"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee--the kind of a dinner that comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered--all but Insley, that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile, covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee where, behind the refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her white duck. "'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't it?' "'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy. "'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.' "'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I donno much about the dinner.' "And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the grand basket dinner at all. "'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?' "'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who was I to leave in the _tent_? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.' "Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says, hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees. You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our baskets--ours is grouped around mine that's tied with a red bandanna to the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?' "And I don't think she even sensed she used that name. "When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and the City folks praising them both sky high. "'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.' "'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy, complacent. "'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over and over, if the business houses went about it right.'