Carol and Sherm nodded.
“One apiece—my, this looks exciting. Somebody is to be very specially honored I see. It is too late to make the kind the little girls have, but you might buy some tiny baskets—I’d love to trim them up for you. Got any money, boys?”
An exhaustive search of trousers’ pockets revealed a combined capital of twenty-five cents. The boys asked anxiously if it were enough.
“Yes, for three. Are you getting this for Chicken Little, Ernest?”
Ernest got red and looked uncomfortable.
“Never mind—I didn’t mean to be prying—only I wish you big boys would hang some for the little girls—it would please them to death. If you don’t mind my having a part in this. I’d like to put in a little money, too. Let me put in another quarter and I’ll do the trimming and you boys can repay me by hanging a basket to each of the little girls as well as to your own friends.”
The bargain was speedily struck and the boys hurried off downtown for the baskets and the ribbon for the tiny bows Marian had decided should adorn them.
They came back so quickly, it made Marian breathless to think of the pace they must have gone. Carol didn’t come straight either. He slipped round by home to beg some blossoms from his mother’s house plants. Not finding her, he promptly helped himself to all her most cherished blooms to her surprise and wrath when she discovered her loss.
Marian filled in with her own flowers and the boys hung round admiring, waiting upon her awkwardly and watching every move she made with the baskets.
“Is it all right?” she asked, holding up the first, filled with scarlet geraniums.