But he had his motto text to bolster him up.
"Clean hands, Harry, and a pure heart," said Mrs. Pemberton, cheerfully.
"It cannot be right to steal flowers or anything else even to decorate
the graves of our brave soldiers."
And so the time passed--kite time, top time, hoop time, marble time.
It was the evening before Memorial Day, at last.
There was a good deal of stirring in the village. It was splendid
moonlight. You could see to read large print. A whole crowd of boys met
at the store and took their way across lots to the beautiful old Eliot
place. The big house, with its broad porch and white columns, stood out
in the glory of the moon. The gardens were sweet in the dew. Violets,
lilies, roses, lilacs, snow-drops, whole beds of them.
Every boy, and there were ten of them, had a basket and a pair of
shears. They meant to get all the flowers they could carry and despoil
the Eliot place, if necessary, to make the cemetery a grand looking spot
to-morrow, when the veterans and the militia should be out with bands of
music and flying flags, and the Governor, no less, coming in person to
review the troops and make a speech in the very place where his own
father was buried.
In went the boys. Over the stile, up the paths, clear on toward the
front portico. They separated into little groups and began to cut their
flowers, the Eliots' flowers, all the Eliots in Europe, and not a soul
on hand to save their property.
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