The great day dawned bright and clear. Miss Bailey's entrance, punctual and parcel-laden, in a festive frilly frock and a flowery hat, caused something almost like silence to fall upon the scene of the coming tournament. Eva Gonorowsky clasped Teacher's unoccupied hand, Sarah Schodsky and Yetta Aaronsohn relieved her of her bundles. Sadie Gonorowsky gesticulated madly from the place upon the sofa which she was reserving with all the expanse of her outspread skirt.
Teacher approached the grand stand and took her place. The feminine First Readers swarmed upon the soap boxes. But neither leg nor arm nor even eye was moved by the seven masculine First Readers drawn up in the centre of the yard. Flags waved in such profusion and such uniformity that even Miss Bailey's obligation to her hosts could not blind her to the fact that she had at last found the fifty-two American flags pasted together by the First Reader Class when Washington's Birthday was in the air and the offing. Two weeks ago she had missed them out of the cupboard, and neither janitor nor Monitor could give her tidings of them. They looked very well, she was forced to admit, dangling from high fence and clothes line. And very bright and joyant was the whole scene. The little girls in their bright colors. The sky so blue. Mrs. Brennan's pear tree in sturdy bloom. All was brilliant with a sense of Spring save the seven dark-clothed figures in the centre of the yard.
"Can you guess what kind from party it is?" shrieked Sadie Gonorowsky from the top of a tottering soap box to which she had withdrawn.
"Why, it's--" Teacher began, recognizing some elements of the scene, but made uncertain by the seven dark little figures, "of course it's----"
"It's 'Games in Gardens,'" shouted the little girls, waving their flags like mad and "scupping" so energetically that two disappeared, "it's Games in Gardens, und you're goin' to have a s'prise."
One of the dark and silent figures found speech and motion.
"Set down an' shut up," commanded Patrick Brennan. "We're goin' to begin."
The shutting up would have been effected automatically by the next proceeding of the seven. They laid violent hands upon themselves and in an instant a flat little heap of dark clothes marked the centre of the yard, and Patrick Brennan, Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein, Isidore Applebaum, Nathan Spiderwitz, Isidore Wishnewsky, Isaac Belchatosky, and Morris Mowgelewsky stood forth in costumes reported by Isaac Borrachsohn, sanctioned by Miss Bailey, and owned by members of the audience.