little soft white creature called aphis by
putting under the plant a pan of hot coals with tobacco thrown on them.

"It certainly has a sufficiently horrid smell," exclaimed Ethel Brown.
"I don't wonder the beasties curl up and die; I'd like to myself."

"They say aphis doesn't come on a plant with healthy sap," Ethel Blue
contributed to this talk, "so the thing to do is to make these plants so
healthy that the animals drop off starved."

"This new development is going to be a great comfort to me if it keeps
on," Mrs. Emerson confessed to her daughter humorously. "I shall
encourage the girls to use my plants for instruction whenever they want
to."

"You may laugh at their sudden affection," returned Mrs. Morton
seriously, "but I've noticed that everything the U.S.C. sets its heart
on doing gets done, and I've no doubt whatever that they'll have what
Roger calls 'some' garden this next summer."

"Roger has had long consultations with his grandfather about fertilizers
and if he's interested in the beginnings of a garden and not merely in
the results I think we can rely on him."

"They have all been absorbed in the subject for three months and now

'Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of
birds is come.'"

Roger maintained that his Aunt Louise's house ought to be begun at the
time that he planted his sweetpeas.

"If I can get into the ground enough to plant, surely the cellar diggers
ought to be able to do the same," he insisted.

March was not over when he succeeded in preparing a trench a foot deep
all around the spot which was to be his vegetable garden except for a
space about three feet wide which he left for an entrance. In the bottom
he placed three inches of manure and over that two inches of good soil.
In this he planted the seeds half an inch apart in two rows and covered
them with soil to the depth of three inches, stamping it down hard. As
the vines grew to the top of the trench he kept them warm with the rest
of the earth that he had taken out, until the opening was entirely
filled.

The builder was not of Roger's mind about the cellar digging, but he
really did begin operations in April. Every day the Mortons and Smiths,
singly or in squads, visited the site of Sweetbrier Lodge, as Mrs. Smith
and Dorothy had decided to call the house. Dorothy had started a
notebook in which to keep account of the progress of th