"We could get along so much faster, if every one was pleasant," sighed Rosemary to her brother. "Fannie Mears has a dozen pin-cushions to make and she made twelve of us promise to take one and finish it for the fancy-work table; and then she wouldn't help iron the napkins for the cake plates. She said it wasn't her table and she didn't intend to waste her time. Harriet Reed heard her and she was so mad she ripped up the pincushion she had just sewed and the sewing teacher found it in the waste-basket and she says Harriet has to buy material to replace the stuff she tore and she can't go home after school to-morrow until she has made another pincushion."
"Well, I don't think Harriet helped her cause much," said the doctor pacifically.
"Well Fannie Mears is too mean," said Rosemary. "It isn't a very nice thing to say, Hugh—"
"Then don't say it, dear," he countered promptly. "Don't gossip, Rosemary. I know of nothing harder on the nerves and temper than a fair, and if you can keep cheerful and serene and not quarrel with your friends and above all, don't talk about them in their absence, you will have done better than most fair workers twice your age."
Rosemary remembered this bit of advice often in the turbulent days that followed. Fannie Mears was one of those girls who manage to sow discord and dissension wherever they go. She had a tireless industry that commended her to her teachers and she was always ready to accept additional tasks and duties. What they did not see was that she distributed these tasks among her friends and the girls in the lower grades and then was unwilling to help them in turn.
"I suppose you've heard what Fannie Mears and Nina Edmonds have done now?" remarked Sarah one noon period when the fair was a scant week off.
"No, what?" asked Rosemary who avoided Nina's name whenever possible.
"Why they've taken three dozen needle-books that have to have the flannel leaves tied in them with ribbon," explained Sarah. "See, Shirley has four to do. Fannie and Nina promised Miss Carlson they'd do them, and now they've handed them all out in the primary grades. They wanted me to do six, but I wouldn't."
Sarah was engrossed with the gold fish which had already arrived and were housed in the natural history room in the high school building. She visited them several times daily and in his heart Mr. Martin, the biology teacher feared she would kill them with kindness before the fair opened.
"Shirley doesn't mind tying the leaves in, do you dear?" asked Rosemary cheerfully.