“And can’t you ask to have the flowers put in the dining-room and the room where the children are in the evening and not in the reception room where only guests will see them?”

“I will,” promised Margaret.  “James and I have a scheme to try to have the children work their gardens on the same plan that the children do here,” she went on.  “We’re going to get Father to put it before the Board of Management, if we can.”

“I do hope he will.  The kiddies here are so wild over their gardens that it’s proof to any one that it’s a good plan.”

“Oo-hoo,” came Roger’s call across the field.

“Oo-hoo.  Come up,” went back the answer.

“What are you girls talking about?” inquired the young man, arranging himself comfortably with his back against a rock and accepting a paper tumbler of lemonade and some cheese straws.

Helen explained their plan for disposing of the extra flowers from their gardens.

“It’s Service Club work; we ought to have started it earlier,” she ended.

“The Ethels did begin it some time ago; I caught them at it,” he accused, shaking his finger at his sister and cousin.

“I told the girls we had been taking flowers to the Old Ladies’ Home,” confessed Ethel Brown.

“O, you have!  I didn’t know that!  I did find out that you were supplying the Atwoods down by the bridge with sweetpeas.”

“There have been such oodles,” protested Ethel Blue.

“Of course.  It was the right thing to do.”

“How did you know about it, anyway?  Weren’t you taking flowers there yourself?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What were you doing?”

“I know; I saw him digging there one day.”

“O, keep still, Dorothy,” Roger remonstrated.

“You might as well tell us about it.”

“It isn’t anything.  I did look in one day to ask if they’d like some sweetpeas, but I found the Ethels were ahead of me.  The old lady has a fine snowball bush and a beauty syringa in front of the house.  When I spoke about them she said she had always wanted to have a bed of white flowers around the two bushes, so I offered to make one for her.  That’s all.”

“Good for Roger!” cried Margaret.  “Tell us what you put into it.  We’ve had pink and blue and yellow beds this year; we can add white next year.”

“Just common things,” replied Roger.  “It was rather late so I planted seeds that would hurry up; sweet alyssum for a border, of course, and white verbenas and balsam, and petunias, and candytuft and, phlox and stocks and portulaca and poppies.  Do you remember, I asked you, Dorothy, if you minded my taking up that aster that showed a white bud?  That went to Mrs. Atwood.  The seeds are all coming up pretty well now and the old lady is as pleased as Punch.”

“I should think she might be!  Can the old gentleman cultivate them or is his rheumatism too bad?”

“I put in an hour there every once in a while,” Roger admitted reluctantly.