Becky took a bite out of a slice of bread, and munching it slowly, said,—
"I tole yer once 't was 'bout May-day and flowers and queens and baskets."
"What May-day? There's thirty-one of 'em, Becky."
Becky looked staggered for a moment. In her little hard-worked life she had had small opportunity to learn much out of books, and she had never happened to hear this rhyming bit:—
"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone."
Recovering her wits, however, very speedily, she said coolly,—
"The first pleasant one."
"Well, what were they telling about it? What were they going to do the first pleasant day in May?"
"They didn't say as they was goin' to do anythin'; they was tellin'—or one of 'em was tellin' t' other one—what folks did when they's little, and afore that, hundreds o' years ago, how the folks then used to get all the children together and go out in the country and put up a great big high pole, and put a lot o' flowers on a string and wind 'em roun' the pole; and then all the children would take hold o' han's and dance roun' the pole, and one o' the children was chose to be queen, and had a crown made o' flowers on her head, and the rest o' the children minded her."
"You'd like that,—to be queen and have the rest mind you, Becky, wouldn't you?" laughed one of the company.