Young Folks' Treasury, Volume 3 — Simple Susan: Queen Of The May
QUEEN OF THE MAY
Simple Susan lived one hundred years ago.
Mr. Price was Susan's father.
He rented a small farm and was always hard at work.
No more honest man could be found far or near, and he loved his little daughter from the bottom of his big heart.
Mrs. Price was Susan's mother.
She was a good woman who was always busy cooking, or cleaning, or sewing.
The bread and cakes made by her were better than those made by any one else in the village.
When she was not doing household work, she earned money by taking in plain needlework.
All who knew Mrs. Price liked her and were sorry she was so far from strong.
That no girl had a better mother than Susan, every one agreed.
John and William were Susan's little brothers.
They were quite sure that no other boys in all the world had such a good sister as theirs.
Our story begins on the evening before the first of May.
Now one hundred years ago, Mayday was looked forward to with glee by all English children living in the country.
Early that morning the lads and lasses of the village, gaily decked with flowers, would go merrily singing from house to house.
In their midst would walk the Queen of the May, or sometimes, seated in a chair twined round with blossom, she would be carried from door to door by her little companions.
With a wreath of their gayest flowers they would crown her their Queen, and for her would be woven the fairest garlands.
After the May carols were sung, cake, coppers, or small coins would be given to the boys and girls.
To choose their Queen and to arrange their flowers the children would meet on the last day of April.
This they did in the village where Susan lived, and their meeting-place was in a corner of a field close by a large pink hawthorn.
A shady lane ran past one side of the bush.
On another side a sweetbrier hedge separated it from the garden belonging to an attorney.
This attorney was a very cross man, so cross that the village people were always in fear of him.
Although he had hedged and fenced his garden, it sometimes happened that there would stray into it a pig, or a dog, or a goat, or a goose belonging to a poor neighbor.
Then the attorney would go to the owner of the stray animal and in a harsh voice demand money to pay for the damage it had done.
Nor did this cruel man let people walk along the paths through his meadows, although they did no harm.
He blocked up the stiles with stones and prickly shrubs, so that not even a gosling could squeeze under them nor a giant climb over.
Even the village children were afraid to fly their kites near his fields, lest they should get entangled in his trees or fall on his ground.
Mr. Case was the name of this attorney, and he had one son and a daughter called Barbara.
For long the father paid no attention to the education of his children, for all his time and thought were given to money-making.
Meanwhile Barbara and her brother ran wild with the village children.
But suddenly Mr. Case decided to send his son to a tutor to learn Latin, and to employ a maid to wait upon Barbara.
At the same time he gave strict orders that his children should no longer play with their old companions.
The village children were not at all sorry when they heard this.
Barbara had not been a favorite among them, for she had always wanted to rule them and to secure for herself the chief part in their games.
When Barbara saw that she was not missed by her old friends she was vexed, and she became angry when she found that they paid no attention to the grand air with which she now spoke nor to the fine frocks which she wore.
To one girl Barbara had a special dislike.
This was none other than Susan Price, the sweetest-tempered and busiest lass in the village, and the pride and delight of all who knew her.
The farm rented by Susan's father was near the house in which Mr. Case lived, and Barbara from her window used to watch Susan at work.
Sometimes the little girl was raking the garden-plots in her neat garden; sometimes she was weeding the paths; sometimes she was kneeling at her beehive with fresh flowers for her bees, and sometimes she was in the hen-yard scattering corn among the eager little chickens.
In the evening Barbara often saw her sitting in the summer-house over which sweet honeysuckle crept, and there, with a clean three-legged pine table before her upon which to lay her work, Susan would sew busily.
Her seams were even and neat, for Mrs. Price had taught her daughter that what is worth doing is worth doing well.
Both Susan and her mother were great favorites in the village.
It was at Mrs. Price's door that the children began their Mayday rounds, and it was Susan who was usually Queen of the May.
It was now time for the village children to choose their queen.
The setting sun was shining full upon the pink blossoms of the hawthorn when the merry group met to make their plans for the morrow.
Barbara Case, sulkily walking alone in her father's garden, heard the happy voices and, crouching behind the hedge that divided her from the other children, she listened to their plans.
"Where is Susan?"
were the first words she overheard.
"Yes, where is Susan?"
repeated a boy called Philip, stopping short in a tune he was playing on his pipe: "I want her to sing me this air, I can't remember how it goes."
"And I wish Susan would come, I'm sure," cried Mary, a little girl whose lap was full of primroses.
"She will give me some thread to tie up my nosegays, and she will show me where the fresh violets grow, and she has promised to give me a great bunch of her cowslips to wear to-morrow.
I wish she would come."
"Nothing can be done without Susan!"
cried another child.
"She always shows us where the nicest flowers are to be found in the lanes and meadows."
"Susan must help to weave the garlands," said another.
"Susan must be Queen of the May!"
shouted several together.
"Why does she not come?"
grumbled Philip.
Rose, who was Susan's special friend, now came forward to remind them that when Susan was late it was always because she was needed at home.
"Go, Rose, and tell her to make haste," cried the impatient Philip.
"Attorney Case is dining at the Abbey to-day, and if he comes home and finds us here, perhaps he will drive us away.
He says this bit of ground belongs to his garden, but that is not true, for Farmer Price says we have all as much right to it as he has.
He wants to rob us of our playground.
I wish he and Bab, or Miss Barbara, as I suppose we must now call her, were a hundred miles away, I do.
Just yesterday she knocked down my ninepins on purpose as she passed with her gown trailing in the dust."
"Yes," cried Mary, "her gown is always trailing.
She does not hold it up nicely like Susan, and in spite of all her fine clothes she never looks half so neat.
Mamma says she hopes I shall grow like Susan, and so do I. I should not like to be vain like Barbara were I ever so rich."
"Rich or poor," said Philip, "it does not become a girl to be vain, much less bold, as Barbara was the other day.
She stood at her father's door, and stared at a strange gentleman who stopped near by, to let his horse drink.
I know what he thought of Bab, by his looks, and of Susan too; for Susan was in her garden, bending down a branch of the laburnum-tree, looking at its yellow flowers which had just come out, and when the gentleman asked her how many miles it was to the next village, she answered him modestly, not bashfully as if she had never seen any one before, but just right.
Then she pulled on her straw hat that had fallen back while she was looking up at the laburnum, and went her way home, and the gentleman said to me after she was gone, 'Pray, who is that neat, modest girl?'
But I wish," cried Philip, interrupting himself, "I wish Susan would come!"
Barbara, still crouching on the other side of the hedge, heard everything that was said.
Susan was all this time, as her friend Rose had guessed, busy at home.
She had been kept by her father's returning later than usual.
His supper was ready for him nearly an hour before he came home, and Susan swept the hearth twice, and twice put on wood to make a cheerful blaze for him.
At last, when he did come in, he took no notice of the blaze or of Susan; and when his wife asked him how he was, he made no answer, but stood with his back to the fire, looking very gloomy.
Susan put his supper upon the table, and set his own chair for him, but he pushed away the chair and turned from the table, saying, "I shall eat nothing, child.
Why have you such a fire to roast me at this time of year?"
"You said yesterday, father, I thought, that you liked a little cheerful wood-fire in the evening, and there was a great shower of hail.
Your coat is quite wet.
We must dry it."
"Take it, then, child," he said, pulling it off, "I shall soon have no coat to dry.
Take my hat, too," he went on, throwing it upon the ground.
Susan hung up his hat, put his coat over the back of a chair to dry, and then stood looking at her mother, who was not well.
She had tired herself with baking, and now, alarmed by her husband's strange conduct, she sat down pale and trembling.
The father threw himself into a chair, folded his arms, and gazed into the fire.
Susan was the first who ventured to break the silence.
Fondling her father, she tried to coax him to eat the supper prepared for him.
This, however, she could not persuade him to do, but he said, with a faint smile, that he thought he could eat one of her guinea-hen's eggs.
Susan thanked him, and showed her eagerness to please her dear father by running as fast as she could to her neat chicken-yard.
Alas!
the guinea-fowl was not there.
It had strayed into the garden of Mr. Case.
She could see it through the paling.
Going to the garden-gate, Susan timidly opened it, and seeing Miss Barbara walk slowly by, she asked if she might come in and take her guinea-fowl.
Barbara, who at that moment was thinking of all she had heard the village children say, started when she heard Susan's voice.
"Shut the gate," she said crossly, "you have no business in our garden.
As for the hen, I shall keep it; it is always flying in here and plaguing us, and my father told me I might catch it and keep it the next time it got in, and it is in now."
Then Barbara called to her maid Betty and bid her catch the mischievous bird.
"Oh, my guinea-hen!
my pretty guinea-hen!"
cried Susan, as mistress and maid hunted the frightened, screaming creature from corner to corner.
"Now we have it!"
said Betty, holding it fast by the legs.
"Then pay damages, Queen Susan, or you may say good-by to your pretty guinea-hen," said Barbara in a rude tone.
"It has done no damage," said Susan; "but tell me what I must pay."
"A shilling," said Barbara.
"Oh, if only sixpence would do!"
said Susan; "I have but sixpence of my own in the world, and here it is."
"It won't do," said Barbara, turning her back.
"Nay, but hear me," cried Susan, "let me at least come in to look for its eggs.
I only want one for my father's supper.
You shall have all the rest."
"What is your father or his supper to us; is he so particular that he can eat none but guinea-hen's eggs?"
said Barbara.
"If you want your hen and your eggs, pay for them, and you shall have them."
"I have only sixpence and you say that won't do," said Susan with a sigh, as she looked at her favorite which was in the maid's cruel hands, struggling and screaming in vain.
Susan went away feeling very sad.
At the door of her father's cottage she saw her friend Rose, who had just come to summon her to the hawthorn-bush.
"They are all at the hawthorn, and I have come for you.
We can do nothing without you, dear Susan," cried Rose, running to meet her the moment she saw her, "You are chosen Queen of the May--come, make haste.
But what is the matter?
Why do you look so sad?"
"Ah!"
said Susan, "don't wait for me; I can't come to you, but," she added, pointing to the tuft of cowslips in the garden, "gather those for little Mary; I promised them to her, and tell her the violets are under a hedge just beside the stile, on the right as we go to church.
Good-by!
never mind me; I can't come--I can't stay, for my father wants me."
"But don't turn away your face; I won't keep you a moment; only tell me what is the matter," said her friend, following her into the cottage.
"Oh, nothing, not much," said Susan; "if I had not wanted the egg in a great hurry for father, it would not have vexed me--to be sure I should have clipped my guinea-hen's wings, and then she could not have flown over the hedge; but let us think no more about it now," she added, trying to hide a tear.
When Rose, however, learned that her friend's guinea-hen was kept a prisoner by Barbara, she was hot with indignation, and at once ran back to tell the story to her companions.
II
