and I haven’t seen her since we were little bits of things.”

“Where does she live?” asked Ethel Blue.

“In Washington. She’s an interior decorator and she’s awfully busy, so when she has had to come on to New York to buy materials or to see people she has never had a chance to stay with us.”

“Is she going to make a visit this time?” inquired Ethel Brown.

“She has come for a long visit now. She has a commission to decorate a house in Englewood. It’s going to take her several weeks, and then she wants to rest and do some studying and to make the rounds of the decorators in the city, so it will be several months before she goes back again.”

“That’s nice,” said Ethel Blue politely, and she was glad she had thought so because Margaret said at once, “We think it’s splendid. She’s a young aunt, lots and lots younger than Mother, and James and I think she’s loads of fun.”

“What was her message to me?” asked Dorothy.

“O, we were telling her about the United Service Club and the things we did—sending gifts to the war orphans and celebrating holidays and our plans for helping some poor women and children in the summer and for taking care of the Belgian baby. She was awfully interested and said she felt as if she knew all of you people and the Watkinses quite well, we talked about you so much. Then we told her about Dorothy’s house, and how Mrs. Smith had said we might all give our opinions about the decorating, and she asked us to tell you that she’d be very glad indeed to act as consulting decorator when you come to the inside work.”

“Why, that’s awfully sweet of her!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Mother isn’t going to have a regular decorator, and I know she’ll be immensely pleased to have Miss—what is your aunt’s name?”

“Graham; she’s our Aunt Daisy!”

“—to have Miss Graham give us advice and ‘check up’ on our suggestions.”

“By the time your house is ready for that part she will have finished her Englewood house; but she said she’d be glad to come over and see the house and the plans any time when she was free for the afternoon, and she hoped you’d consult her about everything you wanted to.”

“Daisy is a pretty name, isn’t it?” Ethel Blue murmured to herself. “I wish one of us was named Daisy.”

“Her name is really Margaret; I’m named after her. Daisy is the nickname for Margaret, you know.”

“It’s a lovely name,” said Ethel Blue again.

“And please tell Miss Daisy that I think she’s the finest ever, and Mother will think so, too, when I tell her about this,” added Dorothy.

“And do ask her to come over to one of the U. S. C. meetings when we happen to be doing something that will interest her,” concluded Helen, who was the president of the club.

CHAPTER III
THE CLUB SELECTS THE BENCHES

It seemed to Dorothy and the Ethels that the outside of Sweetbrier Lodge, as Mrs. Smith had determined to call her house, went up with remarkable speed, but that the inside would never be done—never! Every day the girls walked down the road after school, and stood and surveyed the general appearance from the sidewalk and from across the street and sometimes they went on to Mrs. Emerson’s and discussed vigorously as to whether the view of the corner of the house that was to be seen now would still be seen after the leaves came out or whether the house would be entirely concealed by the foliage.

“That’s ‘one of the things no feller knows,’” Mr. Emerson quoted. “We shall have to wait and see.”

“We can get an idea how it is to look from the road,” said Ethel Brown.

“Only there’ll be a lot of planting,” Dorothy explained. “There’ll be a hedge along the street and a lot of shrubs on the knoll and the house will be covered with vines in the course of time.”

“That’s another good point about concrete,” declared Mr. Emerson; “vines don’t injure it as they do brick.”

“We’ll have it entirely covered, then,” laughed Dorothy.

“I thought it was to be a bungalow,” said Mrs. Emerson. “Your mother has always spoken of it as a bungalow, but the plans I saw the men following the other day when I went up the hill to take a look at things, seemed to me like a two story house.”

“Mother changed her mind,” said Dorothy. “She thought a bungalow would be too crowded now that we have little Belgian Elisabeth with us, so the house is going to have two stories and an attic.”

“The U. S. C. couldn’t get on without Dorothy’s attic,” smiled Ethel Brown, for almost all of the presents for the Christmas Ship had been made in the attic of Dorothy’s present abiding place, and the Club had had many meetings there.

“There’s nothing like having a well-thought-out plan before you attempt building,” said Mr. Emerson, “and that your mother had.”

“She tried to think of every possible need, Ayleesabet’s as well as our own,” continued Dorothy, using the pronunciation that the Belgian baby had given her own name.

“She has a good contractor in Anderson.”

“He didn’t make the very lowest bid,” said Dorothy. “There was one man who was lower, but he was such a lot lower that Mother thought there must be something the matter with the quality of the material he used, or that he employed workmen so poor that they might not do their work well, so she didn’t consider that offer at all.”

“She was very wise,” commended Mr. Emerson. “He might have spoiled the whole thing and have cost her more money in the end by turning out a poor job.”

While the building was going on and before the inside work was done the girls spent a good deal of time in planning for the furnishing of the garden. The flower and vegetable beds had all been arranged some weeks before and many of them had been planted, but the artistic part of the garden had been left until there should be time to devote to it. Mrs. Smith had promised Dorothy that she should have the choice of the garden furniture, reserving for herself a veto power if her daughter chose anything that seemed to her entirely unsuitable.

“Not that I expect to use it,” she said, smiling at the girls who were listening to her.

The selection of the benches and tables and trellises was made a subject of attention by the whole United Service Club. A meeting was called in the partly begun garden so that they might have the “lie of the land” before them as they talked. Dorothy took with her a number of catalogues from which to select or to gather ideas.

“We’ve got a good shelter of large trees already provided for us,” she said as they all seated themselves in such shade as the young leaves made.

“There ought to be a fine large settee under it where we can have Club meetings all summer, no matter how warm it is,” urged Tom Watkins with wise foresight. Tom and his sister, Della, came out from New York for the club gatherings, and the prospect of meeting out of doors instead of in the attic, which was delightful in winter but not so attractive in warm weather, made him offer this shrewd suggestion.