Ethel Morton’s Enterprise by Mabell S.C. Smith (page 2)

get that bit with the brook; she has set her heart on it.”

“We want you to have it not only for Dorothy’s sake but for our own. It isn’t a good building lot–it’s too damp–and we’re lucky to have an offer for it.”

“Can you tell me just what the trouble is? It seems as if it ought to be straight since all of you heirs agree to the sale.”

“The difficulty is,” said Stanley, “that we aren’t sure that we are all the heirs. We thought we were, but Uncle William made some inquiries on his way here, and he learned enough to disquiet him.”

“Our father, John Clark, had a sister Judith,” explained the younger Miss Clark. “They lived here on the Clark estate which had belonged to the family for many generations. Then Judith married a man named Leonard–Peter Leonard–and went to Nebraska at a time when Nebraska was harder to reach than California is now. That was long before the Civil War and during those frontier days Aunt Judith and Uncle Peter evidently were tossed about to the limit of their endurance. Her letters came less and less often and they always told of some new grief–the death of a child or the loss of some piece of property. Finally the letters ceased altogether. I don’t understand why her family didn’t hold her more closely, but they lost sight of her entirely.”

“Probably it was more her fault than theirs,” replied Mrs. Smith softly, recalling that there had been a time when her own pride had forbade her letting her people know that she was in dire distress.

“It doesn’t make much difference to-day whose fault it was,” declared Stanley Clark cheerfully; “the part of the story that interests us is that the family thought that all Great-aunt Judith’s children were dead. Here is where Uncle William got his surprise. When he was coming on from Arkansas he stopped over for a day at the town where Aunt Judith had posted her last letter to Grandfather, about sixty years ago. There he learned from the records that she was dead and all her children were dead–_except one_.”

“Except one!” repeated Mrs. Smith. “Born after she ceased writing home?”

“Exactly. Now this daughter–Emily was her name–left the town after her parents died and there is no way of finding out where she went. One or two of the old people remember that the Leonard girl left, but nothing more.”

“She may be living now.”

“Certainly she may; and she may have married and had a dozen children. You see, until we can find out something about this Emily we can’t give a clear title to the land.”

Mrs. Smith nodded her understanding.

“It’s lucky we’ve never been willing to sell any of the old estate,” said Mr. William Clark, who had entered and been listening to the story. “If we had we should, quite ignorantly, have given a defective title.”

“Isn’t it possible, after making as long and thorough a search as you can, to take the case into court and have the judge declare the title you give to be valid, under the circumstances?”

“That is done; but you can see that such a decision would be granted only after long research on our part. It would delay your purchase considerably.”

“However, it seems to me the thing to do,” decided Mrs. Smith, and she and Stanley at once entered upon a discussion of the ways and means by which the hunt for Emily Leonard and her heirs was to be accomplished. It included the employment of detectives for the spring months, and then, if they had not met with success, a journey by Stanley during the weeks of his summer vacation.

Dorothy and Ethel were bitterly disappointed at the result of Mrs. Smith’s attempt to purchase the coveted bit of land.

“I suppose it wouldn’t have any value for any one else on earth,” cried Dorothy, “but I want it.”

“I don’t think I ever saw a spot that suited me so well for a summer play place,” agreed Ethel Blue, and Helen and Roger and all the rest of the Club members were of the same opinion.

“The Clarks will be putting the price up if they should find out that we wanted it so much,” warned Roger.

“I don’t believe they would,” smiled Mrs. Smith. “They said they thought themselves lucky to have a customer for it, because it isn’t good for building ground.”

“We’ll hope that Stanley will unearth the history of his great-aunt,” said Roger seriously.

“And find that she died a spinster,” smiled his Aunt Louise. “The fewer heirs there are to deal the simpler it will be.”

CHAPTER VI

WILD FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN

Roger had a fair crop of lettuce in one of his flats by the middle of March and transplanted the tiny, vivid green leaves to the hotbed without doing them any harm. The celery and tomato seeds that he had planted during the first week of the month were showing their heads bravely and the cabbage and cauliflower seedlings had gone to keep the lettuce company in the hotbed. On every warm day he opened the sashes and let the air circulate among the young plants.

“Wordsworth says

‘It is my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes,’

and I suppose that’s true of vegetables, too,” laughed Roger.

The girls, meanwhile, had been planting the seeds of Canterbury bells and foxgloves in flats. They did not put in many of them because they learned that they would not blossom until the second year. The flats they made from boxes that had held tomato cans. Roger sawed through the sides and they used the cover for the bottom of the second flat.

The dahlias they provided with pots, joking at the exclusiveness of this gorgeous flower which likes to have a separate house for each of its seeds. These were to be transferred to the garden about the middle of May together with the roots of last year’s dahlias which they were going to sprout in a box of sand for about a month before allowing them to renew their acquaintance with the flower bed.

By the middle of April they had planted a variety of seeds and were watching the growth or awaiting the germination of gay cosmos, shy four o’clocks, brilliant marigolds, varied petunias and stocks, smoke-blue ageratums, old-fashioned pinks and sweet williams. Each was planted according to the instructions of the seed catalogues, and the young horticulturists also read and followed the advice of the pamphlets on “Annual Flowering Plants” and “The Home Vegetable Garden” sent out by the Department of Agriculture at Washington to any one who asks for them.

[Illustration: A Flat]

They were prudent about planting directly in the garden seeds which did not require forcing in the house, for they did not want them to be nipped, but they put them in the ground just as early as any of the seedsmen recommended, though they always saved a part of their supply so that they might have enough for a second sowing if a frost should come.

Certain flowers which they wished to have blossom for a long time they sowed at intervals. Candytuft, for instance, they sowed first in April and they planned to make a second sowing in May and a third late in July so that they might see the pretty white border blossoms late in the autumn. Mignonette was a plant of which Mr. Emerson was as fond as Roger was of sweetpeas and the girls decided to give him a surprise by having such a succession of blooms that they might invite him to a picking bee as late as the end of October. Nasturtiums also, they planted with a liberal hand in nooks and crannies where the soil was so poor that they feared other plants would turn up their noses, and pansies, whose demure little faces were favorites with Mrs. Morton, they experimented with in various parts of the gardens and in the hotbed.

The gardens at the Mortons’ and Smiths’ were long established so that there was not any special inducement to change the arrangement of the beds, except as the young people had planned way back in January for the enlargement of the drying green. The new garden, however, offered every opportunity. Each bed was laid out with especial reference to the crop that was to be put into it and the land was naturally so varied that there was the kind of soil and the right exposure for plants that required much moisture and for those that preferred a sandy soil, for the sun lovers and the shade lovers.

The newly aroused interest in plants extended to the care of the house plants which heretofore had been the sole concern of Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton. Now the girls begged the privilege of trimming off the dead leaves from the ivies and geraniums and of washing away with oil of lemon and a stiff brush the scale that sometimes came on the palms. They even learned to kill the little soft white creature called aphis by putting under the plant a pan of hot coals with tobacco thrown on them.

“It certainly has a sufficiently horrid smell,” exclaimed Ethel Brown. “I don’t wonder the beasties curl up and die; I’d like to myself.”

“They say aphis doesn’t come on a plant with healthy sap,” Ethel Blue contributed to this talk, “so the thing to do is to make these plants so healthy that the animals drop off starved.”

“This new development is going to be a great comfort to me if it keeps on,” Mrs. Emerson confessed to her daughter humorously. “I shall encourage the girls to use my plants for instruction whenever they want to.”

“You may laugh at their sudden affection,” returned Mrs. Morton seriously, “but I’ve noticed that everything the U.S.C. sets its heart on doing gets done, and I’ve no doubt whatever that they’ll have what Roger calls ‘some’ garden this next summer.”

“Roger has had long consultations with his grandfather about fertilizers and if he’s interested in the beginnings of a garden and not merely in the results I think we can rely on him.”

“They have all been absorbed in the subject for three months and now

‘Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.'”

Roger maintained that his Aunt Louise’s house ought to be begun at the time that he planted his sweetpeas.

“If I can get into the ground enough to plant, surely the cellar diggers ought to be able to do the same,” he insisted.

March was not over when he succeeded in preparing a trench a foot deep all around the spot which was to be his vegetable garden except for a space about three feet wide which he left for an entrance. In the bottom he placed three inches of manure and over that two inches of good soil. In this he planted the seeds half an inch apart in two rows and covered them with soil to the depth of three inches, stamping it down hard. As the vines grew to the top of the trench he kept them warm with the rest of the earth that he had taken out, until the opening was entirely filled.

The builder was not of Roger’s mind about the cellar digging, but he really did begin operations in April. Every day the Mortons and Smiths, singly or in squads, visited the site of Sweetbrier Lodge, as Mrs. Smith and Dorothy had decided to call the house. Dorothy had started a notebook in which to keep account of the progress of the new estate, but after the first entry–“Broke ground to-day”–matters seemed to advance so slowly that she had to fill in with memoranda concerning the growth of the garden.

Even before the house was started its position and that of the garage had been staked so that the garden might not encroach on them. Then the garden had been laid out with a great deal of care by the united efforts of the Club and Mr. Emerson and his farm superintendent.

Often the Ethels and Dorothy extended their walk to the next field and to the woods and rocks at the back. The Clarks had learned nothing more about their Cousin Emily, although they had a man searching records and talking with the older people of a number of towns in Nebraska. He reported that he was of the opinion that either the child had died when young or that she had moved to a considerable distance from the town of her birth or that she had been adopted and had taken the name of her foster parents. At any rate consultation of records of marriages and deaths in several counties had revealed to him no Emily Leonard.

The Clarks were quite as depressed by this outcome of the search as was Mrs. Smith, but they had instructed the detective to continue his investigation. Meanwhile they begged Dorothy and her cousins to enjoy the meadow and woods as much as they liked.

The warm moist days of April tempted the girls to frequent searches for wild flowers. They found the lot a very gold mine of delight. There was so much variety of soil and of sunshine and of shadow that plants of many different tastes flourished where in the meadow across the road only a few kinds seemed to live. It was with a hearty shout they hailed the first violets.

“Here they are, here they are!” cried Ethel Blue. “Aunt Marion said she was sure she saw some near the brook. She quoted some poetry about it–

“‘Blue ran the flash across;
Violets were born!'”

“That’s pretty; what’s the rest of it?” asked Ethel Brown, on her knees taking up some of the plants with her trowel and placing them in her basket so carefully that there was plenty of earth surrounding each one to serve as a nest when it should be put into Helen’s wild flower bed.

“It’s about something good happening when everything seems very bad,” explained Ethel Blue. “Browning wrote it.”

“Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!

“Sky–what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!

“World–how it walled about
Life with disgrace
Till God’s own smile came out:
That was thy face!”

“It’s always so, isn’t it!” approved Dorothy. “And the more we think about the silver lining to every cloud the more likely it is to show itself.”

“What’s this delicate white stuff? And these tiny bluey eyes?” asked Ethel Blue, who was again stooping over to examine the plants that enjoyed the moist positions near the stream.

“The eyes are houstonia–Quaker ladies. We must have a clump of them. Saxifrage, Helen said the other was. She called my attention the other day to some they had at school to analyze. It has the same sort of stem that the hepatica has.”

[Illustration: Yellow Adder’s Tongue]

“I remember–a scape–only this isn’t so downy.”

“They’re pretty, aren’t they? We must be sure to get a good sized patch; you can’t see them well enough when there is only a plant or two.”

“Helen wants a regular village of every kind that she transplants. She says she’d rather have a good many of a few kinds than a single plant of ever so many kinds.”

“It will be prettier. What do you suppose this yellow bell-shaped flower is?”

“It ought to be a lily, hanging its head like that.”

“It is a lily,” corroborated Ethel Brown, “but it’s called ‘dog-tooth violet’ though it isn’t a violet at all.”

“What a queer mistake. Hasn’t it any other name?”

“Adder’s-tongue. That’s more suitable, isn’t it?”

“Yes, except that I hate to have a lovely flower called by a snake’s name!”

“Not all snakes are venomous; and, anyway, we ought to remember that every animal has some means of protecting himself and the snakes do it through their poison fangs.”

“Or through their squeezing powers, like that big constrictor we saw at the Zoo.”

“I suppose it is fair for them to have a defence,” admitted Ethel Blue, “but I don’t like them, just the same, and I wish this graceful flower had some other name.”

“It has.”

“O, _that_! ‘Dog-tooth’ is just about as ugly as ‘adder’s tongue’! The botanists were in bad humor when they christened the poor little thing!”

“Do you remember what Bryant says about ‘The Yellow Violet’?” asked Ethel Brown, who was always committing verses to memory.

“Tell us,” begged Ethel Blue, who was expending special care on digging up this contribution to the garden as if to make amends for the unkindness of the scientific world, and Ethel Brown repeated the poem beginning

“When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue-bird’s warble know, The yellow violet’s modest bell
Peeps from last year’s leaves below.”

Dorothy went into ecstasies over the discovery of two roots of white violets, but there seemed to be no others, though they all sought diligently for the fragrant blossoms among the leaves.

A cry from Ethel Blue brought the others to a drier part of the field at a distance from the brook. There in a patch of soil that was almost sandy was a great patch of violets of palest hue, with deep orange eyes. They were larger than any of the other violets and their leaves were entirely different.

“What funny leaves,” cried Dorothy. “They look as if some one had crumpled up a real violet leaf and cut it from the edge to the stem into a fine fringe.”

“Turn it upside down and press it against the ground. Don’t you think it looks like a bird’s claw?”

“So it does! This must be a ‘bird-foot violet,'”

“It is, and there’s more meaning in the name than in the one the yellow bell suffers from. Do you suppose there are any violets up in the woods?”

“They seem to fit in everywhere; I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if there were some there.”

Sure enough, there were, smaller and darker in color than the flowers down by the brook and hiding more shyly under their shorter-stemmed leaves.

“Helen is going to have some trouble to make her garden fit the tastes of all these different flowers,” said Ethel Brown thoughtfully. “I don’t see how she’s going to do it.”

“Naturally it’s sort of half way ground,” replied Ethel Blue. “She can enrich the part that is to hold the ones that like rich food and put sand where these bird foot fellows are to go, and plant the wet-lovers at the end where the hydrant is so that there’ll be a temptation to give them a sprinkle every time the hose is screwed on.”

[Illustration: Blue Flag]

“The ground is always damp around the hydrant; I guess she’ll manage to please her new tenants.”

“If only Mother can buy this piece of land,” said Dorothy, “I’m going to plant forget-me-nots and cow lilies and arum lilies right in the stream. There are flags and pickerel weed and cardinals here already. It will make a beautiful flower bed all the length of the field.”

“I hope and hope every day that it will come out right,” sighed Ethel Blue. “Of course the Miss Clarks are lovely about it, but you can’t do things as if it were really yours.”

Almost at the same instant both the Ethels gave a cry as each discovered a plant she had been looking for.

“Mine is wild ginger, I’m almost sure,” exclaimed Ethel Brown. “Come and see, Dorothy.”

“Has it a thick, leathery leaf that lies down almost flat?” asked Dorothy, running to see for herself.

“Yes, and a blossom you hardly notice. It’s hidden under the leaves and it’s only yellowish-green. You have to look hard for it.”

“That must be wild ginger,” Dorothy decided. “What’s yours, Ethel Blue?”

“I know mine is hepatica. See the ‘hairy scape’ Helen talked about? And see what a lovely, lovely color the blossom is? Violet with a hint of pink?”

“That would be the best of all for a border. The leaves stay green all winter and the blossoms come early in the spring and encourage you to think that after a while all the flowers are going to awaken.”

“It’s a shame to take all this out of Dorothy’s lot.”

“It may never be mine,” sighed Dorothy. “Still, perhaps we ought not to take too many roots; the Miss Clarks may not want all the flowers taken out of their woods.”

“We’ll take some from here and some from Grandfather’s woods,” decided Ethel Brown. “There are a few in the West Woods, too.”

So they dug up but a comparatively small number of the hepaticas, nor did they take many of the columbines nodding from a cleft in the piled-up rocks.

“I know that when we have our wild garden fully planted I’m not going to want to pick flowers just for the sake of picking them the way I used to,” confessed Ethel Blue. “Now I know something about them they seem so alive to me, sort of like people–I’m sure they won’t like to be taken travelling and forced to make a new home for themselves.”

“I know how you feel,” responded Dorothy slowly. “I feel as if those columbines were birds that had perched on those rocks just for a minute and were going to fly away, and I didn’t want to disturb them before they flitted.”

They all stood gazing at the delicate, tossing blossoms whose spurred tubes swung in every gentlest breeze.

“It has a bird’s name, too,” added Dorothy as if there had been no silence; “_aquilegia_–the eagle flower.”

“Why eagle? The eagle is a strenuous old fowl,” commented Ethel Brown. “The name doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“It’s because of the spurs–they suggest an eagle’s talons.”

“That’s too far-fetched to suit me,” confessed Ethel Brown.

“It is called ‘columbine’ because the spurs look a little like doves around a drinking fountain, and the Latin word for dove is ‘_columba_,” said Dorothy.

“It’s queer the way they name flowers after animals–” said Ethel Blue.

“Or parts of animals,” laughed her cousin. “Saxifrage isn’t; Helen told me the name meant ‘rock-breaker,’ because some kinds grow in the clefts of rocks the way the columbines do.”

“I wish we could find a trillium,” said Ethel Blue. “The _tri_ in that name means that everything about it is in threes.”

“What is a trillium?” asked Ethel Brown.

“Roger brought in a handful the other day. ‘Wake-robin’ he called it.”

“O, I remember them. There was a bare stalk with three leaves and the flower was under the leaves.”

“There were three petals to the corolla and three sepals to the calyx. He had purple ones and white ones.”

“Here’s a white one this very minute,” said Dorothy, pouncing upon a plant eight or ten inches in height whose leaves looked eager and strong.

“See,” she said as they all leaned over to examine it; “the blossom has two sets of leaves. The outer set is usually green or some color not so gay as to attract insects or birds that might destroy the flower when it is in bud. These outer leaves are called, all together, the calyx, and each one of them is called a sepal.”

“The green thing on the back of a rose is the calyx and each of its leaflets is called a sepal,” said Ethel Brown by way of fixing the definition firmly in her mind.

“The pretty part of the flower is the corolla which means ‘little crown,’ and each of its parts is called a petal.”

“How did you learn all that?” demanded Ethel Brown admiringly.

“Your grandmother told me the other day.”

“You’ve got a good memory. Helen has told me a lot of botanical terms, but I forget them,”

“I try hard to remember everything I hear any one say about flowers or vegetables or planting now. You never can tell when it may be useful,” and Dorothy nodded wisely.

“Shall we take up this wake-robin?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Let’s not,” pleaded Ethel Brown. “We shall find others somewhere and there’s only one here.”

[Illustration: Wind Flower]

They left it standing, but when they came upon a growth of wind-flowers there were so many of them that they did not hesitate to dig them freely.

“I wonder why they’re called ‘wind-flowers’?” queried Ethel Brown, whose curiosity on the subject of names had been aroused.

“I know that answer,” replied Ethel Blue unexpectedly. “That is, nobody knows the answer exactly; I know that much.”

The other girls laughed.

“What is the answer as far as anybody knows it?” demanded Dorothy.

“The scientific name is ‘anemone.’ It comes from the Greek word meaning ‘wind.'”

“That seems to be a perfectly good answer. Probably it was given because they dance around so prettily in the wind,” guessed Dorothy.

“Helen’s botany says that it was christened that either because it grew in windy places or because it blossomed at the windy season.”

“Dorothy’s explanation suits me best,” Ethel Brown decided. “I shall stick to that.”

“I think it’s prettiest myself,” agreed Dorothy.

“She’s so much in earnest she doesn’t realize that she’s deciding against famous botanists,” giggled Ethel Brown.

“It _is_ prettier–a lot prettier,” insisted Ethel Blue. “I’m glad I’ve a cousin who can beat scientists!”

“What a glorious lot of finds!” cried Ethel Brown. “Just think of our getting all these in one afternoon!”

“I don’t believe we could except in a place like this where any plant can have his taste suited with meadow or brookside or woods or rocks.”

“And sunshine or shadow.”

They were in a gay mood as they gathered up their baskets and trowels and gently laid pieces of newspaper over the uprooted plants.

“It isn’t hot to-day but we won’t run any risk of their getting a headache from the sun,” declared Dorothy.

“These woodsy ones that aren’t accustomed to bright sunshine may be sensitive to it,” assented Ethel Blue. “We must remember to tell Helen in just what sort of spot we found each one so she can make its corner in the garden bed as nearly like it as possible.”

“I’m going to march in and quote Shakespeare to her,” laughed Ethel Brown. “I’m going to say

‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlip and the nodding violet grows,’

and then I’ll describe the ‘bank’ so she can copy it.”

“If she doesn’t she may have to repeat Bryant’s ‘Death of the Flowers’:–

‘The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago.'”

CHAPTER VII

COLOR SCHEMES

“Look out, Della; don’t pick that! _Don’t_ pick that, it’s poison ivy!” cried Ethel Brown as all the Club members were walking on the road towards Grandfather Emerson’s. A vine with handsome glossy leaves reached an inviting cluster toward passers-by.

“Poison ivy!” repeated Della, springing back. “How do you know it is? I thought it was woodbine–Virginia creeper.”

“Virginia creeper has as many fingers as your hand; this ivy has only three leaflets. See, I-V-Y,” and Ethel Blue took a small stick and tapped a leaflet for each letter.

“I must tell Grandfather this is here,” said Helen. “He tries to keep this road clear of it even if he finds it growing on land not his own. It’s too dangerous to be so close to the sidewalk.”

“It’s a shame it behaves so badly when it’s so handsome.”

“It’s not handsome if ‘handsome is as handsome does’ is true. But this is stunning when the leaves turn scarlet.”

“It’s a mighty good plan to admire it from a distance,” decided Tom, who had been looking at it carefully. “Della and I being ‘city fellers,’ we’re ignorant about it. I’ll remember not to touch the three-leaved I-V-Y, from now on.”

The Club was intent on finishing their flower garden plans that afternoon. They had gathered together all the seedsmen’s catalogues that had been sent them and they had also accumulated a pile of garden magazines. They knew, however, that Mr. Emerson had some that they did not have, and they also wanted his help, so they had telephoned over to find out whether he was to be at home and whether he would help them with the laying out of their color beds.

“Nothing I should like better,” he had answered cordially so now they were on the way to put him to the test.

“We already have some of our color plants in our gardens left over from last year,” Helen explained, “and some of the others that we knew we’d want we’ve started in the hotbed, and we’ve sowed a few more in the open beds, but we want to make out a full list.”

“Just what is your idea,” asked Mr. Emerson, while Grandmother Emerson saw that the dining table around which they were sitting had on it a plentiful supply of whole wheat bread sandwiches, the filling being dates and nuts chopped together.

Helen explained their wish to have beds all of one color.

“We girls are so crazy over pink that we’re going to try a pink bed at both of Dorothy’s gardens as well as in ours,” she laughed.

“You’d like a list of plants that will keep on blooming all summer so that you can always run out and get a bunch of pink blossoms, I suppose.”

“That’s exactly what we want,” and they took their pencils to note down any suggestions that Mr. Emerson made.

“We’ve decided on pink candytuft for the border and single pink hollyhocks for the background with foxgloves right in front of them to cover up the stems at the bottom where they haven’t many leaves and a medium height phlox in front of that for the same reason.”

“You should have pink morning glories and there’s a rambler rose, a pink one, that you ought to have in the southeast corner on your back fence,” suggested Mr. Emerson. “Stretch a strand or two of wire above the top and let the vine run along it. It blooms in June.”

“Pink rambler,” they all wrote. “What’s its name?”

“Dorothy–“

“Smith?”

“Perkins.”

James went through a pantomime that registered severe disappointment.

“Suppose we begin at the beginning,” suggested Mr. Emerson. “I believe we can make out a list that will keep your pink bed gay from May till frost.”

“That’s what we want.”

“You had some pink tulips last spring.”

“We planted them in the autumn so that they’d come out early this spring. By good luck they’re just where we’ve decided to have a pink bed.”

“There’s your first flower, then. They’re near the front of the bed, I hope. The low plants ought to be in front, of course, so they won’t be hidden.”

“They’re in front. So are the hyacinths.”

“Are you sure they’re all pink?”

“It’s a great piece of good fortune–Mother selected only pink bulbs and a few yellow ones to put back into the ground and gave the other colors to Grandmother.”

“That helps you at the very start-off. There are two kinds of pinks that ought to be set near the front rank because they don’t grow very tall–the moss pink and the old-fashioned ‘grass pink.’ They are charming little fellows and keep up a tremendous blossoming all summer long.”

“‘Grass pink,'” repeated Ethel, Brown, “isn’t that the same as ‘spice pink’?”

“That’s what your grandmother calls it. She says she has seen people going by on the road sniff to see what that delicious fragrance was. I suppose these small ones must be the original pinks that the seedsmen have burbanked into the big double ones.”

“‘Burbanked’?”

“That’s a new verb made out of the name of Luther Burbank, the man who has raised such marvelous flowers in California and has turned the cactus into a food for cattle instead of a prickly nuisance.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Margaret. “‘Burbanked’ means ‘changed into something superior,’ I suppose.”

“Something like that. Did you tell me you had a peony?”

There’s a good, tall tree peony that we’ve had moved to the new bed.”

“At the back?”

“Yes, indeed; it’s high enough to look over almost everything else we are likely to have. It blossoms early.”

“To be a companion to the tulips and hyacinths.”

“Have you started any peony seeds?”

“The Reine Hortense. Grandmother advised that. They’re well up now.”

“I’d plant a few seeds in your bed, too. If you can get a good stand of perennials–flowers that come up year after year of their own accord–it saves a lot of trouble.”

“Those pinks are perennials, aren’t they? They come up year after year in Grandmother’s garden.”

“Yes, they are, and so is the columbine. You ought to put that in.”

“But it isn’t pink. We got some in the woods the other day. It is red,” objected Dorothy.

“The columbine has been ‘burbanked.’ There’s a pink one among the cultivated kinds. They’re larger than the wild ones and very lovely.”

“Mother has some. Hers are called the ‘Rose Queen,'” said Margaret. “There are yellow and blue ones, too.”

“Your grandmother can give you some pink Canterbury bells that will blossom this year. They’re biennials, you know.”

“Does that mean they blossom every two years?”

“Not exactly. It means that the ones you planted in your flats will only make wood and leaves this year and won’t put out any flowers until next year. That’s all these pink ones of your grandmother’s did last season; this summer they’re ready to go into your bed and be useful.”

“Our seedlings are blue, anyway,” Ethel Blue reminded the others. “They must be set in the blue bed.”

“How about sweet williams?” asked Mr. Emerson. “Don’t I remember some in your yard?”

“Mother planted some last year,” answered Roger, “but they didn’t blossom.”

“They will this year. They’re perennials, but it takes them one season to make up their minds to set to work. There’s an annual that you might sow now that will be blossoming in a few weeks. It won’t last over, though.”

“Annuals die down at the end of the first season. I’m getting these terms straightened in my so-called mind,” laughed Dorothy.

“You said you had a bleeding heart–“

“A fine old perennial,” exclaimed Ethel Brown, airing her new information.

“–and pink candy-tuft for the border and foxgloves for the back; are those old plants or seedlings?”

“Both.”

“Then you’re ready for anything! How about snapdragons?”

“I thought snapdragons were just common weeds,” commented James.

“They’ve been improved, too, and now they are large and very handsome and of various heights. If you have room enough you can have a lovely bed of tall ones at the back, with the half dwarf kind before it and the dwarf in front of all. It gives a sloping mass of bloom that is lovely, and if you nip off the top blossoms when the buds appear you can make them branch sidewise and become thick.”

“We certainly haven’t space for that bank arrangement in our garden,” decided Roger, “but it will be worth trying in Dorothy’s new garden,” and he put down a “D” beside the note he had made.

“The snapdragon sows itself so you’re likely to have it return of its own accord another year, so you must be sure to place it just where you’d like to have it always,” warned Mr. Emerson.

“The petunia sows itself, too,” Margaret contributed to the general stock of knowledge. “You can get pretty, pale, pink petunias now, and they blossom at a great rate all summer.”

“I know a plant we ought to try,” offered James. “It’s the plant they make Persian Insect Powder out of.”

“The Persian daisy,” guessed Mr. Emerson. “It would be fun to try that.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to buy the insect powder?” asked practical Ethel Brown.

“Very much,” laughed her grandfather, “but this is good fun because it doesn’t always blossom ‘true,’ and you never know whether you’ll get a pink or a deep rose color. Now, let me see,” continued Mr. Emerson thoughtfully, “you’ve arranged for your hollyhocks and your phlox–those will be blooming by the latter part of July, and I suppose you’ve put in several sowings of sweetpeas?”

They all laughed, for Roger’s demand for sweetpeas had resulted in a huge amount of seeds being sown in all three of the gardens.

“Where are we now?” continued Mr. Emerson.

“Now there ought to be something that will come into its glory about the first of August,” answered Helen.

“What do you say to poppies?”

“Are there pink poppies?”

“O, beauties! Big bears, and little bears, and middle-sized bears; single and double, and every one of them a joy to look upon!”

“Put down poppies two or three times,” laughed Helen in answer to her grandfather’s enthusiasm.

“And while we’re on the letter ‘P’ in the seed catalogue,” added Mr. Emerson, “order a few packages of single portulaca. There are delicate shades of pink now, and it’s a useful little plant to grow at the feet of tall ones that have no low-growing foliage and leave the ground bare.”

“It would make a good border for us at some time.”

“You might try it at Dorothy’s large garden. There’ll be space there to have many different kinds of borders.”

“We’ll have to keep our eyes open for a pink lady’s slipper over in the damp part of the Clarks’ field,” said Roger.

“O, I speak for it for my wild garden,” cried Helen.

“You ought to find one about the end of July, and as that is a long way off you can put off the decision as to where to place it when you transplant it,” observed their grandfather dryly.

“Mother finds verbenas and ‘ten week stocks’ useful for cutting,” said Margaret. “They’re easy to grow and they last a long time and there are always blossoms on them for the house.”

“Pink?” asked Ethel Blue, her pencil poised until she was assured.

“A pretty shade of pink, both of them, and they’re low growing, so you can put them forward in the beds after you take out the bulbs that blossomed early.”

“How are we going to know just when to plant all these things so they’ll come out when we want them to?” asked Della, whose city life had limited her gardening experience to a few summers at Chautauqua where they went so late in the season that their flower beds had been planted for them and were already blooming when they arrived.

“Study your catalogues, my child,” James instructed her.

“But they don’t always tell,” objected Della, who had been looking over several.

“That’s because the seedsmen sell to people all over the country–people living in all sorts of climates and with all sorts of soils. The best way is to ask the seedsman where you buy your seeds to indicate on the package or in a letter what the sowing time should be for our part of the world.”

“Then we’ll bother Grandfather all we can,” threatened Ethel Brown seriously. “He’s given us this list in the order of their blossoming–“

“More or less,” interposed Mr. Emerson. “Some of them over-lap, of course. It’s roughly accurate, though.”

“You can’t stick them in a week apart and have them blossom a week apart?” asked Della.

“Not exactly. It takes some of them longer to germinate and make ready to bloom than it does others. But of course it’s true in a general way that the first to be planted are the first to bloom.”

“We haven’t put in the late ones yet,” Ethel Blue reminded Mr. Emerson.

“Asters, to begin with. I don’t see how there’ll be enough room in your small bed to make much of a show with asters. I should put some in, of course, in May, but there’s a big opportunity at the new garden to have a splendid exhibition of them. Some asters now are almost as large and as handsome as chrysanthemums–astermums, they call them–and the pink ones are especially lovely.”

“Put a big ‘D’ against ‘asters,'” advised Roger. “That will mean that there must be a large number put into Dorothy’s new garden.”

“The aster will begin to blossom in August and will continue until light frost and the chrysanthemums will begin a trifle later and will last a little longer unless there is a killing frost.”

“Can we get blossoms on chrysanthemums the first, year?” asked Margaret, who had not found that true in her experience in her mother’s garden.

“There are some new kinds that will blossom the first year, the seedsmen promise. I’d like to have you try some of them.”

“Mother has two or three pink ones–well established plants–that she’s going to let us move to the pink bed,” said Helen.

“The chrysanthemums will end your procession,” said Mr. Emerson, “but you mustn’t forget to put in some mallow. They are easy to grow and blossom liberally toward the end of the season.”

“Can we make candy marshmallows out of it?”

“You can, but it would be like the Persian insect powder–it would be easier to buy it. But it has a handsome pink flower and you must surely have it on your list.”

“I remember when Mother used to have the greatest trouble getting cosmos to blossom,” said Margaret. “The frost almost always caught it. Now there is a kind that comes before the frost.”

“Cosmos is a delight at the end of the season,” remarked Mr. Emerson. “Almost all the autumn plants are stocky and sturdy, but cosmos is as graceful as a summer plant and as delicate as a spring blossom. You can wind up your floral year with asters and mallow and chrysanthemums and cosmos all blooming at once.”

“Now for the blue beds,” said Tom, excusing himself for looking at his watch on the plea that he and Della had to go back to New York by a comparatively early train.

“If you’re in a hurry I’ll just give you a few suggestions,” said Mr. Emerson. “Really blue flowers are not numerous, I suppose you have noticed.”

“We’ve decided on ageratum for the border and larkspur and monkshood for the back,” said Ethel Brown.

“There are blue crocuses and hyacinths and ‘baby’s breath’ for your earliest blossoms, and blue columbines as well as pink and yellow ones! and blue morning glories for your ‘climber,’ and blue bachelors’ buttons and Canterbury bells, and mourning bride, and pretty blue lobelia for low growing plants and blue lupine for a taller growth. If you are willing to depart from real blue into violet you can have heliotrope and violets and asters and pansies and primroses and iris.”

“The wild flag is fairly blue,” insisted Roger, who was familiar with the plants that edged the brook on his grandfather’s farm.

“It is until you compare it with another moisture lover–forget-me-not.”

“If Dorothy buys the Clarks’ field she can start a colony of flags and forget-me-nots in the stream,” suggested James.

“Can you remember cineraria? There’s a blue variety of that, and one of salpiglossis, which is an exquisite flower in spite of its name.”

“One of the sweetpea packages is marked ‘blue,'” said Roger, “I wonder if it will be a real blue?”

“Some of them are pretty near it. Now this isn’t a bad list for a rather difficult color,” Mr. Emerson went on, looking over Ethel Blue’s paper, “but you can easily see that there isn’t the variety of the pink list and that the true blues are scarce.”

“We’re going to try it, anyway,” returned Helen. “Perhaps we shall run across some others. Now I wrote down for the yellows, yellow crocuses first of all and yellow tulips.”

“There are many yellow spring flowers and late summer brings goldenrod, so it seems as if the extremes liked the color,” said Margaret observantly.

“The intermediate season does, too,” returned Mr. Emerson.

“Daffodils and jonquils are yellow and early enough to suit the most impatient,” remarked James.

“Who wrote this,” asked Mr. Emerson, from whom Ethel Brown inherited her love of poetry:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high on vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

“Wordsworth,” cried Ethel Brown.

“Wordsworth,” exclaimed Tom Watkins in the same breath.

“That must mean that daffies grow wild in England,” remarked Dorothy.

“They do, and we can have something of the same effect here if we plant them through a lawn. The bulbs must be put in like other bulbs, in the autumn. Crocuses may be treated in the same way. Then in the spring they come gleaming through the sod and fill everybody with Wordsworth’s delight.”

“Here’s another competition between Helen’s wild garden and the color bed; which shall take the buttercups and cowslips?”

“Let the wild bed have them,” urged Grandfather. “There will be plenty of others for the yellow bed.”

“We want yellow honeysuckle climbing on the high wire,” declared Roger.

“Assisted by yellow jessamine?” asked Margaret.

“And canary bird vine,” contributed Ethel Blue.

“And golden glow to cover the fence,” added Ethel Brown.

“The California poppy is a gorgeous blossom for an edge,” said Ethel Blue, “and there are other kinds of poppies that are yellow.”

“Don’t forget the yellow columbines,” Dorothy reminded them, “and the yellow snapdragons.”

“There’s a yellow cockscomb as well as a red.”

“And a yellow verbena.”

“Being a doctor’s son I happen to remember that calendula, which takes the pain out of a cut finger most amazingly, has a yellow flower.”

“Don’t forget stocks and marigolds.”

“And black-eyed-Susans–rudbeckia–grow very large when they’re cultivated.”

“That ought to go in the wild garden,” said Helen.

“We’ll let you have it,” responded Roger generously, “We can put the African daisy in the yellow bed instead.”

“Calliopsis or coreopsis is one of the yellow plants that the Department of Agriculture Bulletin mentions,” said Dorothy. “It tells you just how to plant it and we put in the seeds early on that account.”

“Gaillardia always reminds me of it a bit–the lemon color,” said Ethel Brown.

“Only that’s stiffer. If you want really, truly prim things try zinnias–old maids.”

[Illustration: Rudbeckia–Black-eyed Susan]

“Zinnias come in a great variety of colors now,” reported Mr. Emerson. “A big bowl of zinnias is a handsome sight.”

“We needn’t put any sunflowers into the yellow bed,” Dorothy reminded them, “because almost my whole back yard is going to be full of them.”

“And you needn’t plant any special yellow nasturtiums because Mother loves them and she has planted enough to give us flowers for the house, and flowers and leaves for salads and sandwiches, and seeds for pickle to use with mutton instead of capers.”

“There’s one flower you must be sure to have plenty of even if you don’t make these colored beds complete,” urged Mr. Emerson; “that’s the ‘chalk-lover,’ gypsophila.”

“What is it?”

“The delicate, white blossom that your grandmother always puts among cut flowers. It is feathery and softens and harmonizes the hues of all the rest.

‘So warm with light his blended colors flow,’

in a bouquet when there’s gypsophila in it.”

“But what a name!” ejaculated Roger.

CHAPTER VIII

CAVE LIFE

The dogwood was in blossom when the girls first established themselves in the cave in the Fitz-James woods. Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith thought it was rather too cool, but the girls invited them to come and have afternoon cocoa with them and proved to their satisfaction that the rocks were so sheltered by their position and by the trees that towered above them that it would take a sturdy wind to make them really uncomfortable.

Their first duty had been to clean out the cave.

“We can pretend that no one ever has lived here since the days when everybody lived in caves,” said Ethel Blue, who was always pretending something unusual. “We must be the first people to discover it.”

“I dare say we are,” replied Dorothy.

“Uhuh,” murmured Ethel Brown, a sound which meant a negative reply. “Here’s an old tin can, so we aren’t the very first.”

“It may have been brought here by a wolf,” suggested Ethel Blue.

“Perhaps it was a werwolf,” suggested Dorothy.

“What’s that?”

“A man turned by magic into a wolf but keeping his human feelings. The more I think of it the more I’m sure that it was a werwolf that brought the can here, because, having human feelings, he would know about cans and what they had in them, and being a wolf he would carry it to his lair or den or whatever they call it, to devour it.”

“Really, Dorothy, you make me uncomfortable!” exclaimed Ethel Blue.

“That may be one down there in the field now,” continued Dorothy, enjoying her make-believe.

The Ethels turned and gazed, each with an armful of trash that she had brought out of the cave. There was, in truth, a figure down in the field beside the brook, and he was leaning over and thrusting a stick into the ground and examining it closely when he drew it out.

“That can’t be a werwolf,” remonstrated Ethel Brown. “That’s a man.”

“Perhaps in the twentieth century wolves turn into men instead of men turning into wolves,” suggested Dorothy. “This may be a wolf with a man’s shape but keeping the feelings of a wolf, instead of the other way around.”

“Don’t, Dorothy!” remonstrated Ethel Blue again. “He does look like a horrid sort of man, doesn’t he?”

They all looked at him and wondered what he could be doing in the Miss Clarks’ field, but he did not come any nearer to them so they did not have a chance to find out whether he really was as horrid looking as Ethel Blue imagined.

It was not a short task to make the cave as clean as the girls wanted it to be. The owner of the tin can had been an untidy person or else his occupation of Fitz-James’s rocks had been so long ago that Nature had accumulated a great deal of rubbish. Whichever explanation was correct, there were many armfuls to be removed and then the interior of the cave had to be subjected to a thorough sweeping before the girls’ ideas of tidiness were satisfied. They had to carry all the rubbish away to some distance, for it would not do to leave it near the cave to be an eyesore during the happy days that they meant to spend there.

It was all done and Roger, who happened along, had made a bonfire for them and consumed all the undesirable stuff, before the two mothers appeared for the promised cocoa and the visit of inspection.

The girls at once set about the task of converting them to a belief in the sheltered position of the cave and then they turned their attention to the preparation of the feast. They had brought an alcohol stove that consisted of a small tripod which held a tin of solid alcohol and supported a saucepan. When packing up time came the tripod and the can fitted into the saucepan and the handles folded about it compactly.

“We did think at first of having an old stove top that Roger saw thrown away at Grandfather’s,” Ethel Brown explained. “We could build two brick sides to hold it up and have the stone for a back and leave the front open and run a piece of stove pipe up through that crack in the rocks.”

Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith, who were sitting on a convenient bit of rock just outside the cave, peered in as the description progressed.

“Then we could burn wood underneath and regulate the draft by making a sort of blower with some piece of old sheet iron.”

The mothers made no comment as Ethel Brown seemed not to have finished her account.

“Then we thought that perhaps you’d let us have that old oil stove up in the attic. We could set it on this flat rock on this side of the cave.”

“We thought there might be some danger about that because it isn’t very, _very_ large in here, so we finally decided on this alcohol stove. It’s safe and it doesn’t take up any room and this solid alcohol doesn’t slop around and set your dress afire or your table cloth, and we can really cook a good many things on it and the rest we can cook in our own little kitchen and bring over here. If we cover them well they’ll still be warm when they get here.”

“That’s a wise decision,” assented Mrs. Morton, nodding toward her sister-in-law. “I should be afraid that the stove top arrangement might be like the oil stove–the fuel might fall about and set fire to your frocks.”

“And it would take up much more space in the cave,” suggested Mrs. Smith. “Here’s a contribution to your equipment,” and she brought out a box of paper plates and cups, and another of paper napkins.

“These are fine!” cried Ethel Blue. “They’ll save washing.”

“Here’s our idea for furnishing. Do you want to hear it?” asked Dorothy.

“Of course we do.”

“Do you see that flat oblong space there at the back? We’re going to fit a box in there. We’ll turn it on its side, put hinges and a padlock on the cover to make it into a door, and fix up shelves.”

“I see,” nodded her mother and aunt. “That will be your store cupboard.”

“And our sideboard and our linen closet, all in one. We’re going to make it when we go home this afternoon because we know now what the measurements are and we’ve got just the right box down in the cellar.”

“Where do you get the water?”

“Roger is cleaning out the spring now and making the basin under it a little larger, so we shall always have fresh spring water.”

“That’s good. I was going to warn you always to boil any water from the brook.”

“We’ll remember.”

The water for the cocoa was now bubbling in the saucepan. Ethel Blue took four spoonfuls of prepared cocoa, wet it with one spoonful of water and rubbed it smooth. Then she stirred it into a pint of the boiling water and when this had boiled up once she added a pint of milk. When the mixture boiled she took it off at once and served it in the paper cups that her aunt had brought. To go with it Ethel Brown had prepared almond biscuit. They were made by first blanching two ounces of almonds by pouring boiling water on them and then slipping off their brown overcoats. After they had been ground twice over in the meat chopper they were mixed with four tablespoonfuls of flour and one tablespoonful of sugar and moistened with a tablespoonful of milk. When they were thoroughly mixed and rolled thin they were cut into small rounds and baked in a quick oven for ten or fifteen minutes.

“These are delicious, my dear,” Mrs. Smith said, smiling at her nieces, and the Ethels were greatly pleased at their Aunt Louise’s praise.

They sat about on the rocks and enjoyed their meal heartily. The birds were busy over their heads, the leaves were beginning to come thickly in the tree crowns and the chipmunks scampered busily about, seeming to be not at all frightened by the coming of these new visitors to their haunts. Dorothy tried to coax one to eat out of her hand. He was curious to try the food that she held out to him and his courage brought him almost within reach of her fingers before it failed and sent him scampering back to his hole, the stripes on his back looking like ribbons as he leaped to safety.

Within a month the cave was in excellent working order. The box proved to be a success just as the girls had planned it. They kept there such stores as they did not care to carry back and forth–sugar, salt and pepper, cocoa, crackers–and a supply of eggs, cream-cheese and cookies and milk always fresh. Sometimes when the family thermos bottle was not in use they brought the milk in that and at other times they brought it in an ordinary bottle and let it stand in the hollow below the spring. Glass fruit jars with screw tops preserved all that was entrusted to them free from injury by any marauding animals who might be tempted by the smell to break open the cupboard. These jars the girls placed on the top shelf; on the next they ranged their paper “linen”–which they used for napkins and then as fuel to start the bonfire in which they destroyed all the rubbish left over from their meal. This fire was always small, was made in one spot which Roger had prepared by encircling it with stones, and was invariably put out with a saucepanful of water from the brook.

“It never pays to leave a fire without a good dousing,” he always insisted. “The rascally thing may be playing ‘possum and blaze out later when there is no one here to attend to it.”

A piece of board which could be moved about at will was used as a table when the weather was such as to make eating inside of the cave desirable. One end was placed on top of the cupboard and the other on a narrow ledge of stone that projected as if made for the purpose. One or two large stones and a box or two served as seats, but there was not room inside for all the members of the Club. When there was a general meeting some had to sit outside.

They added to their cooking utensils a few flat saucepans in which water would boil quickly and they made many experiments in cooking vegetables. Beans they gave up trying to cook after several experiments, because they took so long–from one to three hours–for both the dried and the fresh kinds, that the girls felt that they could not afford so much alcohol. They eliminated turnips, too, after they had prodded a frequent fork into some obstinate roots for about three quarters of an hour. Beets were nearly as discouraging, but not quite, when they were young and tender, and the same was true of cabbage.

“It’s only the infants that we can use in this affair,” declared Dorothy after she had replenished the saucepan from another in which she had been heating water for the purpose, over a second alcohol stove that her mother had lent them. Spinach, onions and parsnips were done in half an hour and potatoes in twenty-five minutes.

They finally gave up trying to cook vegetables whole over this stove, for they concluded that not only was it necessary to have extremely young vegetables but the size of the cooking utensils must of necessity be too small to have the proceedings a success. They learned one way, however, of getting ahead of the tiny saucepan and the small stove. That was by cutting the corn from the cob and by peeling the potatoes and slicing them very thin before they dropped them into boiling water. Then they were manageable.

“Miss Dawson, the domestic science teacher, says that the water you cook any starchy foods in must always be boiling like mad,” Ethel Blue explained to her aunt one day when she came out to see how matters were going. “If it isn’t the starch is mushy. That’s why you mustn’t be impatient to put on rice and potatoes and cereals until the water is just bouncing.”

“Almost all vegetables have some starch,” explained Mrs. Morton. “Water _really_ boiling is your greatest friend. When you girls are old enough to drink tea you must remember that boiling water for tea is something more than putting on water in a saucepan or taking it out of a kettle on the stove.”

“Isn’t boiling water boiling water?” asked Roger, who was listening.

“There’s boiling water _and_ boiling water,” smiled his mother. “Water for tea should be freshly drawn so that there are bubbles of air in it and it should be put over the fire at once. When you are waiting for it to boil you should scald your teapot so that its coldness may not chill the hot water when you come to the actual making of the tea.”

“Do I seem to remember a rule about using one teaspoonful of tea for each person and one for the pot?” asked Tom.

“That is the rule for the cheaper grades of tea, but the better grades are so strong that half a teaspoonful for each drinker is enough.”

“Then it’s just as cheap to get tea at a dollar a pound as the fifty cent quality.”

“Exactly; and the taste is far better. Well, you have your teapot warm and your tea in it waiting, and the minute the water boils vigorously you pour it on the tea.”

“What would happen if you let it boil a while?”

“If you should taste water freshly boiled and water that has been boiling for ten minutes you’d notice a decided difference. One has a lively taste and the other is flat. These qualities are given to the pot of tea of course.”

“That’s all news to me,” declared James. “I’m glad to know it.”

“I used to think ‘tea and toast’ was the easiest thing in the world to prepare until Dorothy taught me how to make toast when she was fixing invalid dishes for Grandfather after he was hurt in the fire at Chautauqua,” said Ethel Brown. “She opened my eyes,” and she nodded affectionately at her cousin.

“There’s one thing we must learn to make or we won’t be true campers,” insisted Tom.

“What is it? I’m game to make it or eat it,” responded Roger instantly.

“Spider cakes.”

“Spiders! Ugh!” ejaculated Della daintily.

“Hush; a spider is a frying pan,” Ethel Brown instructed her. “Tell us how you do them, Tom,” she begged.

“You use the kind of flour that is called ‘prepared flour.’ It rises without any fuss.”

The Ethels laughed at this description, but they recognized the value in camp of a flour that doesn’t make any fuss.

“Mix a pint of the flour with half a pint of milk. Let your spider get hot and then grease it with butter or cotton seed oil.”

“Why not lard.”

“Lard will do the deed, of course, but butter or a vegetable fat always seems to me cleaner,” pronounced Tom wisely.

“Won’t you listen to Thomas!” cried Roger. “How do you happen to know so much?” he inquired amazedly.

“I went camping for a whole month once and I watched the cook a lot and since then I’ve gathered ideas about the use of fat in cooking. As little frying as possible for me, thank you, and no lard in mine!”

They smiled at his earnestness, but they all felt the same way, for the girls were learning to approve of delicacy in cooking the more they cooked.

“Go ahead with your spider cake,” urged Margaret, who was writing down the receipt as Tom gave it.

“When your buttered spider is ready you pour in half the mixture you have ready. Spread it smooth over the whole pan, put on a cover that you’ve heated, and let the cake cook four minutes. Turn it over and let the other side cook for four minutes. You ought to have seen our camp cook turn over his cakes; he tossed them into the air and he gave the pan such a twist with his wrist that the cake came down all turned over and ready to let the good work go on.”

“What did he do with the other half of his batter?” asked Ethel Brown, determined to know exactly what happened at every stage of proceedings.

“When he had taken out the first cake and given it to us he put in the remainder and cooked it while we were attacking the first installment.”

“Was it good?”

“You bet!”

“I don’t know whether we can do it with this tiny fire, but let’s try–what do you say?” murmured Ethel Brown to Ethel Blue.

“We ought to have trophies of our bow and spear,” Roger suggested when he was helping with the furnishing arrangements.

“There aren’t any,” replied Ethel Brown briefly, “but Dicky has a glass bowl full of tadpoles; we can have those.”

So the tadpoles came to live in the cave, carried out into the light whenever some one came and remembered to do it, and as some one came almost every day, and as all the U.S.C. members were considerate of the needs and feelings of animals as well as of people, the tiny creatures did not suffer from their change of habitation.

Dicky had taken the frogs’ eggs from the edge of a pool on his grandfather’s farm. They looked like black dots at first. Then they wriggled out of the jelly and took their place in the world as tadpoles. It was an unfailing delight to all the young people, to look at them through a magnifying glass. They had apparently a round head with side gills through which they breathed, and a long tail. After a time tiny legs appeared under what might pass as the chin. Then the body grew longer and another pair of legs made their appearance. Finally the tail was absorbed and the tadpole’s transformation into a frog was complete. All this did not take place for many months, however, but through the summer the Club watched the little wrigglers carefully and thought that they could see a difference from week to week.

CHAPTER IX

“NOTHING BUT LEAVES”

When the leaves were well out on the trees Helen held an Observation Class one afternoon, in front of the cave.

“How many members of this handsome and intelligent Club know what leaves are for?” she inquired.

“As representing in a high degree both the qualities you mention, Madam President,” returned Tom, with a bow, “I take upon myself the duty of replying that perhaps you and Roger do because you’ve studied botany, and maybe Margaret and James do because they’ve had a garden, and it’s possible that the Ethels and Dorothy do inasmuch as they’ve had the great benefit of your acquaintance, but that Della and I don’t know the very first thing about leaves except that spinach and lettuce are good to eat.”

“Take a good, full breath after that long sentence,” advised James. “Go ahead, Helen. I don’t know much about leaves except to recognize them when I see them.”

“Do you know what they’re for?” demanded Helen, once again.

“I can guess,” answered Margaret. “Doesn’t the plant breathe and eat through them?”

“It does exactly that. It takes up food from water and from the soil by its roots and it gets food and water from the air by its leaves.”

“Sort of a slender diet,” remarked Roger, who was blessed with a hearty appetite.

“The leaves give it a lot of food. I was reading in a book on botany the other day that the elm tree in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under which Washington reviewed his army during the Revolution was calculated to have about seven million leaves and that they gave it a surface of about five acres. That’s quite a surface to eat with!”

“Some mouth!” commented Roger.

“If each one of you will pick a leaf you’ll have in your hand an illustration of what I say,” suggested Helen.

[Illustration: Lily of the Valley Leaf]

They all provided themselves with leaves, picking them from the plants and shrubs and trees around them, except Ethel Blue, who already had a lily of the valley leaf with some flowers pinned to her blouse.

“When a leaf has everything that belongs to it it has a little stalk of its own that is called a _petiole_; and at the foot of the petiole it has two tiny leaflets called _stipules_, and it has what we usually speak of as ‘the leaf’ which is really the _blade_.”

They all noted these parts either on their own leaves or their neighbors’, for some of their specimens came from plants that had transformed their parts.

“What is the blade of your leaf made of?” Helen asked Ethel Brown.

“Green stuff with a sort of framework inside,” answered Ethel, scrutinizing the specimen in her hand.

“What are the characteristics of the framework?”

“It has big bones and little ones,” cried Della.

“Good for Delila! The big bones are called ribs and the fine ones are called veins. Now, will you please all hold up your leaves so we can all see each other’s. What is the difference in the veining between Ethel Brown’s oak leaf and Ethel Blue’s lily of the valley leaf?”

[Illustration: Ethel Brown’s Oak Leaf]

After an instant’s inspection Ethel Blue said, “The ribs and veins on my leaf all run the same way, and in the oak leaf they run every which way.”

“Right,” approved Helen again. “The lily of the valley leaf is parallel-veined and the oak leaf is net-veined. Can each one of you decide what your own leaf is?”

“I have a blade of grass; it’s parallel veined,” Roger determined. All the others had net veined specimens, but they remembered that iris and flag and corn and bear-grass–yucca–all were parallel.

“Yours are nearly all netted because there are more net-veined leaves than the other kind,” Helen told them. “Now, there are two kinds of parallel veining and two kinds of net veining,” she went on. “All the parallel veins that you’ve spoken of are like Ethel Blue’s lily of the valley leaf–the ribs run from the stem to the tip–but there’s another kind of parallel veining that you see in the pickerel weed that’s growing down there in the brook; in that the veins run parallel from a strong midrib to the edge of the leaf.”

James made a rush down to the brook and came back with a leaf of the pickerel weed and they handed it about and compared it with the lily of the valley leaf.

“Look at Ethel Brown’s oak leaf,” Helen continued. “Do you see it has a big midrib and the other veins run out from it ‘every which way’ as Ethel Blue said, making a net? Doesn’t it remind you of a feather?”

They all agreed that it did, and they passed around Margaret’s hat which had a quill stuck in the band, and compared it with the oak leaf.

“That kind of veining is called pinnate veining from a Latin word that means ‘feather,'” explained Helen. “The other kind of net veining is that of the maple leaf.”

Tom and Dorothy both had maple leaves and they held them up for general observation.

“How is it different from the oak veining?” quizzed Helen.

“The maple is a little like the palm of your hand with the fingers running out,” offered Ethel Brown.

“That’s it exactly. There are several big ribs starting at the same place instead of one midrib. Then the netting connects all these spreading ribs. That is called _palmate_ veining because it’s like the palm of your hand.”

“Or the web foot of a duck,” suggested Dorothy.

[Illustration: Tom and Dorothy both had Maple Leaves]

“I should think all the leaves that have a feather-shaped framework would be long and all the palm-shaped ones would be fat,” guessed Della.

“They are, and they have been given names descriptive of their shape. The narrowest kind, with the same width all the way, is called ‘_linear_.'”

“Because it’s a line–more or less,” cried James.

“The next wider, has a point and is called ‘_lance-shaped_.’ The ‘_oblong_’ is like the linear, the same size up and down, but it’s much wider than the linear. The ‘_elliptical_’ is what the oblong would be if its ends were prettily tapered off. The apple tree has a leaf whose ellipse is so wide that it is called ‘_oval_.’ Can you guess what ‘_ovate_’ is?”

“‘Egg-shaped’?” inquired Tom.

“That’s it; larger at one end than the other, while a leaf that is almost round, is called ‘_rotund_.'”

“Named after Della,” observed Della’s brother in a subdued voice that nevertheless caught his sister’s ear and caused an oak twig to fly in his direction.

“There’s a lance-shaped leaf that is sharp at the base instead of the point; that’s named ‘_ob-lanceolate_’; and there’s one called ‘_spatulate_’ that looks like the spatula that druggists mix things with.”

[Illustration: Linear Lance-shaped Oblong Elliptical Ovate]

“That ought to be rounded at the point and narrow at the base,” said the doctor’s son.

“It is. The lower leaves of the common field daisy are examples. How do you think the botanists have named the shape that is like an egg upside down?”

“‘_Ob-ovate_’, if it’s like the other _ob_,” guessed Dorothy.

“The leaflets that make up the horse-chestnut leaf are ‘_wedge-shaped_’ at the base,” Helen reminded them.

“Then there are some leaves that have nothing remarkable about their tips but have bases that draw your attention. One is ‘_heart-shaped_’–like the linden leaf or the morning-glory. Another is ‘_kidney-shaped_’. That one is wider than it is long.”

[Illustration: Shield-shaped Oblancolate Spatulate Rotund
Crenate Edge]

[Illustration: Heart-shaped Kidney-shaped]

“The hepatica is kidney-shaped,” remarked James.

“The ‘_ear-shaped_’ base isn’t very common in this part of the world, but there’s a magnolia of that form. The ‘_arrow-shaped_’ base you can find in the arrow-weed in the brook. The shape like the old-time weapon, the ‘_halberd_’ is seen in the common sorrel.”

“That nice, acid-tasting leaf?”

“Yes, that’s the one. What does the nasturtium leaf remind you of?”

“Dicky always says that when the Jack-in-the-Pulpit stops preaching he jumps on the back of a frog and takes a nasturtium leaf for a shield and hops forth to look for adventures,” said Roger, to whom Dicky confided many of his ideas when they were working together in the garden.

[Illustration: Arrow-shaped Ear-shaped Halberd-shaped]

“Dicky is just right,” laughed Helen. “That is a ‘_shield-shaped_’ leaf.”

“Do the tips of the leaves have names?”

“Yes. They are all descriptive–‘_pointed_,’ ‘_acute_,’ ‘_obtuse_,’ ‘_truncate_,’ ‘_notched_,’ and so on,” answered Helen. “Did you notice a minute ago that I spoke of the ‘leaflet’ of a horse-chestnut leaf? What’s the difference between a ‘leaflet’ and a ‘leaf’?”

“To judge by what you said, a leaflet must be a part of a leaf. One of the five fingers of the horse-chestnut leaf is a leaflet,” Della reasoned out in answer.

[Illustration: Obtuse Truncated Notched]

“Can you think of any other leaves that have leaflets?”

“A locust?”

“A rose?”

[Illustration: Pinnate Pinnate, tendrils Locust Leaf Sweet Pea Leaf]

“A sweetpea?”

The latter answer-question came from Roger and produced a laugh.

“All those are right. The leaves that are made up of leaflets are called ‘_compound_’ leaves, and the ones that aren’t compound are ‘_simple_.'”

“Most leaves are simple,” decided Ethel Brown.

“There are more simple than compound,” agreed Helen. “As you recall them do you see any resemblance between the shape of the horse-chestnut leaf and the shape of the rose leaf and anything else we’ve been talking about this afternoon?”

“Helen is just naturally headed for the teaching profession!” exclaimed James in an undertone.

Helen flushed.

“I do seem to be asking about a million questions, don’t I?” she responded good naturedly.

“The rose leaf is feather-shaped and the horse-chestnut is palm-shaped,” Ethel Blue thought aloud, frowning delicately as she spoke. “They’re like those different kinds of veining.”

“That’s it exactly,” commended her cousin. “Those leaves are ‘_pinnately compound_’ and ‘_palmately compound_’ according as their leaflets are arranged like a feather or like the palm of your hand. When you begin to notice the edges of leaves you see that there is about every degree of cutting between the margin that is quite smooth and the margin that is so deeply cut that it is almost a compound leaf. It is never a real compound leaf, though, unless the leaflets are truly separate and all belong on one common stalk.”

“My lily of the valley leaf has a perfectly smooth edge,” said Ethel Blue.

“That is called ‘_entire_.’ This elm leaf of mine has a ‘_serrate_’ edge with the teeth pointing forward like the teeth of a saw. When they point outward like the spines of a holly leaf they are ‘_dentate_-‘toothed. The border of a nasturtium leaf is ‘_crenate_’ or scalloped. Most honeysuckles have a ‘_wavy_’ margin. When there are sharp, deep notches such as there are on the upper leaves of the field daisy, the edge is called ‘_cut_.'”

“This oak leaf is ‘cut,’ then.”

“When the cuts are as deep as those the leaf is ‘_cleft_.’ When they go about half way to the midrib, as in the hepatica, it is ‘_lobed_’ and when they almost reach the midrib as they do in the poppy it is ‘_parted_.'”

[Illustration: Dentate Wavy]

“Which makes me think our ways must part if James and I are to get home in time for dinner,” said Margaret.

“There’s our werwolf down in the field again,” exclaimed Dorothy, peering through the bushes toward the meadow where a man was stooping and standing, examining what he took up from the ground.

“Let’s go through the field and see what he’s doing,” exclaimed Roger. “He’s been here so many times he must have some purpose.”

But when they passed him he was merely looking at a flower through a small magnifying glass. He said “Good-afternoon” to them, and they saw as they looked back, that he kept on with his bending and rising and examination.

“He’s like us, students of botany,” laughed Ethel Blue. “We ought to have asked him to Helen’s class this afternoon.”

“I don’t like his looks,” Dorothy decided. “He makes me uncomfortable. I wish he wouldn’t come here.”

Roger turned back to take another look and shook his head thoughtfully.

“Me neither,” he remarked concisely, and then added as if to take the thoughts of the girls off the subject, “Here’s a wild strawberry plant for your indoor strawberry bed, Ethel Brown,” and launched into the recitation of an anonymous poem he had recently found.

“The moon is up, the moon is up!
The larks begin to fly,
And, like a drowsy buttercup,
Dark Phoebus skims the sky,
The elephant with cheerful voice, Sings blithely on the spray;
The bats and beetles all rejoice, Then let me, too, be gay.”

CHAPTER X

THE U.S.C. AND THE COMMUNITY

Roger’s interest in gardening had extended far beyond fertilizers and sweetpeas. It was not long after the discussion in which the Mortons’ garden had been planned on paper that he happened to mention to the master of the high school, Mr. Wheeler, what the Club was intending to do. Mr. Wheeler had learned to value the enthusiasm and persistency of the U.S.C. members and it did not take him long to decide that he wanted their assistance in putting through a piece of work that would be both pleasant and profitable for the whole community.

“It seems queer that here in Rosemont where we are on the very edge of the country there should be any people who do not have gardens,” he said to Roger.

“There are, though,” responded Roger. “I was walking down by the station the other day where those shanties are that the mill hands live in and I noticed that not one of them had space for more than a plant or two and they seemed to be so discouraged at the prospect that even the plant or two wasn’t there.”

“Yet all the children that live in those houses go to our public schools. Now my idea is that we should have a community garden, planted and taken care of by the school children.”

“Bully!” exclaimed Roger enthusiastically. “Where are you going to get your land?”

“That’s the question. It ought to be somewhere near the graded school, and there isn’t any ploughed land about there. The only vacant land there is is that cheerful spot that used to be the dump.”

“Isn’t that horrible! One corner of it is right behind the house where my aunt Louise lives. Fortunately there’s a thick hedge that shuts it off.”

“Still it’s there, and I imagine she’d be glad enough to have it made into a pleasant sight instead of an eyesore.”

“You mean that the dump might be made into the garden?”

“If we can get people like Mrs. Smith who are personally affected by it, and others who have the benefit of the community at heart to contribute toward clearing off the ground and having it fertilized I believe that would be the right place.”

“You can count on Aunt Louise, I know. She’d be glad to help. Anybody would. Why it would turn that terrible looking spot into almost a park!”

“The children would prepare the gardens once the soil was put into something like fair condition, but the first work on that lot is too heavy even for the larger boys.”

“They could pick up the rubbish on top.”

“Yes, they could do that, and the town carts could carry it away and burn it. The town would give us the street sweepings all spring and summer and some of the people who have stables would contribute fertilizer. Once that was turned under with the spade and topped off by some commercial fertilizer with a dash of lime to sweeten matters, the children could do the rest.”

“What is your idea about having the children taught? Will the regular teachers do it?”

“All the children have some nature study, and simple gardening can be run into that, our superintendent tells me. Then I know something about gardening and I’ll gladly give some time to the outdoor work.”

“I’d like to help, too,” said Roger unassumingly, “if you think I know enough.”

“If you’re going to have a share in planting and working three gardens I don’t see why you can’t keep sufficiently ahead of the children to be able to show them what to do. We’d be glad to have your help,” and Mr. Wheeler shook hands cordially with his new assistant.

Roger was not the only member of his family interested in the new plan. His Grandfather was public-spirited and at a meeting of citizens called for the purpose of proposing the new community venture he offered money, fertilizer, seeds, and the services of a man for two days to help in the first clearing up. Others followed his example, one citizen giving a liberal sum of money toward the establishment of an incinerator which should replace in part the duties of the dump, and another heading a subscription list for the purchase of a fence which should keep out stray animals and boys whose interests might be awakened at the time the vegetables ripened rather than during the days of preparation and backache. Mrs. Smith answered her nephew’s expectations by adding to the fund. The town contributed the lot, and supported the new work generously in more than one way.

When it came to the carrying out of details Mr. Wheeler made further demands upon the Club. He asked the boys to give some of their Saturday time to spreading the news of the proposed garden among the people who might contribute and also the people who might want to have their children benefit by taking the new “course of study.” Although James and Tom did not live in Rosemont they were glad to help and for several Saturdays the Club tramps were utilized as a means of spreading the good news through the outskirts of the town.

The girls were placed among the workers when the day came to register the names of the children who wanted to undertake the plots. There were so many of them that there was plenty to do for both the Ethels and for Dorothy and Helen, who assisted Mr. Wheeler. The registration was based on the catalogue plan. For each child there was a card, and on it the girls wrote his name and address, his grade in school and a number corresponding to the number of one of the plots into which the big field was divided. It did not take him long to understand that on the day when the garden was to open he was to hunt up his plot and that after that he and his partner were to be responsible for everything that happened to it.

Two boys or two girls were assigned to each plot but more children applied than there were plots to distribute. The Ethels were disturbed about this at first for it seemed a shame that any one who wanted to make a garden should not have the opportunity. Helen reminded them, however, that there might be some who would find their interest grow faint when the days grew hot and long and the weeds seemed to wax tall at a faster rate than did the desirable plants.

“When some of these youngsters fall by the wayside we can supply their places from the waiting list,” she said.

“There won’t be so many fall by the wayside if there is a waiting list,” prophesied her Aunt Louise who had come over to the edge of the ground to see how popular the new scheme proved to be. “It’s human nature to want to stick if you think that some one else is waiting to take your place.”

The beds were sixteen feet long and five feet wide and a path ran all around. This permitted every part of the bed to be reached by hand, and did away with the necessity of stepping on it. It was decreed that all the plots were to be edged with flowers, but the workers might decide for themselves what they should be. The planters of the first ten per cent. of the beds that showed seedlings were rewarded by being allowed the privilege of planting the vines and tall blossoming plants that were to cover the inside of the fence.

Most of the plots were given over to vegetables, even those cared for by small children, for the addition of a few extras to the family table was more to be desired than the bringing home of a bunch of flowers, but even the most provident children had the pleasure of picking the white candytuft or blue ageratum, or red and yellow dwarf nasturtiums that formed the borders.

Once a week each plot received a visit from some one qualified to instruct the young farmer and the condition of the plot was indicated on his card. Here, too, and on the duplicate card which was filed in the schoolhouse, the child’s attendance record was kept, and also the amount of seed he used and the extent of the crop he harvested. In this way the cost of each of the little patches was figured quite closely. As it turned out, some of the children who were not blessed with many brothers and sisters, sold a good many dimes’ worth of vegetables in the course of the summer.

“This surely is a happy sight!” exclaimed Mr. Emerson to his wife as he passed one day and stopped to watch the children at work, some, just arrived, getting their tools from the toolhouse in one corner of the lot, others already hard at work, some hoeing, some on their knees weeding, all as contented as they were busy.

“Come in, come in,” urged Mr. Wheeler, who noticed them looking over the fence. “Come in and see how your grandson’s pupils are progressing.”

The Emersons were eager to accept the invitation.

“Here is the plan we’ve used in laying out the beds,” explained Mr. Wheeler, showing them a copy of a Bulletin issued by the Department of Agriculture. “Roger and I studied over it a long time and we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t better this. This one is all vegetables, you see, and that has been chosen by most of the youngsters. Some of the girls, though, wanted more flowers, so they have followed this one.”

[Illustration: Plan of a vegetable Plan of a combined school garden vegetable and flower school garden]

“This vegetable arrangement is the one I’ve followed at home,” said Roger, “only mine is larger. Dicky’s garden is just this size.”

“Would there be any objection to my offering a small prize?” asked Mr. Emerson.

“None at all.”

“Then I’d like to give some packages of seeds–as many as you think would be suitable–to the partners who make the most progress in the first month.”

“And I’d like to give a bundle of flower seeds to the border that is in the most flourishing condition by the first of August,” added Mrs. Emerson.

“And the United Service Club would like to give some seeds for the earliest crop of vegetables harvested from any plot,” promised Roger, taking upon himself the responsibility of the offer which he was sure the other members would confirm.

Mr. Wheeler thanked them all and assured them that notice of the prizes would be given at once so that the competition might add to the present enthusiasm.