"That's the best yet," decided Ethel Brown. "That will go through well if only it is pleasant weather."
"I feel in my bones it will be," and Ethel Blue laughed hopefully.
The appointed day was fair and not too warm. The whole U.S.C. which went on duty at the school house early in the day, pronounced the behavior of the weather to be exactly what it ought to be.
The boys gave their attention to the arrangement of the screen of boughs in the corner of the school lot, and the girls, with Mrs. Emerson, Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith, decorated the hall. Flowers were to be sold everywhere, both indoors and out, so there were various tables about the room and they all had contributed vases of different sorts to hold the blossoms.
"I must say, I don't think these look pretty a bit," confessed Dorothy, gazing with her head on one side at a large bowl of flowers of all colors that she had placed in the middle of one of the tables.
Her mother looked at it and smiled.
"Don't try to show off your whole stock at once," she advised. "Have a few arranged in the way that shows them to the best advantage and let Ethel Blue draw a poster stating that there are plenty more behind the scenes. Have your supply at the back or under the table in large jars and bowls and replenish your vases as soon as you sell their contents."
The Ethels and Dorothy thought this was a sensible way of doing things and said so, and Ethel Blue at once set about the preparation of three posters drawn on brown wrapping paper and showing a girl holding a flower and saying "We have plenty more like this. Ask for them." They proved to be very pretty and were put up in the hall and the outside enclosure and on the lawn.
"There are certain kinds of flowers that should always be kept low," explained Mrs. Smith as they all sorted over the cut flowers that had been contributed. "Flowers that grow directly from the ground like crocuses or jonquils or daffodils or narcissus—the spring bulbs—should be set into flat bowls through netting that will hold them upright. There are bowls sold for this purpose."
"Don't they call them 'pansy bowls'?"