At the very beginning of his holidays Stanley Clark had gone to Nebraska to replace the detective who had been vainly trying to find some trace of his father’s cousin, Emily Leonard.  The young man was eager to have the matter straightened out, both because it was impossible to sell any of the family land unless it were, and because he wanted to please Mrs. Smith and Dorothy, and because his orderly mind was disturbed at there being a legal tangle in his family.

Perhaps he put into his search more clearness of vision than the detective, or perhaps he came to it at a time when he could take advantage of what his predecessor had done;—­whatever the reason, he did find a clue and it seemed a strange coincidence that it was only a few days after the Miss Clarks had received the second offer for their field that a letter came to them from their nephew, saying that he had not only discovered the town to which Emily’s daughter had gone and the name of the family into which she had been adopted, but had learned the fact that the family had later on removed to the neighborhood of Pittsburg.

“At least, this brings the search somewhat nearer home,” Stanley wrote, “but it also complicates it, for ‘the neighborhood of Pittsburg’ is very vague, and it covers a large amount of country.  However, I am going to start to-night for Pittsburg to see what I can do there.  I’ve grown so accustomed to playing hide-and-seek with Cousin Emily and I’m so pleased with my success so far that I’m hopeful that I may pick up the trail in western Pennsylvania.”

The Clarks and the Smiths all shared Stanley’s hopefulness, for it did indeed seem wonderful that he should have found the missing evidence after so many weeks of failure by the professional detective, and, if he had traced one step, why not the next?

The success of the gardens planted by the U.S.C. had been remarkable.  The plants had grown as if they wanted to please, and when blossoming time came, they bloomed with all their might.

“Do you remember the talk you and I had about Rose House just before the Fresh Air women and children came out?” asked Ethel Blue of her cousin.

Ethel Brown nodded, and Ethel Blue explained the conversation to Dorothy.

“We thought Roger’s scheme was pretty hard for us youngsters to carry out and we felt a little uncertain about it, but we made up our minds that people are almost always successful when they want like everything to do something and make up their minds that they are going to put it through and learn how to put it through.”

“We’ve proved it again with the gardens,” responded Ethel Brown.  “We wanted to have pretty gardens and we made up our minds that we could if we tried and then we learned all we could about them from people and books.”

“Just see what Roger knows now about fertilizers!” exclaimed Dorothy in a tone of admiration.  “Fertilizers aren’t a bit interesting until you think of them as plant food and realize that plants like different kinds of food and try to find out what they are.  Roger has studied it out and we’ve all had the benefit of his knowledge.”