All a-tremble she stepped off the platform, and with scarlet face and tearful eyes passed down the aisle between the double row of visitors, whose looks of sympathy her distorted imagination turned into looks of derision at her distress. But the tears should not fall, and she would not lower her head. As she reached her seat she caught a look of amusement on the face of Myrtle Emmons, who sat at the desk immediately behind her own. It was that that gave her the bit over her runaway self-possession. Myrtle was somewhat noted for making fun of people. She would show Myrtle how little she cared.
Disregarding Myrtle’s nudge, she concentrated her attention upon the beautifully decorated school-room. It had been transformed into a veritable bower, not with boughs of pine and cedar as in the Eastern States, but with fragrant branches of catalpa with their great clusters of snowy blossoms and with immense sprays of feathery asparagus. The platform, as well as the teacher’s desk at the back of it, was banked with potted ferns and palms and flowering plants. The beribboned waste-basket formed a huge bouquet of feathery greenery, amidst which tall, graceful sunflowers bowed their golden heads. That artistic touch was her own, and she gazed at it with pride. Sunflowers and asparagus adorned the pictures and caught up the folds of the large flag draped gracefully over the front blackboard, and of the bright bunting festooned around the walls.
Flags and sunflowers, sunflowers and flags—a combination so popular that she should always associate the golden emblem-flower of her State with the glorious emblem of her country. They had devoted more time than usual to their decorations, for, the following Monday being Memorial Day, they had turned their “last day” exercises into a memorial service. Owing to the naval victory of scarce a month previous, patriotism was at a white heat, and patriotic selections of spirit shared the honors with tributes to the dead—both the Blue and the Gray, sectionalism being forgotten in the new union of the North and the South.
But it did not require recent victory to stir Sidney’s enthusiasm; she was at all times intensely patriotic. As a small child, a mere babe, she had listened enthralled to her father’s tales of the Civil War, through many of whose terrible battles he had passed. She invariably chose patriotic selections to speak. Such a deed as described in the “Dandy Fifth” made her forget herself. And now, of all times, to fail to-day! The school were singing softly:
“Cover them over—yes, cover them over—
Parent and husband, and brother, and lover:
Crown in your hearts those dead heroes of ours.
And cover them over with beautiful flowers.”
How she would love to lay a tribute of flowers upon the graves of the Dandy Fifth’s many dead heroes! And, oh, shame! she had failed to give them even the tribute of honor due them—failed miserably!
“Lying so silent by night and by day,