This year there was the added delight of the wedding. Last night Miss
Meredith had given the invitations, and the School, you may be sure,
would "accept with pleasure."
Form Five A held a meeting at recess time. They must get Miss Ashwell a
wedding present.
"Form Two and Form Four are going to give her a hankie shower," said
Joyce Hewson, "and Patricia told me that the Sixth Form is going to give
her a linen shower."
"And Domestic Science are having a kitchen shower," joined in Frances.
"I don't see what there's left for us."
Books were suggested, but voted down. "Besides, we haven't enough
money," said Nancy, "Miss Meredith said we mustn't spend much."
Nancy wanted to put the money into a lump sum and buy one nice thing, a
picture or a piece of silver or something like that. But the majority of
the girls favoured the shower idea. A tea-cup shower was discussed, and
seemed to be the most popular of all the plans yet made, when Peggy said
she believed the Staff were buying china. She and her mother had met
three of the Staff in Smith's on Saturday morning, and she guessed from
what they said that that was what they doing.
Judith had been thinking--what would Miss Ashwell like? What does she
like to do? And a picture flashed into her mind of Miss Ashwell in
garden hat and gloves snipping Miss Meredith's rosebushes and talking to
Judith about Gloire de Dijons, and Frau Druschkis and Prince Ruperts and
Lady Ursulas, as if they were intimate friends. Judith jumped up
excitedly.
"Madam President," she said eagerly, "why shouldn't we have a flower
shower? I mean plants, rosebushes and Canterbury bells and lilacs if
they haven't got 'em, and maybe a cherry tree," she added as the plan
grew before her eyes.
Pros and cons were discussed. Perhaps "White Cottage" already had a
good garden. No, she had heard the Major say--here Judith blushed and
stammered as she heard Jane observe, "Great friend of the Major's is
Judy"--that the garden was no good; anyway, they could find out. Perhaps
Miss Meredith would find out for them.
"But it'll be too late to plant cherry trees and lilac bushes," objected
Alicia Harris, who was a practical gardener and had been a steady worker
in the War Garden Committee. That was so!
Besides, the bride and groom were going to France and what would the
garden do in the meantime? Judith looked quite blank. Just when it had
seemed such a lovely plan! She could see the climbing rose she meant to
give and had already congratulated herself on asking for some extra
pocket money for the last term. But Nancy came to the rescue.
"I know; let's give the money and the order for the flowers or bushes to
a florist and ask him to set them out in the proper time in the fall,
and we'll give Miss Ashwell a card with the name of the flowers we have
chosen, and, oh, then we could have rhymes. We'd put 'Violets' on the
card and then--
"'The rose is red, the violet's blue,
Honey is sweet and so are you'--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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