On Monday the town awoke to the rumbling of waggons.  They came in from the plantations where since the early June daybreak Squire Willyams’s foresters and gardeners had been cutting young larches, firs, laurels, aucubas.  The waggons halted at every door and each householder took as much as he required.  So, all that day, Cai and ’Bias packed their arch with evergreens; until at five o’clock Mr Philp, happening along, could find no chink anywhere in its solid verdure.  He called his congratulations up to them as, high on ladders, they affixed flags to the corner poles and looped the whole with festoons of roses.

And now for the motto to crown the work!  Fancy Tabb coming up the roadway and pausing while she conned the structure, shading her eyes against the sun-rays that slanted over it, beheld Mrs Bowldler and Palmerston issue from the doorway in solemn procession, bearing between them a length of Turkey twill.  Mrs Bowldler passed one end up to Captain Hocken, high on his ladder:  Captain Hunken reached down and took the other end from Palmerston.  Between them, as they lifted the broad fillet above the archway, its folds fell apart, and she read:—­

MANY DAUGHTERS HAVE DONE VIRTUOUSLY
BUT THOU EXCELLEST THEM ALL.

“My!  I’d like to be a Queen!”

“If I had my way, you WOULD,” whispered Palmerston, who, edging close to her, had overheard.

“Eh?  Is that Fancy Tabb?” interrupted Cai.  He had happened to glance over his shoulder and spied her from the ladder.  “Well, and what d’ee think of it?” he asked, as one sure of the answer.

“I was sayin’ as I’d like to be a Queen,” said Fancy.  “Queen of England, I mean:  none of your second-bests.”

“Well, my dear,” Cai assured her, bustling down the ladder and staring up at the motto to make sure that it hung straight, “that you won’t never be:  but you’re among the many as have done virtuously, and God bless ’ee for it!  Which is pretty good for your age.”

“You’re not,” retorted the uncompromising child.

“Eh?”

“’Tis three days now since you’ve been near the old man, either one of ‘ee.  How would you like that, if you was goin’ to hell?”

“Hush ’ee now! . . .  ’Bias and me had clean forgot—­there’s so much to do in all these rejoicin’s!  Run back and tell ’n we’ll be down in half-an-hour, soon as we’ve tidied up here.”

On their way down to visit the sick man, Cai and ’Bias had to pause half-a-score of times at least to admire an arch or a decorated house-front.  For by this time even the laggards were out and working for the credit of Troy.

But no decorations could compare with their own.

“That’s a handsome bunch, missus,” called Cai to a very old woman, who, perched on a borrowed step-ladder, was nailing a sheaf of pink valerian (local name, “Pride of Troy”) over her door-lintel.  “Let me give ’ee a hand wi’ that hammer,” he offered; for her hand shook pitiably.