of special hues, and this arrangement made easy the work
of decorating different rooms in different colors. The porch was made
cool with ferns and hanging vines; the hall, which seemed dark to eyes
blinded by the glare outside, was brightened with yellow posies; the
dining room had delicate blue lobelia mingled with gypsophila springing
from low, almost unseen dishes all over the table where the tea and
coffee were poured, and hanging in festoons from the smaller table on
which stood the bowl of grape juice lemonade, made very sour and very
sweet and enlivened with charged water. The girls profited by this
combination, for the various amounts used in it were being "tried out"
during the morning and with every new trial refreshing glasses were
handed about for criticism by the workers.

In the drawing room where the hostess stood to receive, superb pink
poppies reared their heads from tall vases, pink snapdragons bobbed on
the mantel piece and a bank of pink candytuft lay on the top of the
piano. A lovely vine waved from a wall vase of exquisite design and
vines trailed around the wide door as naturally as if they grew there
instead of springing from bottles of water concealed behind tall jars of
pink hollyhocks.

"It is perfectly charming, my dears, and I can't tell you how obliged I
am," said their hostess as she pressed a bill into Ethel Brown's hand.
"I know that every woman who will be here will want you the next time
she entertains, and I shall tell everybody you did it."

She was as good as her word and the attempt resulted in several other
orders. The girls tried to make each house different from any that they
had decorated before, and they thought that they owed the success that
brought them many compliments to the fact that they planned it all out
beforehand and left nothing to be done in a haphazard way.

Meanwhile Rose House benefited greatly by the welcome weekly additions
from the flower sale to its slender funds.

"I'm not sure it isn't roses ye are yerselves, yer that sweet to look
at!" exclaimed Moya, the cook at Rose House, one day when the girls were
there.

And they admitted themselves that if happiness made them sweet to look
at it must be true.

CHAPTER XIV

UNCLE DAN'S RESEARCHES

"Uncle Dan," whose last name was Hapgood, did not cease his calls upon
the Clarks. Sometimes he brought with him his niece, whose name, they
learned, was Mary Smith.

"Another Smith!" ejaculated Dorot