Mrs. Price was an intelligent, active, domestic woman; but her health was not robust. She earned money, however, by taking in plain work; and she was famous for baking excellent bread and breakfast cakes. She was respected in the village, for her conduct as a wife and as a mother, and all were eager to show her attention. At her door the first branch of hawthorn was always placed on May morning, and her Susan was usually Queen of the May. It was now time to choose the Queen. The setting sun shone full upon the pink blossoms of the hawthorn, when the merry group assembled upon their little green. Barbara was now walking in sullen state in her father’s garden. She heard the busy voices in the lane, and she concealed herself behind the high hedge, that she might listen to their conversation. “Where’s Susan?” were the first unwelcome words which she overheard. “Ay, where’s Susan?” repeated Philip, stopping short in the middle of a new tune that he was playing on his pipe. “I wish Susan would come! I want her to sing me this same tune over again; I have not it yet.” “And I wish Susan would come, I’m sure,” cried a little girl, whose lap was full of primroses. “Susan will give me some thread to tie up my nosegays, and she’ll show me where the fresh violets grow; and she has promised to give me a great bunch of her double cowslips to wear to-morrow. I wish she would come.” “Nothing can be done without Susan! She always shows us where the nicest flowers are to be found in the lanes and meadows,” said they. “She must make up the garlands; and she shall be Queen of the May!” exclaimed a multitude of little voices. “But she does not come!” said Philip. Rose, who was her particular friend, now came forward to assure the impatient assembly, “that she would answer for it Susan would come as soon as she possibly could, and that she probably was detained by business at home.” The little electors thought that all business should give way to theirs, and Rose was dispatched to summon her friend immediately. “Tell her to make haste,” cried Philip. “Attorney Case dined at the Abbey to-day—luckily for us. If he comes home and finds us here, maybe he’ll drive us away; for he says this bit of ground belongs to his garden: though that is not true, I’m sure; for Farmer Price knows, and says, it was always open to the road. The Attorney wants to get our playground, so he does. I wish he and his daughter Bab, or Miss Barbara, as she must now be called, were a hundred miles off, out of our way, I know. No later than yesterday she threw down my nine-pins in one of her ill-humours, as she was walking by with her gown all trailing in the dust.”