Once home, you would have thought that Cherry would have thrown herself on the lounge to rest, for she was pretty tired; but she did no such thing. On the contrary, she sat down with a pair of scissors, beside the mass of pink fragrant blossoms, and industriously culled and clustered the brightest among them, under the delighted supervision of dear little Belle, into dozens of sweet little bouquets, each with its sprig of "running pine," and its bright furbishing of partridge or checker berries. These she sprinkled, and bringing out from her trunk a mysterious roll, which Belle had inquired about several times, she cut off a generous allowance of cotton batting, dampened it, and carefully surrounding her precious little nosegays with it, she put them into a box, tied it up, and sent it by the noon train to "Miss Pidgie Mullen."
The train reached the city at four o'clock, and a bright, modest little girl was at the station to welcome it, and to bear away the box as soon as the express agent could hand it to her. Cherry had told her just how to do it.
Then catching a car, she was soon at a certain prominent street, where she got off. The gentlemen and ladies who were sauntering along this street presently saw such an array of fresh spring blossoms before them that very few of them felt that they could resist buying, for ten cents, a bunch of the lovely things, and by a little after six Pidgie's boxful was entirely gone.
Then she ran home, and up the narrow, creaking stairs her light step passed more lightly and joyously than ever.
"I meant to save one for you, mamma," she cried, excitedly; "but a gentleman came along just as I was starting for home, and he said, 'None left?' 'Only one.' I told him I was going to take that to my mother. 'Won't this do just as well?' he said, and he held up a silver quarter. 'Oh, it's only ten cents,' I told him. 'But if I take your mother's,' he said, 'of course I ought to pay more,' and he took the bunch—it was such a sweet bunch, mamma!—and tossed me the quarter. And just look here!" and Pidgie emptied her porte-monnaie, full of shining silver pieces, into her mother's lap.
This kind of life was continued by the Mullens for nearly a month. The grand event of that month up in the country was the celebration of the 1st of May, a week after Cherry and Belle had arrived there. This consisted—as the 1st of May was one of the very sunniest and most delightful that ever was seen—of a kind of picnic, in which Aunty Rogers and her husband participated, and which was actually attended by Belle. She was carried up to the pasture in Mr. Rogers's wagon, scrambled out to the arbutus beds on her own little feet, with Cherry's help, and finding a seat on a big warm rock beside the little brook, ate some of Aunty Rogers's nice sandwiches there with a relish which a week before was quite unknown to her.
Then there was a surprise. Mr. Rogers had built a fire, hung a kettle over it between some crotched sticks, and was soon stirring with a long stick a mass of golden-colored liquid, which gave out an odor that Cherry declared was almost as good as that of her beautiful flowers. Before long Mr. Rogers conducted her and Belle to a cool, shady place, just on the edge of the woods, where the sun had spared, as in several other similar spots, a great solid snow-drift. From this the top was scraped smoothly away, leaving a shining hard white surface, on which Aunty Rogers dropped spoonful after spoonful of the clear, fragrant syrup, which hardened as it touched the snow into delicious maple wax. The girls had never eaten anything so nice before, and they thought that they never had enjoyed themselves quite so well as in the sunshine of that exquisite May-day, picking sweet flowers, watching the swift, sparkling little brook, and eating the delicious sugar that had been made only the March before from Mr. Rogers's own maple-trees. Belle said that she gained a whole pound of flesh that day, and indeed perhaps she did. She certainly gained several pounds before the time came for them to go back to the city again.
For that time did really come, just before the May glided into June. Nearly every day during the delightful four weeks of their happy visit Cherry had trudged early up to the pasture with her baskets, coming back in time to make up her sweet bouquets for the noon train, and resting through the long pleasant afternoons; and every day in the city, when school was done, a merry, tidy little girl hurried down to the express office, and back to the busy streets laden with the fresh pink nosegays, for which the frequenters of those streets soon learned to watch with interest, and which they bought generously. Indeed, Pidgie's demands, like Oliver Twist's, for "more," grew so urgent, and her reports of her profits were so encouraging, that Cherry had to employ one of the neighbors' boys to go up in the pastures with her every morning during the last ten days of her stay. But she did not have to get any one to help her "make them up," for Belle, under the longed-for country air and sights and sounds, grew able to help her herself, and before she went home she could do quite the lion's share of that work.