r," answered Helen thoughtfully, "I used to be rather
afraid of a person who was in trouble. I thought she might think I was
intruding if I spoke of it. But Mother told me one day that a person who
was suffering didn't want to be treated as if she were in disgrace and
not to be spoken to, and I've always tried to remember it. Now, when I
know about it or guess it I make a point of being just as nice as I know
how to her. Sometimes we don't talk about the trouble at all; sometimes
it comes out naturally after a while. But even if the subject isn't
mentioned she knows that there is at least one person who is interested
in her and her affairs."

"I begin to see why you're so popular at school," remarked Margaret, who
had known for a long time other reasons for Helen's popularity.

Helen threw a leaf at her friend and asked the Ethels to make some
lemonade. They had brought the juice in a bottle and chilled water in a
thermos bottle, so that the preparation was not hard. There were cold
cheese straws to eat with it. The Ethels had made them in their small
kitchen at home by rubbing two tablespoonfuls of butter into four
tablespoonfuls of flour, adding two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese,
seasoning with a pinch of cayenne, another of salt and another of mace,
rolling out to a thickness of a quarter of an inch, cutting into strips
about four inches long and half an inch wide and baking in a hot oven.

"'Which I wish to remark and my language is plain,'" Helen quoted, "that
in spite of Dicky's picking all the blossoms we have so many flowers now
that we ought to do--give them away.

"Ethel Blue and I have been taking some regularly every week to the old
ladies at the Home," returned Ethel Brown.

"I was wondering if there were enough to send some to the hospital at
Glen Point," suggested Margaret. "The Glen Point people are pretty good
about sending flowers, but the hospital is an old story with them and
sometimes they don't remember when they might."

"I should think we might send some there and some to the Orphanage,"
said Dorothy, from whose large garden the greater part of the supply
would have to come. "Have the orphans any gardens to work in?"

"They have beds like your school garden here in Rosemont, but they have
to give the vegetables to the house and I suppose it isn't much fun to
raise vegetables and then have them taken away from you."

"They eat them themselves."

"But they don't know Willy's tomato from