“Which reminds me that if we want any flowers at all next week we’d better put on some nitrate of soda this afternoon or this dry weather will ruin them.”

“Queer how that goes right to the blossoms and doesn’t seem to make the whole plant grow.”

“I did a deadly deed to one of my calceolarias,” confessed Ethel Blue.  “I forgot you mustn’t use it after the buds form and I sprinkled away all over the plant just as I had been doing.”

“Did you kill the buds?”

“It discouraged them.  I ought to have put some crystals on the ground a little way off and let them take it in in the air.”

“It doesn’t seem as though it were strong enough to do either good or harm, does it?  One tablespoonful in two gallons of water!”

“Grandfather says he wouldn’t ask for plants to blossom better than ours are doing.”  Ethel Brown repeated the compliment with just pride.

“It’s partly because we’ve loved to work with them and loved them,” insisted Ethel Blue.  “Everything you love answers back.  If you hate your work it’s just like hating people; if you don’t like a girl she doesn’t like you and you feel uncomfortable outside and inside; if you don’t like your work it doesn’t go well.”

“What do you know about hating?” demanded Dorothy, giving Ethel Blue a hug.

Ethel flushed.

“I know a lot about it,” she insisted.  “Some days I just despise arithmetic and on those days I never can do anything right; but when I try to see some sense in it I get along better.”

They all laughed, for Ethel Blue’s struggles with mathematics were calculated to arouse sympathy even in a hardened breast.

“It’s all true,” agreed Helen, who had been listening quietly to what the younger girls were saying, “and I believe we ought to show people more than we do that we like them.  I don’t see why we’re so scared to let a person know that we think she’s done something well, or to sympathize with her when she’s having a hard time.”

“O,” exclaimed Dorothy shrinkingly, “it’s so embarrassing to tell a person you’re sorry.”

“You don’t have to tell her in words,” insisted Helen.  “You can make her realize that you understand what she is going through and that you’d like to help her.”

“How can you do it without talking?” asked Ethel Brown, the practical.

“When I was younger,” answered Helen thoughtfully, “I used to be rather afraid of a person who was in trouble.  I thought she might think I was intruding if I spoke of it.  But Mother told me one day that a person who was suffering didn’t want to be treated as if she were in disgrace and not to be spoken to, and I’ve always tried to remember it.  Now, when I know about it or guess it I make a point of being just as nice as I know how to her.  Sometimes we don’t talk about the trouble at all; sometimes it comes out naturally after a while.  But even if the subject isn’t mentioned she knows that there is at least one person who is interested in her and her affairs.”