“Well, you shall.  Calm yourself,” and Roger patted him with a soothing hand.  “You may do all the digging I promised the girls I’d do.”

A howl of laughter at James’s expense made the attic ring.

James appeared quite undisturbed.

“I’m ready to do my share,” he insisted placidly.  “Why don’t we make plans of the gardens now?”

“Methodical old James always has a good idea,” commended Tom.  “Is there any brown paper around these precincts, Dorothy?”

“Must it be brown?”

“Any color, but big sheets.”

“I see.  There is plenty,” and she spread it on the table where James had done so much pasting when they were making boxes in which to pack their presents for the war orphans.

“Now, then, Roger, the first thing for us to do is to see—­”

“With our mind’s eye, Horatio?”

“—­how these gardens are going to look.  Take your pencil in hand and draw us a sketch of your backyard as it is now, old man.”

“That’s easy,” commented Roger.  “Here are the kitchen steps; and here is the drying green, and back of that is the vegetable garden and around it flower beds and more over here next the fence.”

“It’s rather messy looking as it is,” commented Ethel Brown.  “We never have changed it from the way the previous tenant laid it out.”

“The drying green isn’t half large enough for the washing for our big family,” added Helen appraisingly.  “Mary is always lamenting that she can hang out only a few lines-ful at a time.”

“Why don’t you give her this space behind the green and limit your flower beds to the fence line?” asked Tom, looking over Roger’s shoulder as he drew in the present arrangement with some attention to the comparative sizes.

“That would mean cutting out some of the present beds.”

“It would, but you’ll have a share in Dorothy’s new garden in case Mrs. Morton needs more flowers for the house; and the arrangement I suggest makes the yard look much more shipshape.”

“If we sod down these beds here what will Roger do for his sweetpeas?  They ought to have the sun on both sides; the fence line wouldn’t be the best place for them.”

“Sweetpeas ought to be planted on chicken wire supported by stakes and running from east to west,” said Margaret wisely, “but under the circumstances, I don’t see why you couldn’t fence in the vegetable garden with sweetpeas.  That would give you two east and west lines of them and two north and south.”

“And there would be space for all the blossoms that Roger would want to pick on a summer’s day,” laughed Della.

“I’ve always wanted to have a garden of all pink flowers,” announced Dorothy.  “My room in the new house is going to be pink and I’d like to keep pink powers in it all the time.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that, too.  Let’s try one here,” urged Ethel Brown, nodding earnestly at Ethel Blue.