he girls covered the bleakness of the plain tables by placing a
centrepiece of radiating ferns flat on the wood. On that stood a small
vase, each one having flowers of but one color, and each one having a
different color.

Under the trees among the refreshment tables, but not in their way, were
the sales tables. On one, cut flowers were to be sold; on another,
potted plants, and a special corner was devoted to wild plants from the
woods. A seedsman had given them a liberal supply of seeds to sell on
commission, agreeing to take back all that were not sold and to
contribute one per cent. more than he usually gave to his sales people,
"for the good of the cause."

Every one in the whole town who raised vegetables had contributed to the
Housewives' Table, and as the names of the donors were attached the
table had all the attraction of an exhibit at a county fair and was
surrounded all the time by so many men that the women who bought the
vegetables for home use had to be asked to come back later to get them,
so that the discussion of their merits among their growers might
continue with the specimens before them.

"That's a hint for another year," murmured Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown.
"We can have a make-believe county fair and charge admission, and give
medals--"

"Of pasteboard."

"Exactly. I'm glad we thought to have a table of the school garden
products; all the parents will be enormously interested. It will bring
them here, and they won't be likely to go away without: spending nickel
or a dime on ice cream."

A great part of the attractiveness of the grounds was due to the
contribution of a dealer in garden furniture. In return for being
allowed to put up advertisements of his stock in suitable places where
they would not be too conspicuous, he furnished several artistic
settees, an arbor or two and a small pergola, which the Glen Point
greenhouseman decorated in return for a like use of his advertising
matter.

Still another table, under the care of Mrs. Montgomery, the wife of the
editor, showed books on flowers and gardens and landscape gardening and
took subscriptions for several of the garden and home magazines. Last of
all a fancy table was covered with dolls and paper dolls dressed like
the participants in the floral procession that was soon to form and pass
around the lawn; lamp shades in the form of huge flowers; hats,
flower-trimmed; and half a hundred other small articles including many
for ten, fift