Marian that
day. Three rather sheepish boys appeared so promptly after the girls
departed, that Marian suspected they had been hanging around waiting for
the children to go.

"Say, Marian, do you s'pose you could help us fix up some of those May
basket things everybody's talking about?"

"It's a little late in the day, Ernest. How many do you boys want?"

Ernest looked at Sherm and Sherm looked at Carol, and Carol saw
something out of the window that interested him.

At length, Ernest, getting no assistance from the others, blurted out:

"One's enough for me. What do you say, boys?"

Carol and Sherm nodded.

"One apiece--my, this looks exciting. Somebody is to be very specially
honored I see. It is too late to make the kind the little girls have,
but you might buy some tiny baskets--I'd love to trim them up for you.
Got any money, boys?"

An exhaustive search of trousers' pockets revealed a combined capital of
twenty-five cents. The boys asked anxiously if it were enough.

"Yes, for three. Are you getting this for Chicken Little, Ernest?"

Ernest got red and looked uncomfortable.

"Never mind--I didn't mean to be prying--only I wish you big boys would
hang some for the little girls--it would please them to death. If you
don't mind my having a part in this. I'd like to put in a little money,
too. Let me put in another quarter and I'll do the trimming and you boys
can repay me by hanging a basket to each of the little girls as well as
to your own friends."

The bargain was speedily struck and the boys hurried off downtown for
the baskets and the ribbon for the tiny bows Marian had decided should
adorn them.

They came back so quickly, it made Marian breathless to think of the
pace they must have gone. Carol didn't come straight either. He slipped
round by home to beg some blossoms from his mother's house plants. Not
finding her, he promptly helped himself to all her most cherished blooms
to her surprise and wrath when she discovered her loss.

Marian filled in with her own flowers and the boys hung round admiring,
waiting upon her awkwardly and watching every move she made with the
baskets.

"Is it all right?" she asked, holding up the first, filled with scarlet
geraniums.

"Gee, that's a dandy!" Ernest approved.

"Say, I'd like to have that one," said Sherm.

"I like blue better anyway--make mine blue, will you, Marian?" Ernest
added.

Marian thought of Katy's scarlet and white offering to be la