But those two kept everybody busy all morning long.

One was the reproduction of a famous painting called June, in which seven garlanded maidens in Greek costumes posed in a bewitching rose bower.

Quantities of roses were needed for the background, great masses of them that would not fade and droop; and since previous experience had proved that artificial flowers may be used with fine stage effect in the glare of red foot-lights the whole place was bursting into tissue-paper bloom.

The girls cut and folded the myriad petals needed, the boys wired them, and a couple of little pickaninnies sent out to gather foliage, piled armfuls of young oak-leaves on the porch to twine into long conventional garlands, like the ones in the painting.
Agnes Waring had come over to help with the Greek costumes, and since the long folds of cheesecloth could be held in place by girdles, basting threads, and pins, the gowns were rapidly finished.
Down by the tea-house the colored coachman sawed and pounded and planed under Malcolm's occasional direction.

He was building a barge like the one described in Tennyson's poem of the Lily Maid of Astolat.