"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was put on to from one to five committees—I mean most of them that works. The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them, serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each other, private.
"'What under the canopy is a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when we met at her house to plan about refreshments.
"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.
"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'
"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's what it is. From England.'
"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on things—it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis' Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o' some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers had ought to know.
"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I see,' she says, 'in the Caterer's Gazette a picture called "Marquee Decorated for Fête." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could a tent have anything to do with it?'
"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done, Abagail.'
"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names of and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the article about our Fourth flared out in the Friendship Daily and Red Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before: 'Garden Party.' 'All Day Fête.' 'Al Fresco Celebration,' the editors had wrote it up.