Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer — Part 32

“I guess you are about right, Lillie,” added Grace, “for we are awfully rusty on pioneer history. It always seemed so stupid at school, but we have learned a lot since we started naming our rallies after pioneer things, and trying to see what we can cram. Why, girls,” she cried suddenly, as if impelled by inspiration to tell the latest thing she had learned, “do you know that there were almost thirty children who came over with the Pilgrims in the _Mayflower_?”

“Well, I for one did not,” remarked Jessie candidly; “I didn’t know that the Pilgrims had any children; supposed they were just a lot of blue-nosed men who wore high ruffs and tall, round hats, and who went about with long faces, telling people they would go to the devil if they dared to smile.”

“There, Jess,” broke in Lillie Bell mischievously, “you needn’t get profane over it.”

“Of course they were grim and forbidding-looking,” supplemented Kitty, “and—”

“And sanctimonious,” added some one, “with their blue laws.”

“Girls, you are all wrong,” spoke up Helen, with a sort of call-you-down air, “it was the Connecticut elders who made the blue laws. The Pilgrims were sincere, earnest men. Remember what Mrs. Morrow said about them?”

There was a sudden silence for a moment, and then a faint voice was heard from the other end of the veranda. Every one pricked up her ears and craned her neck to see who was speaking.

“Ye Stars! it is the Flower of the Family,” whispered Edith; “what has come to her?”

The sweet, low voice went on slowly, perhaps a trifle unsteadily, “God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain into the wilderness.”

“Hooray for the Flower!” shouted some one, and then of course they all had to clap, while the editor-in-chief of the “Pioneer,” who was sitting next to the speaker, jotted down this little saying with the air of an expert reporter.

“Now, do you suppose,” went on Helen, “that these picked men—”

“This choice grain,” corrected the Sport softly, who was trying hard to create a laugh.

“Edith, please be serious,” admonished Helen, looking at that young lady with reproving eyes, but she was sitting with folded arms and eyes cast down, the picture of innocent and bland decorum.