Close on the heels of Lilac Sunday comes Decoration Day. And nowhere
is it observed so thoroughly as in Green Valley.

The whole week preceding the day there is heard everywhere the whir of
sewing machines. New dresses are feverishly cut and made; old ones
ripped and remade. Hats are bought, old ones are retrimmed. Buggies
are repainted and baby carriages oiled. Dick does a thriving business
in lemons, picnic baskets, flags, peanuts and palm-leaf fans, these
being things that Jessup's chronically forget to carry, regarding them
as trifles and rather scornfully leaving them to Dick, who makes a
point of having on hand a very choice supply.

This fury of work gradually dies down, to be followed by such an
epidemic of baking that the old town smells like a sweet old bakery
shop with its doors and windows wide open. There is then every evening
a careful survey of the flower beds in the garden, a rigid economy of
blossoms and even much skilful forcing of belated favorites.

The last day is generally given over to hat buying, the purchasing of
the last forgotten fixings and clothes inspections. From one end of
the town to the other clotheslines, dining-room chairs, porch rockers
and upstairs bedrooms are overflowing with silk foulards, frilled
dimities, beribboned and belaced organdies, not to mention the billows
of dotted swiss and muslin.

On short clotheslines, stretched across corners of back and side
porches or in the tree-shaded nooks of back yards, may be seen hanging
the holiday garments of Green Valley men. But what most catches the
eye are the old suits of army blue flapping gently in the spring breeze