"If you'll write those orders for the seed catalogues I'll post them
to-night," James suggested to Helen.

"Oh, will you? Margaret and I will write them together."

"What's the rush?" demanded Roger. "This is only January."

"I know just how the girls feel," sympathized James. "When I make up my
mind to do a thing I want to begin right off, and the first step of this
new scheme is to get the catalogues hereinbefore mentioned."

"We can plan out our back yards any time, I should think," said Dorothy.

"Father says that somebody--was it Bacon, Margaret?--says that a man's
nature runs always either to herbs or to weeds. Let's start ours running
to herbs in the first month of the year and perhaps by the time the
herbs appear we'll catch up with them."




CHAPTER III


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET

"How queer it is that when you're interested in something you keep
seeing and hearing things connected with it!" exclaimed Ethel Blue about
a week after her birthday, when Della Watkins came out from town to
bring her her belated birthday gift.