Every day Roxy was busy from early morning until late in the afternoon, either at work with scissors and water-color paints, or running down to the big sycamore to plan just where the tent should stand, and decide on the best place for Grandma Miller.
“There ought to be a special seat for Grandma,” she said on the day before the party, as she and her mother walked up the path to the sycamore.
“Of course,” Mrs. Delfield agreed; “and if it was right here against the tree she could see the guests as they came up the path and be ready to welcome them. We could make a seat of moss.”
“So we could!” exclaimed Roxy. “There’s quantities of nice gray moss along the ledges and under the beech trees! Can’t we make it now, Mother?”
“Of course we can,” said Mrs. Delfield, and they at once started off up the pasture slope and gathered armfuls of the clean gray moss from the ledges and under the beech trees and heaped it up to make a comfortable seat under the sycamore; and when they had finished Roxy felt she could hardly wait for the next morning to come when Polly and her father were to put up a small white tent for the circus.
The morning of July twentieth was clear and pleasant, and Roxy was up at an early hour and ran to her grandma’s room to wish her a happy birthday. At breakfast time Mrs. Delfield gave her mother a pretty lace collar, and Roxy presented her with a frilled white apron that she had made, and Mrs. Miller declared that it was the happiest birthday breakfast she had ever had.
“But I can’t imagine what ails Dulcie this morning,” she said. “She has been talking to herself and chuckling as if something wonderful was about to happen!”
It was difficult for Roxy to keep quiet, and as soon as breakfast was over she ran up to her room for the boxes that held the paper animals and then hurried off toward the sycamore where she found Polly and Mr. Lawrence awaiting her. Mr. Lawrence had brought the white canvas tent and set it up on the smooth field just beyond the big tree.
It was not a very large tent, and the girls decided to leave one side open.
“Then everyone can see in,” said Roxy. Mr. Lawrence set two flat boxes at the closed end of the tent, and Polly and Roxy brought ferns and wild flowers and fastened them over the rough sides and ends, leaving the tops of the boxes uncovered; for the paper animals were to be set out in a “procession.”