“Yes. Now order the carriage and I’ll go with you on your rounds and make a list as we do so of how many will need to be provided for. We shall have a busy week before us.”
“But a happy one, Grandmother. Your face is shining already, even more than usual. I believe in your heart of hearts you love girls better than anything else in this world.”
“Maybe. Except—boys.”
“And flowers, and animals. How they will enjoy the conservatories! And it wouldn’t be wrong, would it, to have out the horses between times on Sunday and let these young things, who’d never had a chance, see how glorious a feeling it is to ride a fine horse? Just around the park, you know.”
“Which would be quite as far as most of them would care to ride, I fancy, for there are very few people who call their first experience on horseback a ‘glorious’ one.”
It was a busy week indeed, but a joyful one, full of anticipation concerning the coming festivities. Never had the Sun Maid appeared younger or gayer or entered more heartily into the preparations for entertainment. A dozen times, maybe, during those mornings of shopping and ordering and superintending, did she exclaim with fervor:
“Thank God for Gaspar’s money, that makes us able to give others pleasure!”
“Grandmother, even for a foreign nobleman you wouldn’t do half so much!”
“Foreign? No, indeed. To all their due; and to our own young Americans, these toilers who are the glory of our nation, let every deference be paid. Did you write about the orchestra? That was to play during Saturday’s supper?”