e you laughing at?"
she asked them in surprise. "I have a great big bowl with gold fish
in it and a lot of little bowls; and people buy the little bowls for
fifteen cents and I dip out two gold fish with a soup ladle for
twenty-five cents, and they take them home."

"I'm going to sell little baby bouquets," announced Shirley, who
looked like a "baby bouquet" herself in a pink challis frock. "I
have 'em on a tray and I walk around and people buy them for their
buttonholes."

"I'll be your first customer, sweetheart," Doctor Hugh assured her.

Preparations for the fair absorbed most of the after-school time of
the next two weeks. There were committee meetings and inter-class
conferences, and difficulties that required to be straightened out
and sensitive feelings that needed careful handling.

"We could get along so much faster, if every one was pleasant,"
sighed Rosemary to her brother. "Fannie Mears has a dozen
pin-cushions to make and she made twelve of us promise to take one
and finish it for the fancy-work table; and then she wouldn't help
iron the napkins for the cake plates. She said it wasn't her table
and she didn't intend to waste her time. Harriet Reed heard her and
she was so mad she ripped up the pincushion she had just sewed and
the sewing teacher found it in the waste-basket and she says Harriet
has to buy material to replace the stuff she tore and she can't go
home after school to-morrow until she has made another pincushion."

"Well, I don't think Harriet helped her cause much," said the doctor
pacifically.

"Well Fannie Mears is too mean," said Rosemary. "It isn't a very
nice thing to say, Hugh--"

"Then don't say it, dear," he countered promptly. "Don't gossip,
Rosemary. I know of nothing harder on the nerves and temper than a
fair, and if you can keep cheerful and serene and not quarrel with
your friends and above all, don't talk about them in their absence,
you will have done better than most fair workers twice your age."

Rosemary remembered this bit of advice often in the turbulent days
that followed. Fannie Mears was one of those girls who manage to sow
discord and dissension wherever they go. She had a tireless industry
that commended her to her teachers and she was always ready to
accept additional tasks and duties. What they did not see was that
she distributed these tasks among her friends and the girls in the
lower grades and then was unwilling to help them in turn.

"I suppose you