But in the midst of all the trouble, May would come
tripping over the rocks,--a little sunburnt girl now, with tattered
clothes and bare feet,--and she would bring a pretty pink conch-shell or
the lovely rose-colored sea-mosses, and tell her funny little story of
where she found them. The discontented people would gather around her:
she would give a sailor kiss to one, and a French kiss to another, and,
best of all, a Yankee kiss, with both arms round his neck, to her own
dear father; and then, somehow or other, the discontent and trouble
would be gone, for a little while at least,--just as a cloud sometimes
seems to melt away in the sunshine; and so May Warner earned the name of
"Little Sunshine."
If anybody had picked up driftwood enough to make a fire, and could get
an old battered kettle and some water to make a soup of shell fish,
"Little Sunshine" must be invited to dinner, for half the enjoyment
would be wanting without her.
If a great black cloud came up threatening a shower, the roughest man on
the island forgot his own discomfort, in making a tent to keep "Little
Sunshine" safe from the rain. And so, in a thousand ways, she cheered
the weary days, making everybody happier for having her there.
Do you think there are any children who would have made the people less
happy by being there? who would have complained and fretted, and been
selfish and disagreeable?
Ten days go by, so slowly that they seem more like weeks or months than
like days.
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