Over the chimney-piece she laid great boughs of maple, glittering like purest gold in the afternoon light, which streamed broadly in through the windows.

Others--scarlet, pink, dappled red, and yellow--were placed over the windows, the doors, the dresser.
She filled the corners with stately oak-boughs, and made a bower of the purple ash in the bow-window,--Faith's window.

Then she set the tea-table with the best china, every plate and dish resting on a mat of scarlet leaves, while a chain of yellow ones outlined the shining square board.

A tiny scarlet wreath encircled the tea-kettle, and even the butter-dish displayed its golden balls beneath an arch of flaming crimson.

This done, she filled a great glass bowl with purple-fringed asters and long, gleaming sprays of golden-rod, and setting it in the middle of the table, stood back with her head a little on one side and surveyed the general effect.
"Good!" was her final comment; "very good! And now for my own part." She gathered in her apron the branches first selected, and carried them up to her own room, where she proceeded to strip off the leaves and to fashion them into long garlands.