“I always have yellow or white or pink flowers in the dark corner of our sitting room,” said Mrs. Smith.  “The blue ones or the deep red ones or the ferns may have the sunny spots.”

“Father insists on yellow blossoms of some kind in the library,” added Mrs. Emerson.  “He says they are as good as another electric light to brighten the shadowy side where the bookcases are.”

“I remember seeing a gay array of window boxes at Stratford-on-Avon, once upon a time,” contributed Mrs. Morton.  “It was a sunshiny day when I saw them, but they were well calculated to enliven the very grayest weather that England can produce.  I was told that the house belonged to Marie Corelli, the novelist.”

“What plants did she have?” asked Dorothy.

“Blue lobelia and scarlet geraniums and some frisky little yellow bloom; I couldn’t see exactly what it was.”

“Red and yellow and blue,” repeated Ethel Brown.  “Was it pretty?”

“Very.  Plenty of each color and all the boxes alike all over the front of the house.”

“We shouldn’t need such vividness under our brilliant American skies,” commented Mrs. Smith.  “Plenty of green with flowers of one color makes a window box in the best of taste, to my way of thinking.”

“And that color one that is becoming to the house, so to speak,” smiled Helen.  “I saw a yellow house the other day that had yellow flowers in the window boxes.  They were almost extinguished by their background.”

“I saw a white one in Glen Point with white daisies, and the effect was the same,” added Margaret.  “The poor little flowers were lost.  There are ivies and some small evergreen shrubs that the greenhouse-men raise especially for winter window boxes now.  I’ve been talking a lot with the nurseryman at Glen Point and he showed me some the other day that he warranted to keep fresh-looking all through the cold weather unless there were blizzards.”

“We must remember those at Sweetbrier Lodge,” Mrs. Smith said to Dorothy.

“Why don’t you give a talk on arranging flowers as part of the program this evening?” Margaret asked Mrs. Smith.

“Do, Aunt Louise.  You really ought to,” urged Helen, and the Ethels added their voices.

“Give a short talk and illustrate it by the examples the girls have been arranging,” Mrs. Morton added, and when Mrs. Emerson said that she thought the little lecture would have real value as well as interest Mrs. Smith yielded.

“Say what you and Grandmother have been telling us and you won’t need to add another thing,” cried Helen.  “I think it will be the very best number on the program.”

“I don’t believe it will compete with the side show in the yard,” laughed Mrs. Smith, “but I’m quite willing to do it if you think it will give any one pleasure.”

“But you’ll be part of the side show in the yard,” and they explained the latest plan of running the program.