zzie, we shall be back before the speech-making begins. We would not
lose a word of that for a great deal," said Clifton, laughing.

Elizabeth stood looking after them, with a feeling of some discomfort.
It was very foolish for Clifton to make himself so conspicuous, she
thought, and then she turned at somebody's suggestion to go and look at
the tables before they were disturbed. Here she fell in with Katie
again, and with her cousin Betsey, and they all went together round the
tables.

They were twelve in number, and were capable of seating not quite five
hundred, but a great many people, and they were loaded with good things
of all sorts. The speakers' table was splendid with flowers and glass
and silver. The good and beautiful from all baskets, or a part of
whatever was best and most beautiful, had been reserved for it, and
Katie hoped that the stranger young lady had got a good view of it. The
other tables were leaded also. There did not seem to be a full supply
of plates and knives and things on some of them, but that would
doubtless be considered a secondary matter as long as the good things
lasted; and there seemed little chance of their failing.

The supply reserved for the second tables, and even for the third and
fourth tables, seemed to Miss Elizabeth to be inexhaustible. Baskets of
cookies and doughnuts, and little cakes of all kinds; great trays of
tartlets and crullers, boxes of biscuits, and buns and rolls of all
shapes and sizes, fruit-pies, and crackers, and loaves of bread: there
seemed to be no end of them.

"End of them! If they hold out, we may be glad," said Miss Betsey.
"Every child on the field is good for one of each thing, at least,
biscuits and cookies and all the rest, and there are hundreds of
children, to say nothing of the grown-up folks. They've been all
calculating to have the children come in at the last, but two or three
of us have concluded to fix it different."

The speaking was to come before the eating, and as the crowd who would
wish to hear would leave no room for the children, Miss Betsey's plan
was that they should have their good things while the speaking was going
on, at a sufficient distance to prevent their voices from being
troublesome, and that the tables should be left undisturbed. Some
dozens of young people were detailed to carry out this arrangement, and
Davie and Katie were among them. Miss Elizabeth would have liked to go
with them; but she was a lit