The plan is to hang a
basket of wild flowers at the door of a friend, ring the bell or rattle
the latch, and then scamper off as fast as you can. You have to be
very spry so as to be back at home when your own baskets begin to
arrive; then you must be quick to run out and, if possible, catch the
friend who knocks, and thus find out whom to thank for the flowers."
"How delightful!" cried Frances, charmed at the prospect.
"It is so strange that you did not know about it!" added Ellen.
"Not at all," said Mrs. Moore, who had come out on the veranda where
the young folks were chatting,--Frances swinging in the hammock, Ellen
ensconced in a rustic chair with her fancy-work, and Joe leaning
against a post, and still busy whittling. "Not at all," repeated
Ellen's mother. "In America it is but little observed outside of the
Eastern States. This is one of the beautiful traditionary customs of
Catholic England, which even those austere Puritans, the Pilgrims,
could not entirely divest themselves of; though among them it lost its
former significance. Perhaps it was the gentle Rose Standish or fair
Priscilla, or some other winsome and good maiden of the early colonial
days, who transplanted to New England this poetic practice, sweet as
the fragrant pink and white blossoms of the trailing arbutus, which is
especially used to commemorate it.
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