"You are, ma"am, of course," replied Roger with exaggerated politeness, "but I think I"d like you under an arbor in a graceful att.i.tude and not hobn.o.bbing with these wild flowers."
"You forget that wild flowers have been my special care this summer,"
returned Helen, withdrawing to a point where she would not interfere with Roger"s plans. "Dorothy"s wild garden is only a copy of mine."
"Not in arrangement. Hers is prettier with everything piled up on the stones this way--columbines, ferns, wild ginger, hepaticas."
"You"re right about that. Mine had to be in a regular bed. Are you going to take a picture of the vegetable garden?"
"Certainly I am. And of tomatoes that were started with and without dirt bands."
Roger"s chief attention during the summer garden campaign had been devoted to the raising of vegetables, while the girls had done wonders with flowers.
"What are dirt bands?" inquired Helen.
"I know," cried the voice of Ethel Brown who came in sight through the pergola. "They"re brown paper cuffs to put around young plants. It keeps the earth all close and cozy and warm and they grow faster than the ones that don"t wear such fine clothes."
"Listen to that," Roger said approvingly to Helen. "Those Ethels haven"t let anything slip that happened in any of our gardens all summer. They know all about everything!"
"Roger is in a very complimentary mood this morning," laughed Helen. "If I could only think of something to say I"d be polite in return."
"I"m sorry it doesn"t come to you spontaneously," replied her brother, "but what care I?" and he broke into song:
"I"m a careless potato, and care not a pin How into existence I came; If they planted me drill-wise or dibbled me in, To me "tis exactly the same.
The bean and the pea may more loftily tower, But I care not a b.u.t.ton for them.
Defiance I nod with my beautiful flower When the earth is hoed up to my stem."
"Oo-hoo!" came a voice from the Lodge. "Come in and help."
"There"s Dorothy calling," cried Ethel Brown, and they all moved toward the house where they found their cousin on the back porch with an array of plates, bowls, stones, small plants, tiny trees and small china figures before her.
"May I inquire, madam, what on earth--" began Roger, but Ethel Brown"s exclamation enlightened him.
"You"re making j.a.panese gardens!"
"I"m going to try to. I think they"re awfully pretty and cunning. Let"s each make one."
Mrs. Smith had bought a professionally made garden at an Oriental shop in New York, and the girls were seized with a desire to copy it.
"Here"s the real thing," and Dorothy indicated a flat bowl of gray and dull green pottery. In it were some stones outlining the bed of a stream over which stretched the span of a tiny porcelain bridge. A twisted tree that looked aged in spite of its height of only three inches reared its evergreen head at one end of the bridge; a patch of gra.s.s the size of three fingers grew greenly at the other end, and a goldfish swam happily in a pool at the side.
"Margaret told me that horse-radish would grow if you kept it damp and let it sprout, so I"ve got several pieces started for our gardens."
Sure enough, the horse-radish had sent forth shoots and a head of small leaves quite tall enough for the size of the garden, and its body looked brownish and gnarled like some bit of queer Oriental wood. Dorothy had taken up little plants of running growth like partridge berry and she had collected many wee ferns.
"We can sprinkle a pinch or two of gra.s.s seed and bird seed over them all when they"re done," she said. "That ought to bring up something fresh every little while."
"These will be all started for your housewarming," suggested Helen.
"That"s why I"m doing them. We can leave them here, and I"ll come over every day so they"ll be watered. I think they"ll be awfully pretty and they"ll be different from the usual decorations."
"I read somewhere the other day that the j.a.ps arrange their flowers with a meaning."
"O, they do," cried Dorothy. "They have very little in one holder, perhaps only three flowers. One--the highest one--means Heaven, the next lower is Man, and the lowest is Earth."
"I should have to have a diagram with every vase," insisted Roger.
"The water in the bowl that holds the flowers represents the surface of the earth and the edge of the bowl is the horizon. Then they have ways of suggesting the different seasons--spring by flowers, summer by a lot of green leaves, autumn by bright colored leaves and winter by tall stems without much on them."
"We"ve got flowers left in the gardens--lots of them," insisted Ethel Brown proudly.
"Plenty," answered Dorothy; "and by this time next year I hope we"ll have a little hot-house of our own so that we can have flowering plants all winter, but I like other things, too."
"Miss Daisy was telling me the other day that we Americans didn"t pay enough attention to using through the winter branches of trees and seedling trees from the woods and boughs of pine and fir and cedar," said Ethel Blue, who came through the house and had been listening to the conversation.
"I don"t see why you couldn"t have a small maple-tree growing all winter in the dining-room if you put your mind on it," answered Helen.
"A great jar of Norway spruce with cones hanging from the fingers would be stunning," decided Roger, as he set his horse-radish in place and planted a tree at one end of it.
"The covers for the radiators are all on now," said Dorothy, changing the subject. "Did you notice them when you came through the house?"
The Ethels had not and Helen and Roger had gone directly to the garden, so they all went in on a tour of examination.
"Mother said that there was one thing about heating that she couldn"t stand, and that was the ugly radiators; so the heating man has tried to hide them as much as he could. There isn"t one in the house that stands out like a monument of pipes," declared Dorothy.
"Even in the attic?"
"Not even in the attic. See, he"s covered most of them with grilles bronzed or painted like the wood-work of the room, so they aren"t at all conspicuous."
"It"s these little points that make this house so attractive," declared Helen. "Aunt Louise has thought of everything."
"What are you going to wear at the party?" asked Ethel Blue of Dorothy.
"If we do that Columbus thing--" began Dorothy, looking at Helen.
"Go on," the president of the U. S. C. replied to the inquiring gaze; "we might as well tell Roger now as later."
"If we have the tableaux and pantomimes we can stay in our court dresses."
"Court dresses?" inquired Roger, sitting up interestedly. "Why so scrumptious?"
"Columbus at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella," answered Helen.
"You as Columbus."
"Me? Me? Why this honor?" asked Roger meekly.
"Need you ask?" returned Helen. "That"s in reply to your remarks about me as an addition to the foreground of your photographs."