Families -- Juvenile fiction; New England -- Juvenile fiction
Nobody had thought that there must be water. Mr. Harper went into the
nearest house and telephoned to the fire station. The hose-cart came
immediately and fastened a hose to the hydrant. Any amount of water
could be turned anywhere it was wanted.
The committee in charge of each bed had a copy of Mr. Lawrence’s plan.
This told them exactly how many plants and shrubs were to go in the bed
and where they were to be set. When the ground was ready the head of each
committee put a marker where each was to be planted.
The High School students planted the shrubs, and then came the turn of
the smaller children. Each of them carried a bulb and marched in line to
the flower-bed appointed.
Each one dug a little hole for his bulb and put it in with care to get it
right side up. Bulbs never grow so well when they are planted with their
heads down. Then a Boy Scout with a water-pot gave it a drink, and the
child covered it with loam and patted it down hard.
The kindergarten children planted tulips. Dora’s class planted daffodils
and Lucy’s class did the jonquils. Every child in the public schools had
a share in making the Victory Park.
Meanwhile the ladies had been getting lunch in the Town Hall. Some of the
older men who had stiff knees and couldn’t work out of doors, set up the
long tables and brought settees and dishes. Promptly at twelve the fire
whistle blew long and loud. It wasn’t for a fire at all, but the signal
that everybody was to stop working and go to lunch in the Town Hall.
The park looked like nothing at all, but it did look as though there
might be hope for it by sunset.
Some of the men, especially those who wore stiff collars and went into
Boston every day, thought they were much too dirty to go to lunch. They
said they would go home and wash.
Mr. Harper took a megaphone and spoke through it. He asked the men not to
go home. He told them to brush off the dust and loam and to wash their
hands at the hydrant. Most of them laughed and did just as Mr. Harper
said.
Very soon all the tables in the long hall were filled, and everybody was
hungry. There is nothing like digging in the dirt to make people ready
for dinner.
The good things the ladies had been cooking vanished like snow before the
sun. There was cold meat of various kinds, a great many baked potatoes,
string-beans, and beets, and squash. For dessert were doughnuts and pies
and coffee and ice-cream.
Girls of Olive’s age waited on the tables. Lucy and Dora wanted
dreadfully to help, but that was one of the things they could not do
until they were older. Five hundred people sat down together at lunch in
the Westmore Town Hall.
When they had finished eating, Mr. Harper made another suggestion. He
asked every person at the table to pick up the dishes he had used and to
carry them into the kitchen on his way out of the hall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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