“I begin to see why you’re so popular at school,” remarked Margaret, who had known for a long time other reasons for Helen’s popularity.

Helen threw a leaf at her friend and asked the Ethels to make some lemonade.  They had brought the juice in a bottle and chilled water in a thermos bottle, so that the preparation was not hard.  There were cold cheese straws to eat with it.  The Ethels had made them in their small kitchen at home by rubbing two tablespoonfuls of butter into four tablespoonfuls of flour, adding two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, seasoning with a pinch of cayenne, another of salt and another of mace, rolling out to a thickness of a quarter of an inch, cutting into strips about four inches long and half an inch wide and baking in a hot oven.

“‘Which I wish to remark and my language is plain,’” Helen quoted, “that in spite of Dicky’s picking all the blossoms we have so many flowers now that we ought to do—­give them away.

“Ethel Blue and I have been taking some regularly every week to the old ladies at the Home,” returned Ethel Brown.

“I was wondering if there were enough to send some to the hospital at Glen Point,” suggested Margaret.  “The Glen Point people are pretty good about sending flowers, but the hospital is an old story with them and sometimes they don’t remember when they might.”

“I should think we might send some there and some to the Orphanage,” said Dorothy, from whose large garden the greater part of the supply would have to come.  “Have the orphans any gardens to work in?”

“They have beds like your school garden here in Rosemont, but they have to give the vegetables to the house and I suppose it isn’t much fun to raise vegetables and then have them taken away from you.”

“They eat them themselves.”

“But they don’t know Willy’s tomato from Johnny’s.  If Willy and Johnny were allowed to sell their crops they’d be willing to pay out of the profit for the seed they use and they’d take a lot of interest in it.  The housekeeper would buy all they’d raise, and they’d feel that their gardens were self-supporting.  Now they feel that the seed is given to them out of charity, and that it’s a stingy sort of charity after all because they are forced to pay for the seed by giving up their vegetables whether they want to or not.”

“Do they enjoy working the gardens?”

“I should say not!  James and I said the other day that they were the most forlorn looking gardeners we ever laid our eyes on.”

“Don’t they grow any flowers at all?”

“Just a few in a border around the edge of their vegetable gardens and some in front of the main building where they’ll be seen from the street.”

The girls looked at each other and wrinkled their noses.

“Let’s send some there every week and have the children understand that young people raised them and thought it was fun to do it.”