“That red hanky on his massive brow gives the touch of color he needed,” said Margaret.

“We don’t maintain that his features are ‘faultily faultless,’” quoted Roger, “but we do insist that they’re ‘icily regular.’”

“Thanks to the size of the nose Ethel Blue stuck on they’re not ‘splendidly null.’”

“No, there’s no ‘nullness’ about that nose,” agreed James.  “That’s ‘some’ nose!”

When they were all in the house and preparing for dinner Ethel Blue unwrapped the gift that Margaret had brought for her birthday.  It was a shallow bowl of dull green pottery in which was growing a grove of thick, shiny leaves.  The plants were three or four inches tall and seemed to be in the pink of condition.

“This is for the top of your Christmas desk,” Margaret explained.

“It’s perfectly beautiful,” exclaimed not only Ethel Blue but all the other girls, while Roger peered over their shoulders to see what it was.

“I planted it myself,” said Margaret with considerable pride.  “Each one is a little grapefruit tree.”

“Grapefruit?  What we have for breakfast?  It grows like this?”

“Mother has some in a larger bowl and it is really lovely as a centrepiece on the dining room table.”

“Watch me save grapefruit seeds!” and Ethel Brown ran out of the room to leave an immediate request in the kitchen that no grapefruit seeds should be thrown away when the fruit was being prepared for the table.

“When Mr. Morton and I were in Florida last winter,” said Mrs. Morton, “they told us that it was not a great number of years ago that grapefruit was planted only because it was a handsome shrub on the lawn.  The fruit never was eaten, but was thrown away after it fell from the tree.”

“Now nobody can get enough of it,” smiled Helen.

“Mother has a receipt for grapefruit marmalade that is better than the English orange marmalade that is made of both sweet and sour oranges,” said Dorothy.  “Sometimes the sour oranges are hard to find in the market, but grapefruit seems to have both flavors in itself.”

“Is it much work?” asked Margaret.

“It isn’t much work at any one time but it takes several days to get it done.”

“Why?”

“First you have to cut up the fruit, peel and all, into tiny slivers.  That’s a rather long undertaking and it’s hard unless you have a very, very sharp knife.”

“I’ve discovered that in preparing them for breakfast.”

“The fruit are of such different sizes that you have to weigh the result of your paring.  To every pound of cut-up fruit add a pint of water and let it stand over night.  In the morning pour off that water and fill the kettle again and let it boil until the toughest bit of skin is soft, and then let it stand over night more.”

“It seems to do an awful lot of resting,” remarked Roger.

“A sort of ‘weary Willie,’” commented James.