CHAPTER XVII

A MAY-DAY RESOLUTION


The spring had been a late one at Harding, but it had come at last with a
sudden rush and a glare of breathless midsummer heat. The woods of
Paradise were alive with fresh young green, gay with bird songs, sweet
with the smell of growing things. The campus too was bright in its new
livery. The tulips in front of the Hilton House flaunted their scarlet
and gold cups in the sunshine. The great bed of narcissus around the side
entrance of college hall sweetened the air with its delicate perfume, and
out on the back campus the apple-trees, bare and brown only a day or so
before, were wrapped in a soft pink mist that presaged the coming glory
of bud and blossom.

It was there, in the square of dappled sunshine and shadow under the
apple-trees, at once the loveliest and most sequestered spot on the
campus, that the Harding girls were holding a May-day fete. It was a
strictly impromptu affair. Somebody had discovered at breakfast the day
before that to-morrow would be May-day, and somebody else had suggested
that as it was also Saturday, there ought to be some sort of celebration.
A May queen was decreed "too old"; a May masque too much trouble. Then
somebody said, "Let's all just dress up as little girls and roll hoops,"
and the idea met with instant favor. It was passed along at chapel and
morning classes, and at three o'clock the next afternoon the whole
college, its hair in waving curls or tightly braided pig-tails, its
skirts shortened, its waists lengthened and encircled by sashes, had
gathered in the space under the apple-trees, carrying hoops, dolls and
skipping ropes, intent on getting all the fun possible out of being