"There are the five birds," said Miss Heath, when the song sparrow flew away; "now for our flowers!" and she jumped up and led the way across the brook and down a gentle slope toward an old pasture that was half overgrown with underbrush.
"You must notice all the different shades of green in the new leaves on the trees, with the yellows and reds on the bushes," she said, as they stood looking across the pasture. "There are almost as many colors among the trees in the spring as there are in the fall, but they are not so brilliant.
"Now, run and look for flowers," she added, when they had climbed over a stone wall and found a narrow foot-path across the pasture. "I will wait here, under this chestnut tree, and you can come back when you are ready; but if I call, you must come at once. It will be lunch-time almost before you know it."
That old pasture was a splendid place to find spring flowers, and the children scattered in all directions, by twos and threes, peeping under bushes and poking away dead leaves to hunt for sprays of arbutus, or Mayflowers as they always called them.
Grace and Alice found some beautiful clusters of the fragrant pink and white blossoms, but poor little Joe Thorpe didn't have good luck at all, so he wandered off by himself to look for hepaticas.
He found them, too, among the rocks at the farther end of the field, blue ones and white ones, and some that were pink and lavender; and when he had picked a good handful for Miss Heath, he saw some "spring beauties," white blossoms striped with pink that swayed gently on their slender stems.
Just then he heard the call to lunch, and although he hurried back to the big chestnut tree he found all the children there before him, their hands filled with flowers. There were bunches of blue violets and white violets, hepaticas and spring beauties. One girl had found yellow adder's tongues with their spotted leaves, and a boy brought a Jack-in-the-pulpit, standing up stiff and straight to preach its little sermon.
After Miss Heath had admired all the flowers, and had sent three of the boys back to the brook for water, the children opened the baskets and spread their lunch on newspaper tablecloths.
Then what a merry picnic they had! They exchanged cakes and cookies, gingerbread and doughnuts. They shared pickles and apples, and divided turnovers and saucer pies,—and they all picked out the very best of everything for Miss Heath, until she laughingly declared that she couldn't eat another single mouthful.
After lunch they told stories and played games, until, all at once, the teacher noticed that the sun had hidden his face behind a heavy cloud.