“Are those roses in the big bowls tea-roses?” thought she. “I’ve heard of such a kind, but I didn’t know ’twas tea that made them so.”
The plants were in cups, and saucers, and basins, and everything else but flower-pots. There was a dew-plant in an iron kettle, spattered all over with little red blossoms, “like the measles,” Dotty thought. “And the caltycus had something else the matter, for it was covered with little white pimples.”
After the good lady had helped her forty plants to a cup of tea all around, it was time to hear the lessons. Tate was delighted to show the silver medal which hung from her neck by a blue ribbon, and was a sign that she stood at the head of her spelling class.
“Now school is done,” said Mrs. Piper, settling her false hair; “and as you’ve been pretty good children for the last four weeks, I suppose you all want to see my pictures?”
“Yes, ma’am,” cried the children, Johnny loudest of all.
“It isn’t what everybody would call pictures,” said Mrs. Piper, opening the bureau drawers in the entry, while no less than four cats sprang upon her, and playfully tried to assist her in taking out her treasures.
“No, I shouldn’t call them pictures,” thought Dotty, as Mrs. Piper held them so high that she saw nothing but a rough, dark surface.
“Looks to me like hemlock bark,” thought Johnny, and decided at once that he had been right in the first place, and the woman was certainly crazy.
Mrs. Piper set the pictures on a table. A murmur of surprise arose from the lips of Johnny and Dotty.
“A camp-meeting, little dears,” explained Mrs. Piper, pointing to several wee tents made of white cloth, and spread around on the smooth surface of the bark, which had been covered with moss to imitate grass. There were sprigs of evergreen stuck in for trees; and here and there a bit of broken looking-glass served for a brook. But the men and women formed the most attractive part of the scene. These were little rag babies as long as your finger, dressed for church; the men in long-tailed coats and stove-pipe hats, the women in gowns of all colors, and bonnets trimmed with tiny feathers, or very narrow taste. The preachers stood outside the tents, holding little things in their hands which Mrs. Piper said were hymn-books and Bibles, though they looked like bits of paper. The preachers were looking at the hymns with their little beads of eyes, and reading them aloud with their red worsted mouths. The men and women who seemed to be doing nothing at all but try to keep from tipping over, were actually singing, only the music, like the rippling of the looking-glass brooks, was so very low that it couldn’t be heard.