Again Isabel's apron was heaped full, and again she glided, in all her bright, young beauty, through the sick wards. When she came down, an earthern pitcher, crowded with great white lilies, honeysuckles and sweetbriar, stood on the windows or mantel-pieces of every room. There was not a pillow without its pretty garland, or bouquet of buds, tied with the spray of some fragrant shrub. She had made the atmosphere of those sick wards redolent with fragrance. "Now for the boys' hats!" said Mary, "here are plenty of soldier's feathers." The boys cast down their straw-hats from the tree, shouting for her to make soldiers of them, each one clamoring for a red plume. But the red hollyhocks did not quite hold out, so, perforce some of the slender plumes were of yellow, some of snow-white--for you never saw such hollyhocks as grew in the Hospital-gardens--and Mary had all variety of tints around her, even to some of a deep maroon. When each straw hat had its plume, the little girls fell to ornamenting three or four large paper kites, and then they began forming garlands for their own heads. Mary twined a beautiful wreath of white clematis around the dark tresses of Isabel's hair. "Nothing but white," she said with a gentle sigh, "for that is almost mourning." The others arrayed themselves according to their own fancy, and when the sun rose high it kindled up a happy and picturesque group beneath that old elm tree. A company of boys, with a red silk handkerchief streaming over them for a banner, their hollyhock plumes rising jauntily in the sunshine, the tallest mounting an epaulette of red, yellow, and purple flowers, marched out with gallant parade from the shelter of the old tree. Tin trumpets, an old milk pail, and various similar instruments, made the air ring again as this warlike band sallied forth. A score of little pale creatures watched them from the Hospital stoop and the upper windows. Some of the boys were lame; some were blind; while others bore evidence of recent disease; but if they looked in these things like a company of volunteers returning from Mexico, it only gave them a more warlike appearance, and of this they were very ambitious. Then the little girls began to seek their own amusements. They played "hide and seek," "ring, ring a rosy," and a thousand wild and pretty games; for the place was so beautiful, and the day so bright, the little rogues quite forgot that they were in the Poor House, or had ever been sick in the whole course of their lives. Mary and Isabel were a little pensive at times, but when all the rest seemed so happy, they could not choose but smile with them--and so the Fourth of July wore over.