’Oh, no!’—­didn’t she, Mother?  She just twisted and twisted her hands, and said, ’I can’t.’  And Mother said, ’Mary, if you will be a brave girl about the doctor, I will make you a pink dress and a wreath of roses, and you shall ride with the others in the Flower Festibul!’ And she just said, ’Oo-oo!’—­didn’t she, Mother?  And she said she thought God sent you, didn’t she, Mother?”

“She did.”  Mrs. Burgoyne smiled through wet lashes.  Mrs. Brown wiped her own eyes against the baby’s fluffy mop.  “She’s a most pathetic little creature, this Mary Scott,” went on the other woman when Ellen had dashed away, “and I’m afraid she’s not the only one.  There’s my Miss Davids’ little sister; if I took her in, Miss Davids would be free for the day; and there’s a little deaf-mute whose mother runs the bakery.  And I told Mary we’d manage the baby, too, and that if she knew any other children who positively couldn’t come any other way, she must let me know.  Of course the school children are cared for, they will have seats right near the grand stand, and sing, and so on.  But I am really terrified about it, you’ll have to help me out.”

“I’ll do anything,” Mrs. Brown promised.

“I’ll do anything I can,” said Mrs. Lloyd, modestly, “I loathe and abominate children unless they’re decently dressed and smell of soap—­but I’ll run a machine, if some one’ll see that they don’t swarm over me.”

“I’ll put a barbed wire fence around you!” promised Mrs. Burgoyne, gaily.

Mrs. Carew, coming up, as she expressed it, “to gather up some children,” was decidedly optimistic about the plan.  “Nobody ever uses hydrangeas, because you can’t make artificial ones to fill in with,” she said, “so you can get barrels of them.”  Mrs. Burgoyne was enthusiastic over hydrangeas, “But it’s not the fancy touches that scare me,” she confessed; “it’s the awful practical side.”

“What does Barry think?” Mrs. Carew presently asked innocently.  Mrs. Burgoyne’s suddenly rosy face was not unobserved by any of the others.

“I haven’t seen him for several days, not since the night of my dinner,” she admitted; “I’ve been lazy, sending my work down to the office.  But I will see him right away.”

“He’s the one really to have ideas,” Mrs. Brown assured her.

CHAPTER XII

So Barry was invited up to the Hall to dinner, and found himself so instantly swept into the plan that he had no time to be self-conscious.  Dinner was served on the side porch, and the sunlight filtered across the white cloth, and turned the garden into a place of enchantment.  When Billy and the small girls had seized two cookies and two peaches apiece, and retired to the lawn to enjoy them, he and Sidney sat talking on in the pleasant dusk.

“You’ve asked eight, so far,” he said, as she was departing for the office an hour or so after dinner was finished, “but do you think that’s all?”