Lingering for a little further chat with Elaine, whom they all adored, they entered the living room to be met by a vociferous welcome from the assembled Silvertonites. When the last guest had arrived and been ushered into the reception room, from somewhere in the house a bell suddenly tinkled. In order to give more space the chairs had been removed and the guests lined the sides of the apartment and filled one end of it halfway to the wide doorway opening into the main hall.
At sound of the bell a hush fell upon the merry-makers. Again it tinkled and down the stairs came a procession that might have stepped from a tapestry depicting the life of the greenwood men. Four merry men, their green cambric costumes carefully modeled after the attire of Robin Hood and his followers, had come to the party. The first, instead of being Robin Hood, was Robin Page. She bowed low to Elaine, who was still languishing in exile in the hall, and offered her arm.
“Delighted; I am so tired of hanging about that old hall!” Elaine seized Robin’s arm with alacrity and the two passed into the adjoining room. The other three faithful servitors followed their leader. The last one carried a violin and drew from it an old-time greenwood melody as Elaine and Robin joined forces and paraded into the living room.
Straight toward the green curtain Robin piloted Elaine to the fiddler’s plaintive tune. Stationed before the curtain, Blanche Scott drew it aside.
A surprised and admiring chorus of exclamations arose. There stood a real greenwood tree. Portia and Blanche could have amply testified to this fact as the two of them, armed with a hatchet, had laboriously chopped down a small maple and brought it to the house from the woods on the afternoon previous. Its branches were as well loaded with packages of various sizes as those of a Christmas tree. Under the tree was a grassy mound built up of hard cushions, the whole covered with real sod dug up by the patient wood cutters.
On this Elaine was invited to sit. She formed a pretty picture in her fluffy white gown in conjunction with the greenery. The four merry men gathered round her and bowed low, then sang her an ancient ballad to the accompaniment of the violin. Followed a short speech by the tallest of the four congratulating her, in stately language on the anniversary of her birth. Three of the four then busied themselves with stripping the tree of its spoils and laying them at her feet. During this procedure the fiddler evoked further sweet thin melodies from his violin.