Mother Blossom smiled as Bobby looked at her expectantly. "You want to know how we do it?" she asked. "Well, first we choose our committees and plan the tables. There is usually a refreshment table; a table for fancy work, aprons, bags, and pretty handkerchiefs; if the fair is held in summer, we have a flower table; then a grab-bag table for the little people. After we plan how many tables we will have, the committees set out to collect the things to be sold. They go to the baker and ask for cake donations; and to ladies and ask them to bake cakes; they ask other ladies to make aprons and bags; Mr. Barber, the grocer, usually gives us something for the canned goods table. You see, the idea is to ask people to give all these things and then whatever they are sold for can go outright to the purpose for which the fair is held." "Like new carpets for the church," put in Meg wisely. "Yes, new carpets for the church, or new books for the Sunday-school library," agreed Mother Blossom. "Your fair will be for the Jordans, and the money you raise will help them through the winter." Bobby was silent a long time, puzzling over the idea of a fair. Before his bed hour came he had decided that perhaps that was the best way to raise money, and anyway he would talk it over with the boys at school. "I've been thinking," announced Mother Blossom at the breakfast table the next morning. "As our living-room isn't very large, I think three tables will be all we can comfortably arrange. As an extra attraction for the fair, why don't you give a little play?" "A stuffed animal play," suggested Aunt Polly mysteriously. "If the children like the idea, don't you say another word. I'll make the costumes and drill them." A stuffed animal play and a fair sounded delightfully exciting, and when Bobby mentioned his plans to a group of close friends at recess he found them most responsive. "There's nothing much to do 'round now," said Palmer Davis. "I'm dead tired coasting every day. I'd like to help Mrs. Jordan." Mrs. Jordan was an old woman who lived in a tumbled-down house. She had a crippled son, and had supported herself, since the death of her husband, by going out to work by the day. As she had always worked faithfully and never complained, Oak Hill people really did not know that this winter she had had a hard time to get enough to eat and coal enough to burn. Her son was unable to earn anything, and Miss Mason, for whom Mrs. Jordan washed, had thought that it would be a kindness to put him in a home where he would be well taken care of at no expense to his mother. "I'll not hear of it!" declared Mrs. Jordan angrily, when the teacher mentioned this plan to her. "He's going to live at home with me as long as I have a roof to cover us."