"What we've got is
ours," she said to herself.
As she sat there a band of children went past, with a shrill, sweet
clamor of voices. They were out hanging May-baskets and bunches of
anemones. That was the favorite sport of the village children during
the month of May. The woods were full of soft, innocent, seeking
faces, bending over the delicate bells nodding in the midst of whorls
of dark leaves. Every evening, after sundown, there were mysterious
bursts of laughter and tiny scamperings around doors, and great balls
of bloom swinging from the latchets when they were opened; but no
person in sight, only soft gurgles of mirth and delight sounded
around a corner of darkness.
After Charlotte went to bed that night she thought she heard somebody
at the south door. "It is the children with some may-flowers," she
thought. But presently she reflected that it was very late for the
children to be out.
After a little while she got up, and stole down-stairs to the door,
feeling her way through the dark house.
She opened the south door cautiously, and put her hand out. There
were no flowers swinging from the latch as she half expected. Her
bare feet touched something on the door-step; she stooped, and there
was a great package.
Charlotte took it up, and went noiselessly back to her room with it.
She lighted a candle, and unfastened the paper wrappings.
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