Notices have been put up here and there in the village for the last fortnight announcing a meeting to discuss the yearly Flower Show, which has not been held in Fairacre for a number of years. Before I became the village schoolmistress here, the Flower Show appears to have been an event of some importance and people came from miles around to enjoy a day at Fairacre.
I decided to go to the meeting, as the children in my school, I knew, used to play quite a large part in this village excitement and there were a number of special competitions, such as collecting wild flowers, making dolls' house decorations or little gardens and so on, included in the program.
It was a freezing, starlit night. By the time I arrived at the Village hall, there were about ten people already there. The doctor was chairman of the meeting. A few men were warming their hand over the rather smoky oil stove, which was trying, somewhat inefficiently, to warm the room. The meeting was called for seven thirty—a most inconvenient time in my private opinion as it successfully upsets the evening and puts back the time of one's evening meal. By a quarter to eight only fifteen people had arrived.
"I think we must begin," the doctor said, turning his gentle smile upon us. He gave a short speech about the past glories of Fairarce's Flower Show and his hopes that it might take place again. "Perhaps someone would put forward the suggestion that the Flower Show be restarted?" he suggested. There was a heavy silence, broken only by the movement of feet from the bench at the back. All fifteen of us, I noticed, were middle-aged. John Pringle, Mrs. Pringle's only child, must have been the youngest among us and he is a man of nearly thirty. It was John who, at last, shyly answered the doctor's request.
"I'll do it," he said. "Propose we have a Flower Show then." He sat down, pink and self-conscious, and the doctor thanked him sincerely. "Is there anybody else who agrees with this proposal?" Again that painful silence. It seemed as though we sat in a dream.
"I'll do it," I said, when I could stand the waiting no longer. "Good! Good!" said the doctor cheerfully. "Let's take a vote here then." All fifteen raised their hands doubtfully. To look at our faces an outsider might reasonably have thought we were having the choice of hanging or the electric chair.
