le 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