the first of May," she said, "there will be ever so many more flowers. If May Day is bright and sunny we will have no school,—except the school of the woods, no lessons but those the birds and flowers teach us. Wear your oldest clothes, and don't forget your lunches. You will be as hungry as squirrels when you have played out of doors all the morning."
The first morning in May was warm and sunny enough to make everyone long to spend the whole day in the woods.
At half-past eight all the pupils in Miss Heath's school were at the schoolhouse door, eager for the Maying. There were only sixteen of them, and they were of all ages, from five to fourteen, for the little brick schoolhouse was in the country, far away from the graded city schools.
The mothers had not forgotten the lunches, and it was a happy band of boys and girls that set off at nine o'clock for the woods. They climbed the hill and followed a cart-path until they came to a shady hollow where a tiny brook rippled over its stony bed.
"We'll stay here for a little while and watch the birds," said Miss Heath. "Sit down under this pine tree, and keep as still as mice until you have seen five different birds."
Joe Thorpe saw the first one,—a robin that came down to the brook for a drink of water. Alice Fletcher caught sight of a black and white warbler that was hopping about in the pine tree, and Grace Atkins pointed out a woodpecker that was rapping on the trunk of an old oak.
A golden oriole flew to the top of a tall elm and called down to them, "Look, look, look! Look up here! Look up here! Look up here!" But the fifth bird was hard to find. They had almost given him up when Miss Heath held up her hand. "Listen!" she whispered, and in a moment a song sparrow that had lighted in a little bush near by sang them his sweetest song,—sang it over and over, with his head held high and his tiny throat swelling with the music.