"And string an electric light wire over them. I begin to get enthusiastic," cried Roger. "We could amuse, say, a hundred people at a time at ten cents apiece, in the side-show corner and keep them away from the other more crowded regions."

"Exactly," agreed Dorothy; "and if you can think of any other side show that the people will like better than Punch and Judy, why, put it in instead."

"We might have finger shadows--rabbits' and dogs' heads and so on; George Foster does them splendidly, and then have some one recite and some one else do a monologue in costume."

"Aren't we going to have that sort of thing inside?"

"I suppose so, but if your idea is to give more s.p.a.ce inside, considering that all Rosemont is expected to come to this festivity, we might as well have a performance in two rings, so to speak."

"Especially as some of the people might be a little shy about coming inside," suggested Dorothy.

"Why not forget Punch and Judy and have the same performance exactly in both places?" demanded Roger, quite excited with his idea. "The Club gives a flower dance, for instance, in the hall; then they go into the yard and give it there in the ten cent enclosure while number two of the program is on the platform inside. When number two is done inside it is put on outside, and so right through the whole performance."

"That's not bad except that the outside people are paying ten cents to see the show and the inside people aren't paying anything."

"Well, then, why not have the tables where you sell things--if you are going to have any?"--

"We are," Helen responded to the question in her brother's voice.

"--have your tables on the lawn, and have everybody pay to see the performance--ten cents to go inside or ten cents to see the same thing in the enclosure?"

"That's the best yet," decided Ethel Brown. "That will go through well if only it is pleasant weather."

"I feel in my bones it will be," and Ethel Blue laughed hopefully.

The appointed day was fair and not too warm. The whole U.S.C. which went on duty at the school house early in the day, p.r.o.nounced the behavior of the weather to be exactly what it ought to be.

The boys gave their attention to the arrangement of the screen of boughs in the corner of the school lot, and the girls, with Mrs. Emerson, Mrs.

Morton and Mrs. Smith, decorated the hall. Flowers were to be sold everywhere, both indoors and out, so there were various tables about the room and they all had contributed vases of different sorts to hold the blossoms.

"I must say, I don't think these look pretty a bit," confessed Dorothy, gazing with her head on one side at a large bowl of flowers of all colors that she had placed in the middle of one of the tables.

Her mother looked at it and smiled.

"Don't try to show off your whole stock at once," she advised. "Have a few arranged in the way that shows them to the best advantage and let Ethel Blue draw a poster stating that there are plenty more behind the scenes. Have your supply at the back or under the table in large jars and bowls and replenish your vases as soon as you sell their contents."

The Ethels and Dorothy thought this was a sensible way of doing things and said so, and Ethel Blue at once set about the preparation of three posters drawn on brown wrapping paper and showing a girl holding a flower and saying "We have plenty more like this. Ask for them." They proved to be very pretty and were put up in the hall and the outside enclosure and on the lawn.

"There are certain kinds of flowers that should always be kept low,"

explained Mrs. Smith as they all sorted over the cut flowers that had been contributed. "Flowers that grow directly from the ground like crocuses or jonquils or daffodils or narcissus--the spring bulbs--should be set into flat bowls through netting that will hold them upright.

There are bowls sold for this purpose."

"Don't they call them 'pansy bowls'?"

"I have heard them called that. Some of them have a pierced china top; others have a silver netting. You can make a top for a bowl of any size by cutting chicken wire to suit your needs."

"I should think a low-growing plant like ageratum would be pretty in a vase of that sort."

"It would, and pansies, of course, and anemones--windflowers--held upright by very fine netting and nodding in every current of air as if they were still in the woods."

"I think I'll make a covering for a gla.s.s bowl we have at home,"

declared Ethel Brown, who was diligently snipping ends of stems as she listened.

"A gla.s.s bowl doesn't seem to me suitable," answered her aunt. "Can you guess why?"

Ethel Brown shook her head with a murmured "No." It was Della who offered an explanation.

"The stems aren't pretty enough to look at," she suggested. "When you use a gla.s.s bowl or vase the stems you see through it ought to be graceful."

"I think so," responded Mrs. Smith. "That's why we always take pleasure in a tall slender gla.s.s vase holding a single rose with a long stem still bearing a few leaves. We get the effect that it gives us out of doors."

"That's what we like to see," agreed Mrs. Morton. "Narcissus springing from a low bowl is an application of the same idea. So are these few sprays of clematis waving from a vase made to hang on the wall. They aren't crowded; they fall easily; they look happy."

"And in a room you would select a vase that would harmonize with the coloring," added Margaret, who was mixing sweetpeas in loose bunches with feathery gypsophila.

"When we were in j.a.pan Dorothy and I learned something about the j.a.panese notions of flower arrangement," continued Mrs. Smith. "They usually use one very beautiful dominating blossom. If others are added they are not competing for first place but they act as helpers to add to the beauty of the main attraction."

"We've learned some of the j.a.panese ways," said Mrs. Emerson. "I remember when people always made a bouquet perfectly round and of as many kinds of flowers as they could put into it."

"People don't make 'bouquets' now; they gather a 'bunch of flowers,' or they give you a single bloom," smiled her daughter. "But isn't it true that we get as much pleasure out of a single superb chrysanthemum or rose as we do out of a great ma.s.s of them?"

"There are times when I like ma.s.ses," admitted Mrs. Emerson. "I like flowers of many kinds if the colors are harmoniously arranged, and I like a mantelpiece banked with the kind of flowers that give you pleasure when you see them in ma.s.ses in the garden or the greenhouse."

"If the vases they are in don't show," warned Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Emerson agreed to that.

"The choice of vases is almost as important as the choice of flowers,"

she added. "If the stems are beautiful they ought to show and you must have a transparent vase, as you said about the rose. If the stems are not especially worthy of admiration the better choice is an opaque vase of china or pottery."

"Or silver or copper?" questioned Margaret.

"Metals and blossoms never seem to me to go well together," confessed Mrs. Emerson. "I have seen a copper cup with a bunch of violets loosely arranged so that they hung over the edge and the copper glinted through the blossoms and leaves and the effect was lovely; but flowers to be put into metal must be chosen with that in mind and arranged with especial care."

"Metal _jardinieres_ don't seem suitable to me, either," confessed Mrs.

Emerson. "There are so many beautiful potteries now that it is possible to something harmonious for every flowerpot."

"You don't object to a silver centrepiece on the dining table, do you?"

"That's the only place where it doesn't seem out of place," smiled Mrs.

Emerson. "There are so many other pieces of silver on the table that it is merely one of the articles of table equipment and therefore is not conspicuous. Not a standing vase, mind you!" she continued. "I don't know anything more irritating than to have to dodge about the centrepiece to see your opposite neighbor. It's a terrible bar to conversation."

They all had experienced the same discomfort, and they all laughed at the remembrance.

"A low bowl arranged flat is the rule for centrepieces," repeated Mrs.

Emerson seriously.

"Mother always says that gay flowers are the city person's greatest help in brightening up a dark room," said Della as she laid aside all the calliopsis from the flowers she was sorting. "I'm going to take a bunch of this home to her to-night."