the First M. E. Church still talk of the money they
garnered at the strawberry festival. Pearlie's out-of-town friend was
garnerer-in-chief. You take a cross-eyed, pock-marked girl and put her
in a white dress, with a pink slip, on a green lawn under a string of
rose-colored Japanese lanterns, and she'll develop an almost Oriental
beauty. It is an ideal setting. The leading lady was not cross-eyed or
pock-marked. She stood at the lantern-illumined booth, with Pearlie in
the background, and dispensed an unbelievable amount of strawberries.
Sid Strang and the hotel bench brigade assisted. They made engagements
to take Pearlie and her friend down river next day, and to the ball game,
and planned innumerable picnics, gazing meanwhile into the leading lady's
eyes. There grew in the cheeks of the leading lady a flush that was not
brought about by the pink slip, or the Japanese lanterns, or the skillful
application of rouge.

By nine o'clock the strawberry supply was exhausted, and the president of
the Foreign Missionary Society was sending wildly down-town for more
ice-cream.

"I call it an outrage," puffed Pearlie happily, ladling ice-cream like
mad. "Making a poor working girl like me slave all evening! How many
was that last order? Four? My land! that's the third dish of ice-cream
Ed White's had! You'll have something to tell the villagers about when
you get back to New York."

The leading lady turned a flushed face toward Pearlie. "This is more fun
than the Actors' Fair. I had the photograph booth last year, and I took
in nearly as much as Lil Russell; and goodness knows, all she needs to do
at a fair is to wear her diamond-and-pearl stomacher and her set-piece
smile, and the men just swarm around her like the pictures of a crowd in
a McCutcheon cartoon."

When the last Japanese lantern had guttered out, Pearlie Schultz and the
leading lady prepared to go home. Before they left, the M. E. ladies
came over to Pearlie's booth and personally congratulated the leading
lady, and thanked her for the interest she had taken in the cause, and
the secretary of the Epworth League asked her to come to the tea that was
to be held at her home the following Tuesday. The leading lady thanked
her and said she'd come if she could.

Escorted by a bodyguard of gray suits and lavender-striped shirts Pearlie
and her friend, Miss Evans, walked toward the hotel. The attentive
bodyguard confessed itself puzzled.

"Aren't