“We are to have our Liberty Pageant to-morrow, and all the people who live on the line of parade have been perfectly lovely, for they have sold tickets for the seats on their verandas, and are to give the money to us for the Liberty Fund, so we can buy Liberty bonds. And the day after,” continued Nathalie, “we are to have a liberty sale on Mrs. Van Vorst’s grounds, the Pioneers’ meeting-place, you know. Indeed, we are almost over the tops of our heads in work, and we have enough plans to last the rest of the summer. Mother declares I am the busiest girl she knows.” “And the Liberty Garden, has that turned out well? I understand it is the work of my girls, the Pioneers.” “Indeed, yes,” returned her companion: “it has been said to be one of the beauty spots of Westport. We have bordered it with nasturtiums, poppies, marigold, sweet peas, and all sorts of old-time posies. But _we had_ a time getting the ground, for this year every one was hysterically wild to cultivate every inch of ground for a war-garden, and nobody wanted to loan any. Finally, however, Edith and Lillie tried their powers of persuasion on old Deacon Sawyer,—you know he’s one of the pillars of the old Presbyterian church, and he let us have an old lot of his on Summer Street, about a hundred feet or so square. “And how we have worked over it, for of course it had to be plowed. Peter, Mrs. Van Vorst’s gardener,—he’s the kindest-hearted thing alive,—offered to plow it for us, but we declined with a vote of thanks, for we felt _that_ wouldn’t be our work. So Edith scoured the town until finally she borrowed an old nag from the livery-stable man,—he was just ready to crumble to pieces,—and Nita got a plow from Peter, and we plowed it ourselves. “But the time we had with that old steed,” Nathalie’s eyes gleamed humorously, “for just as he would be going nicely across the field, he would be inspired to take the ‘rest-cure’ and stand stock-still, and no amount of pulling—we all got behind him and pushed—or coaxing would induce him to budge a hair. O dear, we worked over him until we thought we should expire with the heat, our faces all red and perspiring. “Then Edith took to pulling his tail; she said she had read that would make a balky horse go. Oh, it was funny to see her!” Nathalie laughed outright. “But, dear me, it only made him lift one leg, very slowly, and then the other, and then settle down in the same old rut, as still as the wooden horse of Troy.