After the conclusion of this little talk (for it was that rather than a set speech), the children gathered up their lunch baskets and boxes, each party sought the spot that pleased it best, and soon the hillside was dotted with groups of boys and girls engaged in disposing of sandwiches, pickles, pies, cakes, fruit, and so on, with great enjoyment and good appetites.
The afternoon was passed most pleasantly by Winnifred and her own special friends, reinforced by many of the girls and boys of her class. Games of all sorts were indulged in with unflagging energy and good spirits for two or three hours.
About four o'clock Fannie's parents came for her in a carriage. Soon after Winnifred's mother arrived on the scene with little Ralph, and they were shown the trees which had just been planted and told about all the events of the day. By this time nearly every one was making preparations to leave, and by five o'clock the park was almost deserted and the happy day had become only a memory. But the seeds of thought planted there fell not altogether on stony ground, and were destined to bear fruit at some future day.
Indeed, the very next morning Ralph insisted on having an Arbor Day of his own, and he put in the ground a branch of willow, which took root and thrived, growing so rapidly that in a few years it was taller than himself; and each spring, when it put forth its delicate gray-green foliage, it recalled to Winnifred that most delightful Arbor Day.
CHAPTER XV.
GRETCHEN'S KAFFEEKLATCH.
Another year of Gretta's life had rolled around and brought with it her thirteenth birthday. The little club of "warriors" had not been without its influence upon her behavior, and she had become so ready to enter upon her duties, so cheerful in performing them, and so much less resentful in accepting the reproof which was perhaps too frequent in that busy and overworked household, that her elder sister—whom she had so complained of when the subject of forming their club was first mentioned—had decided that Gretta must have a little birthday party, and asked her whom she wished to invite.
Gretta was greatly delighted, for she had long been wishing to have a meeting of the club at her home, but had hardly known how to broach the subject. She immediately gave her sister the list, and while the latter was somewhat surprised that it should be so small, it was something of a relief to find what she had thought would be quite an undertaking so greatly simplified. It was decided that the girls should be invited to come at four o'clock and that supper should be served at half past five.
Promptly at the hour named Winnifred and Miriam appeared, followed soon after by Fannie, and then by Ernestine. The door was opened by the smiling-faced, German maid-of-all-work, and the girls were met at the foot of the stairs by Gretta, who took them up to the library on the second floor. "Here we will have no one to bother us," said Gretta. "My mother is out of the city on a visit to my uncle, and my sister has a music pupil in the parlor, so we'll have the library all to ourselves."
"How jolly!" said Miriam, looking around. "Oh, here is a big reclining-chair! We'll call it the president's chair, and Winnifred shall occupy it, because she was the first one to think of this club."