afternoon is our usual time of meeting," she began, "and no one can say that we haven't put in a solid afternoon of service."

Groans as one and another shifted a cramped position to another more restful for weary feet confirmed her statement.

"What I want to say now is that it's time for us to be thinking up some more service work. We are all studying pretty hard so we don't want to undertake anything that will use up our out-of-door time too much, but we haven't anything in prospect except helping with the town Fourth of July celebration, over two months away, so we might as well be planning something else."

"Do I understand, Madam President," asked Roger, "that the chief officer of this distinguished Club hasn't any ideas to suggest?"

"The chief officer is so tired that not even another glass of lemonade--thank you, Tom--can stir her gray matter."

"Hasn't anybody else any ideas?"

Silence greeted the question.

"I seem to remember boasts that ideas never would fail this brilliant group," jeered Roger.

"There were some such remarks," James recalled meditatively; "and I remember that you prophesied that the day would come when we'd call on you for information about some stupendous scheme of yours that was literally as big as a house. Let's have it now."

"Do I understand that you're really appealing to me to learn my scheme?" inquired Roger, swelling with amusement.

"If it's any satisfaction to you--yes," replied his sister.

Roger burst into a peal of laughter.

"Shoot off the answers, old man," urged James. "We're waiting."

"Breathlessly," added Margaret.

Roger settled himself comfortably on the top step of the piazza and leaned his head against the post.

"It certainly does me good to see you all at my feet begging like this," he declared.

"Bosh! You're at ours and I can prove it," asserted Tom, stretching out a foot of goodly size.

"Peace! Withdraw that battering ram!" pleaded Roger. "I'll tell you all about it. Tom's really responsible for this idea, anyway."

"Ideas, real fresh ones, aren't much in my line," admitted practical Tom, "but I'm glad to have helped for once."

"I don't suppose you remember that time last autumn when I went in to New York to see you and you took me down to the chapel where your father preaches on Sunday afternoons?"

"I remember it; we found Father there talking with a lot of mothers and children."

"That's the time. Well, those women and children got on my nerves like anything. You see, out here in Rosemont we haven't any real suffering like that. There are poor people, and Mother always does what she can for them, and there's a Charitable Society, as you know, because you all helped with the Donnybrook Fair they had on St. Patrick's Day. But the people they help out here are regular Rockefellers compared with those poor creatures that your father had in his office that day."

"Father says he could spend a million dollars a year on those people, and not have a misspent cent," said Delia.

"What hit me hardest was the thin little children. Elisabeth hadn't come to us yet," Roger went on, referring to a Belgian baby that had been sent to the Club to take care of, "and I wasn't so accustomed to thinness as I've grown to be since, and it made me--well, it just made me sick."

"I don't wonder," agreed Delia seriously. "That's the way they make me feel."

"I know what you thought of," exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was so imaginative and sympathetic that she sometimes had an almost uncanny way of reading peoples' thoughts. "You wanted to bring some of those poor women out into the country so that the children could get well, and you told your grandfather about it and he offered you a house somewhere."

"That's about it, kidlet. I heard one of the women say that she'd had a week in the country--some sort of Fresh Air business--and that the baby got a lot better, and then she had to go back to the city and the little creature was literally dying on her hands."

"You want to give them a whole summer," guessed Ethel Brown.

"That's the idea. Since I've seen what proper care and good food and fresh air have done for that wretched little skeleton, Elisabeth, I'm more than ever convinced that if we can give some of those mothers and babies a whole month or perhaps two months of Rosemont air we'll be saving lives, actually saving lives."

Roger looked about earnestly from one grave face to another. All were in sympathy with him and all waited for the development of his plan, for they knew he would not have laid so much stress upon it if he had not thought out the details.

"I've talked it over with Grandfather and he rose to it right off. Here's where the house comes in. He said he was going to build a new cottage for his farm superintendent this spring--you know it's almost done now--and that we could have the old farm house if we wanted to fix it up for a Fresh Air scheme."

"Mr. Emerson is a brick. I pull my forelock to him," and Tom illustrated his remark.

"Where's the money to come from?" asked James, who was both of Scottish descent and the Club treasurer, and so was not only shrewd but accustomed to look after details.

"Grandfather said he'd help in this way; if the Club would study the old house and decide on the best way to make it answer the purpose he would provide two carpenters for a fortnight to help us. That will mean that if we want to do any whitewashing or papering or matters of that kind we'll have to do it ourselves, but the carpenters will put the house in repair and put up any partitions that we want and so on."

"Is it furnished?"

"There's another problem. The superintendent has had his own furniture there and what will be left when he goes is almost nothing. There are some old things in the garret, but we'll have to use our ingenuity and invent furniture."

"The way I did for our attic." Dorothy reminded them of the room where the Club had been meeting ever since its members returned from Chautauqua where it had been formed the summer before.

"Just so. We'll have to make a raid on our mothers' attics and also on the stores in town that have their goods come in big boxes, and I imagine we shall be able to concoct things that will 'do,' though they may be remarkable to look upon."

"The mothers and children will be out of doors all the time, so they won't sit around and examine the furniture," laughed Delia.

"It will be scanty, probably, but if we can get beds enough and a chair apiece, or a substitute for a chair, and a few tables, we can get along."

"There's your house provided and furnished after a fashion--how are you going to run it?" inquired Helen. "It takes shekels to buy even very plain food in these days of the 'high cost of living," and we've got to give these women and children nourishing food; they can't live on fresh air alone."

"Praise be, fresh air costs nothing!"

"That's one thing we'll get free," laughed Roger. "Grandfather told me to investigate and see what I could find out about finances and then let him know. So I went in to see Mr. Watkins."

"And never told me," said Tom reproachfully.

"Of course not. All of you people were too sniffy. I told your father what the plan was and what Grandfather had said. He thought it was great. He's a corker, your father is."

Delia and Tom looked somewhat startled at this epithet describing their parent, but Roger meant it to be complimentary, so they made no remonstrance.

"He said right off that he could provide the women and children in any numbers and that he'd select the ones that needed the change most and would be most benefited by it."

"It's not hard to find those," murmured Delia.

"Then he said that he had certain funds that he could draw on for such cases and that he'd be just as willing to pay the board for these women and children at Rosemont as anywhere else, so that we could depend on a small sum for each one of them from