With Marjorie, to be freshly dressed always made her walk decorously, and Grandma smiled as she saw the little girl pick her way daintily down the walk to the front gate, and along the road to Stella’s, which, though only next door, was several hundred yards away.

As Marjorie passed out of sight, Grandma sighed a little to think how quickly the summer was flying by, for she dearly loved to have her grandchildren with her, and though, perhaps, not to be called favorite, yet Marjorie was the oldest and possessed a very big share of her grandmother’s affection.

Soon after she reached Stella’s, Molly came flying over.  Molly, too, had on a clean afternoon dress, but that never endowed her with a sense of decorum, as it did Marjorie.

“Hello, girls,” she cried, as she climbed over the veranda-railing and plumped herself down in the hammock.  “What are we going to do this afternoon?”

“Let’s read,” said Stella, promptly.

“Read, read, read!” said Molly.  “I’m tired of your everlasting reading.  Let’s play tennis.”

“It’s too hot for tennis,” said Stella, “and, besides, you girls haven’t tennis shoes on and you’d spoil your shoes and the court, too.”

“Oh, what do you think,” said Mopsy, suddenly; “I have the loveliest idea!  Only we can’t do it this afternoon, because we’re all too much dressed up.  But I’ll tell you about it, and we can begin to-morrow morning.”

“What’s your idea?” said Molly, rousing herself in the hammock and sitting with her chin in both hands as she listened.

“Why, I read it in the paper,” said Marjorie, “and it’s this.  And it’s a lovely way to make money; we could make quite a lot for the Dunns.  It will be some trouble, but it would be a lot of fun, too.”

“Yes, but what is it,” said Stella, in her quietly patient way.

“You go out into the field,” began Marjorie, “and you gather heaps and heaps of pennyroyal,—­you take baskets, you know, and gather just pecks of it.  Then you take it home and you put it in pails or tubs or anything with a lot of water.  And then you leave it about two days, and then you drain it off, and then it’s pennyroyal extract.”

Marjorie announced the last words with a triumphant air, but her hearers did not seem very much impressed.

“What then?” asked Molly, evidently awaiting something more startling.

“Why, then, you put it in bottles, and paste labels on, and take it all around and sell it to people.  They love to have it, you know, for mosquitoes or burns or something, and they pay you quite a lot, and then you have the money for charity.”

The artistic possibilities began to dawn upon Stella.

“Yes,” she said, “and I could make lovely labels, with fancy letters; and you and Molly could paste them on, and we could tie the corks in with little blue ribbons, like perfumery bottles.”

“And we’ll each bring bottles,” cried Molly, becoming interested; “we have lots at our house.  Let’s start out now to gather the pennyroyal.  We’re not so awfully dressed up.  This frock will wash, anyway.”