Ethel Morton's Enterprise Part 25

"I always have yellow or white or pink flowers in the dark corner of our sitting room," said Mrs. Smith. "The blue ones or the deep red ones or the ferns may have the sunny spots."

"Father insists on yellow blossoms of some kind in the library," added Mrs. Emerson. "He says they are as good as another electric light to brighten the shadowy side where the bookcases are."

"I remember seeing a gay array of window boxes at Stratford-on-Avon, once upon a time," contributed Mrs. Morton. "It was a suns.h.i.+ny day when I saw them, but they were well calculated to enliven the very grayest weather that England can produce. I was told that the house belonged to Marie Corelli, the novelist."

"What plants did she have?" asked Dorothy.

"Blue lobelia and scarlet geraniums and some frisky little yellow bloom; I couldn't see exactly what it was."

"Red and yellow and blue," repeated Ethel Brown. "Was it pretty?"

"Very. Plenty of each color and all the boxes alike all over the front of the house."

"We shouldn't need such vividness under our brilliant American skies,"

commented Mrs. Smith. "Plenty of green with flowers of one color makes a window box in the best of taste, to my way of thinking."

"And that color one that is becoming to the house, so to speak," smiled Helen. "I saw a yellow house the other day that had yellow flowers in the window boxes. They were almost extinguished by their background."

"I saw a white one in Glen Point with white daisies, and the effect was the same," added Margaret. "The poor little flowers were lost. There are ivies and some small evergreen shrubs that the greenhouse-men raise especially for winter window boxes now. I've been talking a lot with the nurseryman at Glen Point and he showed me some the other day that he warranted to keep fresh-looking all through the cold weather unless there were blizzards."

"We must remember those at Sweetbrier Lodge," Mrs. Smith said to Dorothy.

"Why don't you give a talk on arranging flowers as part of the program this evening?" Margaret asked Mrs. Smith.

"Do, Aunt Louise. You really ought to," urged Helen, and the Ethels added their voices.

"Give a short talk and ill.u.s.trate it by the examples the girls have been arranging," Mrs. Morton added, and when Mrs. Emerson said that she thought the little lecture would have real value as well as interest Mrs. Smith yielded.

"Say what you and Grandmother have been telling us and you won't need to add another thing," cried Helen. "I think it will be the very best number on the program."

"I don't believe it will compete with the side show in the yard,"

laughed Mrs. Smith, "but I'm quite willing to do it if you think it will give any one pleasure."

"But you'll be part of the side show in the yard," and they explained the latest plan of running the program.

When the flowers had all been arranged to their satisfaction the girls went into the yard where they found the tables and chairs placed for the serving of the refreshments. The furniture had been supplied by the local confectioner who was to furnish the ice cream and give the management a percentage of what was received. The cake was all supplied by the ladies of the town and the money obtained from its sale was clear profit.

The girls covered the bleakness of the plain tables by placing a centrepiece of radiating ferns flat on the wood. On that stood a small vase, each one having flowers of but one color, and each one having a different color.

Under the trees among the refreshment tables, but not in their way, were the sales tables. On one, cut flowers were to be sold; on another, potted plants, and a special corner was devoted to wild plants from the woods. A seedsman had given them a liberal supply of seeds to sell on commission, agreeing to take back all that were not sold and to contribute one per cent. more than he usually gave to his sales people, "for the good of the cause."

Every one in the whole town who raised vegetables had contributed to the Housewives' Table, and as the names of the donors were attached the table had all the attraction of an exhibit at a county fair and was surrounded all the time by so many men that the women who bought the vegetables for home use had to be asked to come back later to get them, so that the discussion of their merits among their growers might continue with the specimens before them.

"That's a hint for another year," murmured Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown.

"We can have a make-believe county fair and charge admission, and give medals--"

"Of pasteboard."

"Exactly. I'm glad we thought to have a table of the school garden products; all the parents will be enormously interested. It will bring them here, and they won't be likely to go away without: spending nickel or a dime on ice cream."

A great part of the attractiveness of the grounds was due to the contribution of a dealer in garden furniture. In return for being allowed to put up advertis.e.m.e.nts of his stock in suitable places where they would not be too conspicuous, he furnished several artistic settees, an arbor or two and a small pergola, which the Glen Point greenhouseman decorated in return for a like use of his advertising matter.

Still another table, under the care of Mrs. Montgomery, the wife of the editor, showed books on flowers and gardens and landscape gardening and took subscriptions for several of the garden and home magazines. Last of all a fancy table was covered with dolls and paper dolls dressed like the partic.i.p.ants in the floral procession that was soon to form and pa.s.s around the lawn; lamp shades in the form of huge flowers; hats, flower-trimmed; and half a hundred other small articles including many for ten, fifteen and twenty-five cents to attract the children.

At five o'clock the Flower Festival was opened and afternoon tea was served to the early comers. All the members of the United Service Club and the other boys and girls of the town who helped them wore flower costumes. It was while the Ethels were serving Mrs. Smith and the Miss Clarks that the latter called their attention to a man who sat at a table not far away.

"That man is your rival," they announced, smiling, to Mrs. Smith.

"My rival! How is that?" inquired Mrs. Smith.

"He wants to buy the field."

They all exclaimed and looked again at the man who sat quietly eating his ice cream as if he had no such dreadful intentions. The Ethels, however, recognized him as he pushed back a lock of hair that fell over his forehead.

"Why, that's our werwolf!" they exclaimed after taking a good look at him, and they explained how they had seen him several times in the field, always digging a stick into the ground and examining what it brought up.

"He says he's a botanist, and he finds so much to interest him in the field that he wants to buy it so that he may feel free to work there,"

said Miss Clark the younger.

"That's funny," commented Ethel Blue. "He almost never looks at any flowers or plants. He just pokes his stick in and that's all."

"He offered us a considerable sum for the property but we told him that you had an option on it, Mrs. Smith, and we explained that we couldn't give t.i.tle anyway."

"Did his interest seem to fail?"

"He asked us a great many questions and we told him all about our aunt and the missing cousin. I thought you might be interested to know that some one else besides yourself sees some good in the land."

"It's so queer," said the other Miss Clark. "That land has never had an offer made for it and here we have two within a few weeks of each other."

"And we can't take advantage of either of them!"

The Ethels noticed later on that the man was joined by a girl about their own age. They looked at her carefully so that they would recognize her again if they saw her, and they also noticed that the werwolf, as he talked to her, so often pushed back from his forehead the lock of hair that fell over it that it had become a habit.

The full effect of the flower costumes was seen after the lanterns were lighted, when some of the young married women attended to the tables while their youngers marched around the lawn that all might see the costumes and be attracted to the entertainment in the hall and behind the screen in the open.

Roger led the procession, impersonating "Spring."

"That's a new one to me," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the editor of the _Star_ in surprise. "I always thought 'Spring' was of the feminine gender."

"Not this year," returned Roger merrily as he pa.s.sed by.

He was dressed like a tree trunk in a long brown cambric robe that fitted him closely and gave him at the foot only the absolute s.p.a.ce that he needed for walking. He carried real apple twigs almost entirely stripped of their leaves and laden with blossoms made of white and pink paper. The effect was of a generously flowering apple tree and every one recognized it.

Behind Roger came several of the spring blossoms--the Ethels first, representing the yellow crocus and the violet. Ethel Brown wore a white dress covered with yellow gauze sewn with yellow crocuses. A ring of crocuses hung from its edge and a crocus turned upside down made a fascinating cap. All the flowers were made of tissue paper. Ethel Blue's dress was fas.h.i.+oned in the same way, her violet gauze being covered with violets and her cap a tiny lace affair with a violet border. In her case she was able to use many real violets and to carry a basket of the fresh flowers. The contents was made up of small bunches of b.u.t.tonhole size and she stepped from the procession at almost every table to sell a bunch to some gentleman sitting there. A scout kept the basket always full.

St.u.r.dy James made a fine appearance in the spring division in the costume of a red and yellow tulip. He wore long green stockings and a striped tulip on each leg const.i.tuted his breeches. Another, with the points of the petals turning upwards, made his jacket, and yet another, a small one, upside down, served as a cap. James had been rather averse to appearing in this costume because Margaret had told him he looked bulbous and he had taken it seriously, but he was so applauded that he came to the conclusion that it was worth while to be a bulb if you could be a good one.

Helen led the group of summer flowers. As "Summer" she wore bunches of all the flowers in the garden, arranged harmoniously as in one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned bouquets her grandmother had spoken of in the morning. It had been a problem to keep all these blossoms fresh for it would not be possible for her to wear artificial flowers. The Ethels had found a solution, however, when they brought home one day from the drug store several dozen tiny gla.s.s bottles. Around the neck of each they fastened a bit of wire and bent it into a hook which fitted into an eye sewed on to the old but pretty white frock which Helen was sacrificing to the good cause. After she had put on the dress each one of these bottles was fitted with its flowers which had been picked some time before and revived in warm water and salt so that they would not wilt.