Arbor Day was the most beautiful day you ever saw. Not too warm, or too cool, or too wet, or too dry, or too cloudy, or too bright—but just perfect in every way. The festival was to be held both afternoon and evening, and Miss Larkin told the children they might go at two o’clock, when it opened, and stay until nine at night.
Of course, this meant they would eat their supper there, which was a satisfactory arrangement to them all.
Marjorie and Delight had dresses just alike, of orange-colored cheesecloth, bordered with green leaves. The leaves had been added, because they were suggestive of trees, and also because they made the dresses more becoming. Indeed, the orange color suited Marjorie’s dark eyes and curls better than it did Delight’s fair hair and pink-and-white complexion; but the decoration of green leaves made Delight look like a sort of wood-nymph. The Maynard carriage took the two girls over first, before Miss Larkin and her aids went, and Miss Merington welcomed them warmly.
She had not desired their help in the arranging of her tree, so Marjorie and Delight had not seen the festival before at all.
As they entered the door, they stopped, enchanted.
Surely, the old Town Hall had never before responded so nobly to beautifying efforts. Across one end was a grape-vine, trained over a rustic pergola.
Here, young ladies, garbed as Italian peasants, served such refreshments as grape-juice, grape-sherbert, white grapes, grape-salad, grape-jelly, and preserved grapes. The little tables looked very tempting, and though the grape-vine and leaves were all artificial, the effect was very fine indeed.
The girls laughed heartily at the next “tree,” for it was a pair-tree!
Suspended from its branches were pairs of all sorts of things: scissors, slippers, gloves, mittens, earrings, bracelets, cuffs—in fact, everything that comes in pairs seemed to be there. This tree was presided over by two young ladies who were twins, and as they were dressed exactly alike, they made a most pleasing “pair.”
“Ho! look at that tall tree!” cried Marjorie, as they came to an affair that looked like a flagpole with a lot of palm-leaf fans at its top.