"Shut your eyes till I get in the kitchen – something nice!" Was Sonny's cry, as my two tousled blue-overalled youngsters tumbled in the back door at noon the other day. And when I "shut my eyes" and held out my hand. I was given five stubby, grimy, crushed little dandelions, the first we've seen the season. Of course, to mothers, the dandelions her babies bring her are the sweetest flowers that blow, and I made a proper fuss over them, and listened as best I could while I put dinner on the table to the whole detailed story of where they were found, and how hard they were to get.
You see, the boys had made a couple of wheel stick or stick wheels, I never can remember which it is. But you find an old, rusty wheel, and size, but preferably small, and onto it, you bolt a stick, any length and shape and condition, but preferably not too rough and about 3 feet long. Sometimes it takes quite a while to find a bolt with a burr that will fit and that isn't too rusty to use, but it is a happy search if it takes all forenoon. But anyway, on this particular morning luck was with the boys and they got their wheel sticks made early, and then they felt an urgent call to go down the road and show them to their little chums, two boys of corresponding ages in a neighboring family. These wheel sticks are not for anything in particular, but you push them and run and it's so pleasant to guide them and make them go fast. If you are big enough for your daddy to let you stand on the running board of the car, you can trail the wheel stick on the ground and wee, but it goes! But if you're too little for that, you have to just run on your own chubby feet as fast as you can.
Spied Something Yellow
After they showed the wheel stick to the boys and helped them find supplies to make some for themselves, and then started home, why, right across the ditch they saw something yellow. It was in a hard place, but they got over, and sure enough it was dandelions, two of them. And so after they got those, they watched pretty close the rest of the way of home, and finally, they found three more, and here they were.
We floated them in a white saucer, and they made a cheerful centerpiece for the dining table. And radiant with satisfaction of a good deed well appreciated. Sonny announced beautifully, "after nap we're going to hunt up a big bunch and take it to Miss Anna." (For our teacher is still dreadfully ill at the hospital, and will not be strong for a long time.) Brother boy squelched him with his superior grant. "Won't do for that," he said, and I thought with one of those her little twinges that comes so often to mothers when the little ones are growing out of babyhood, "has he already learned that is only to mothers that these common little furry golden balls are sweet, and to them only because their own darlings made the effort to get them? Is he already touched by that melody which gets us all – that is not the love in the effort alone count but what other people think
But no! He is still just a baby, unsullieded by convention. "Won't do for that," he said. "Stems too short. Wouldn't have a vase to fit 'em so we can't carry the dandelions to the hospital, where the grown-ups might be embarrassed less someone think we didn't know any better. We'll just wait until we find some more some weeds with longer stems." – Hope.