ts, pretty girls in a
setting of scarlet carnations, more pretty girls half-hidden in bobbing
and nodding daisies--every one more charming than the last. There were
white horses as dazzling as soap and powder could make them; horses
whose black flanks glistened as dark as coal, and there was a tandem of
cream-colored horses that tossed rosettes of pink Shirley poppies in
their ears. The Whites' motor-car, covered with pink carnations, and
filled with good-looking lads flying the colors of the Women's Club and
the nation's flag, won a special round of applause. Mrs. Burgoyne and
Barry loyally clapped for the Pratt motor-car, from which Joanna
Burgoyne and Lizzie Pratt's children were beaming upon the world.

"But what are they halting for, and what are they clapping?" Sidney
presently demanded, when a break in the line and a sudden outburst of
cheering and applause interrupted the parade. Barry again hung at a
dangerous angle from the window. Presently he sat back, his face one
broad smile.

"It's us," he remarked simply. "Wait until you see us; we're the cream
of the whole show!"

Too excited to speak, Sidney knelt breathless at the sill, her eyes
fixed upon the spot where the cause of the excitement must appear. She
was perhaps the only one of all the watchers who did not applaud, as
the eight powerful oxen came slowly down the sunshiny street, guided by
the tall, lean driver who walked beside them, and dragging the great
wagon and its freight of rapturous children.

Only an old hay-wagon, after all; only a team of shabby oxen, such as a
thousand lumber-camps in California might supply; only a score or more
of the ill-nourished, untrained children of the very poor; but what an
enchantment of love and hope and summer-time had been flung over them
all! The body of the wagon was entirely hidden by exquisite hydrangeas;
the wheels were moving disks of the pale pink and blue blossoms; the
oxen, their horns gilded, their polished hoofs twinkling as they moved,
wore yokes that seemed solidly made of the flowers, and great ropes of
blossoms hid the swinging chains. Over each animal a brilliant cover
had been flung; and at the head of each a young Indian boy, magnificent
in wampum and fringed leather, feathers and beads, walked sedately. The
children were grouped, pyramid-fashion, on the wagon, in a nest of
hydrangea blooms, the pink, and cream, and blue of their gowns blending
with the flowers all about them, the sunlight