“‘Cause they were sayin’ somethin’ I wanted to hear.”

“Of course they were.  What was it about, Becky?”

“May-day, flowers and queens and baskets.”

“Oh, my!  Well, tell us how they said it, Becky.”

“I tole yer they warn’t funny; they warn’t o’ that kind that peeks through them long stick glasses and puckers up their lips.  They talked straight ‘long, and said very int’restin’ things,” said Becky.

“Well, tell us; tell us what ’twas,” exclaimed Lizzie.

“Oh, you wouldn’t care for what they’s talkin’ ‘bout.  They warn’t sayin’ anythin’ ’bout beaux or clothes,” Becky replied with a grin.

A shout of laughter went up from the rest of the company, who all knew the lively Lizzie’s favorite topics.  Lizzie joined in the laugh, and cried good-naturedly,—­

“Never mind, Becky, if I’m not up to your ribbon swells talk; tell us about it.”

“Oh, yes! tell us, tell us!” echoed the others.

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.

“I bet I would,” owned Becky, frankly.

“But what about the baskets?” asked somebody else.

“Oh, the kids,” said Becky, forgetting in her present absorbed interest the term “children,”—­which she had learned to use since she had come up daily from the poor neighborhood where she lived,—­“the kids use to fill a basket with flowers and hang it on the door-knob of somebody’s house,—­somebody they knew,—­and then ring the bell and run.  Golly! guess I should hev to hang it inside where I lives.  I couldn’t hang it on no outside door and hev it stay there long,—­them thieves o’ alley boys would git it ’fore yer could turn.  I guess, though, they was country kids who used to hang ’em; but the lady said she was goin’ to try to start ’em up again here in the city.”