“O, let’s go into the gardening business,” cried Roger.  “I’ve already offered to be the laboring man at the beck and call of these young women all for the small reward of having all the sweetpeas I want to pick.”

“What we’re afraid of is that he won’t want to pick them,” laughed Ethel Brown.  “We’re thinking of binding him to do a certain amount of picking every day.”

“Anyway, the Morton-Smith families are going to have gardens and Helen is going to write for seed catalogues this very night before she seeks her downy couch—­she has vowed she will.”

“Mother has always had a successful garden, she’ll be able to give you advice,” offered Margaret.

“We’ll ask it from every one we know, I rather imagine,” and Dorothy beamed at the prospect of doing something that had been one of her great desires all her life.

The little thicket of grapefruit trees served as the centrepiece of Ethel Blue’s dinner table, and every one admired all over again its glossy leaves and sturdy stems.

“When spring comes we’ll set them out in the garden and see what happens,” promised Ethel Blue.

“We have grapefruit salad to-night.  You must have sent a wireless over to the kitchen,” Ethel Brown declared to Margaret.

It was a delicious salad, the cubes of the grapefruit being mixed with cubes of apple and of celery, garnished with cherries and served on crisp yellow-green lettuce leaves with French dressing.

Ethel Blue always liked to see her Aunt Marion make French dressing at the table, for her white hands moved swiftly and skilfully among the ingredients.  Mary brought her a bowl that had been chilled on ice.  Into it she poured four tablespoonfuls of olive oil, added a scant half teaspoonful of salt with a dash of red pepper which she stirred until the salt was dissolved.  To that combination she added one tablespoonful either of lemon juice or vinegar a drop at a time and stirring constantly so that the oil might take up its sharper neighbor.

Dorothy particularly approved her Aunt Marion’s manner of putting her salads together.  To-night, for instance, she did not have the plates brought in from the kitchen with the salad already upon them.

“That always reminds me of a church fair,” she declared.

She was willing to give herself the trouble of preparing the salad for her family and guests with her own hands.  From a bowl of lettuce she selected the choicest leaves for the plate before her; upon these she placed the fruit and celery mixture, dotted the top with a cherry and poured the dressing over all.  It was fascinating to watch her, and Margaret wished that her mother served salad that way.