"Tell me what they are and I can do them last," said James.

"And we can put them on a shelf in the club attic as models," suggested Dorothy.

"Here's an example," said Helen, taking up a pasteboard cylinder. "This is a mailing tube—you know those mailing tubes that you can buy all made, of different sizes. We've brought down a lot of them to-day. Take this fat one, for instance, and cut it off about three inches down. Then cover it with chintz or cretonne or flowered paper or holly paper."

"Line it with the paper, too, I should say," commented James, picking up the pieces that Helen cut off.

"Yes, indeed. Cover two round pieces and fit one of them into the bottom and fasten the other on for a cover with a ribbon hinge, and there you have a box for string, or rubber bands for somebody's desk."

"O.K. for rubber bands," agreed Roger, "but for string it would be better to make a hole in the cover and let the cord run up through."

"How would you keep the cover from flopping up and down when you pulled the string?"

"Here's one very simple way. You know those fasteners that stationers sell to keep papers together? They have a brass head and two legs and when you've pushed the legs through the papers you press them apart and they can't pull out. One of those will do very well as a knob to go on the box part, and a loop of gold or silver cord or of ribbon can be pasted or tied on to the cover."

"If you didn't care whether it was ever used again you could put in the ball of twine with its end sticking through and then paste a band of paper around the joining of the top and the box. It would be pretty as long as the twine lasted."

"It would be a simple matter for the person who became its proud possessor to paste on another strip of paper when he had put in his new ball of twine."

"Any way you fix it," went on Helen, "there you have the general method of making round boxes from these mailing tubes."

"And you can use round boxes for a dozen purposes," said Margaret; "for candy and all the goodies we're going to send the orphans."

"Are you sure they'll keep?" asked careful James.

"Ethel Brown asked the domestic science teacher at school about that, and she's going to give her receipts for cookies and candies that will last at least six weeks. That will be long enough for the Christmas Ship to go over and to make the rounds of the ports where it is to distribute presents."

"Of course we'll make the eatables at the last minute," said Dorothy, "and we'll pack them so as to keep the air out as much as possible."

"Give that flour paste a good boiling," Helen called after Margaret as she left the room to prepare it.

"And don't forget the oil of cloves to keep it sweet," added Ethel Blue.

"These round boxes will be especially good for the cookies," said Ethel Brown, "though the string box would have to go to Father. A string box isn't especially suitable for an orphan."

"If you split these mailing tubes lengthwise and line them inside you get some pretty shapes," went on Helen.

"Rather shallow," commented Della.

"If you split them just in halves they are, but you don't have to do that. Split them a little above the middle and then the cover will be shallower than the box part."

"Right-o," nodded Roger.

"Then you line them and arrange the fastening and hinges just as you described for the string box?" asked James.

"Exactly the same. Another way of fastening them is by making little chintz straps and putting glove snappers on them."

"I don't see why you couldn't put ribbons into both cover and box part and tie them together."

"You could."

"You can use these split open ones for a manicure set or a brush and comb box for travelling."

"Or a handkerchief box."

"If you get tubes of different sizes and used military hair brushes you could make a box for a man, with a cover that slipped over for a long way," said Ethel Blue. "It would be just like the leather ones."

"You make one of those for Uncle Richard for Christmas," advised Ethel Brown. "I rather think the orphans aren't keen on military brushes."

"Oh, I'm just talking out any ideas that come along. As Helen suggested, an idea is always useful some time or other even if it won't do for to-day's orphans."

"I saw a dandy box the other day that we might have put into Mademoiselle's kit," said Roger. "It's a good thing to remember for some other traveller."

"Describe," commanded James.

"I don't think these round boxes would be as convenient for it as a square or oblong one. It had a ball of string and a tube of paste and a pair of small scissors, and tags of different sizes and rubber bands and labels with gum on the back."

"That's great for a desk top," said Della. "I believe I'll make one for Father for his birthday," and she nodded toward Tom who nodded back approvingly.

"A big blotter case is another desk gift. The back is of very stiff cardboard and the corners are of chintz or leather. The blotters are slipped under the corners and are kept flat by them," continued Roger, who had noticed them because of their leather corners.

"A lot of small blotters tied together are easy to put up," contributed Dorothy. "You can have twelve, if you want to, and paste a calendar for a month on to each one."

"I think we ought to make those plain boxes the boys have made for the dresses a little prettier. Can't we ornament them in some way?" asked Ethel Blue.

"The made-over ones are all covered with fancy paper you remember," said Tom.

"I was thinking of the plain ones that are 'neat but not gaudy.' How can we make them 'gaudy'?"

"Christmas seals are about as easy a decoration as you can get," Tom suggested.

"Pretty, too. Those small seals, you mean, that you put on letters. A Santa Claus or a Christmas tree or a poinsettia would look pretty on the smaller sized boxes."

"It would take a lot of them to show much on the larger ones, and that would make them rather expensive. Can't we think up something cheaper?" asked the treasurer.

"I'm daffy over wall paper," cried Dorothy. "I went with Mother to pick out some for one of our rooms the other day and the man showed us such beauties—they were like paintings."

"And cost like paintings, too," growled James feelingly.

"Some of them did," admitted Dorothy. "But I asked him if he didn't have remnants sometimes. He laughed and said they didn't call them remnants but he said they did have torn pieces and for ten cents he gave me a regular armful. Just look at these beauties."

She held up for the others' inspection some pieces of paper with lovely flower designs upon them.

"But those bits aren't big enough to cover a big box and the patterns are too large to show except on a big box," objected Margaret who had come back with the paste.

"Here's where they're just the thing for decoration of the plain boxes. Cut out this perfectly darling wistaria—so. Could you find anything more graceful than that? You'd have to be an artist to do anything so good. Paste that sweeping, drooping vine with its lovely cluster of blossoms on to the top of one of the largest boxes and that's plenty of decoration."

Dorothy waved her vine in one hand and her scissors in the other and the rest became infected with her enthusiasm, for the scraps of paper that she had brought were exquisite in themselves and admirable for the purpose she suggested.

"Good for Dorothy!" hurrahed James. "Anybody else got any ideas on this decoration need?"

"I have," came meekly from Ethel Brown. "It isn't very novel but it will work, and it will save money and it's easy."

"Trot her forth," commanded Roger.

"It's silhouettes."

Silence greeted this suggestion.

"They're not awfully easy to do," said Helen doubtfully.

"Not when you make them out of black paper, and you have to draw on the pattern or trace it on and you can hardly see the lines and you get all fussed up over it," acknowledged Ethel. "I've tried that way and I almost came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the trouble I put into it unless you happened to be a person who can cut them right out without drawing them first."

"I saw a man do that at a bazar once," said Della. "It was wonderful. He illustrated Cinderella. He cut out a coach and tiny horses and the old fairy without drawing anything at all beforehand."

"Nothing doing here," Tom pushed away an imaginary offer of scissors and black paper.

"Here's where my grand idea comes in," insisted Ethel Brown. "My idea is to cut out of the magazines any figures that please you."

"Figures with action would be fun," suggested Roger.

"They'd be prettiest, too. You'll find them in the advertising pages as well as in the stories. Paste them on to your box or whatever you want to decorate, and then go over them with black oil paint."

"Good for old Ethel Brown!" applauded her brother. "I didn't think you had it in you, child! Have you ever tried it?"

"Yes, sir, I have. I knew I'd probably meet with objections from an unimaginative person like you, so I decorated this cover and brought it along as a sample."

It proved to be an idea as dashing as it was simple. Ethel Brown had selected a girl rolling a hoop. A dog, cut from another page, was bounding beside her. Some delicate foliage at one side hinted at a landscape.

"Wasn't it hard not to let the black run over the edges of the picture?" asked Della.

"Yes, you have to keep your wits about you all the time. But then you have to do that any way if you want what you're making to amount to anything, so that doesn't count."

"That's a capital addition, that suggestion of ground that you made with a whisk or two of the brush."

"Just a few lines seem to give the child something to stand on."

"These plans for decoration look especially good to me," said practical James, "because there's nothing to stick up on them. They'll pack easily and that's what we must have for our purpose."

"That's true," agreed Helen. "For doing up presents that don't have to travel it's pretty to cut petals of red poinsettia and twist them with wire and make a flower that you can tuck in under the string that you tie the parcel with—"

"Or a bit of holly. Holly is easily made out of green crÊpe paper or tissue paper," cried Della.

"But as James says, none of the boxes for the orphans can have stick-ups or they'll look like mashed potatoes when they reach the other side."

"We'll stow away the poinsettia idea for home presents then," said Margaret. "What we want from James, however, is a lot of boxes of any and every size that he can squeeze out."

"No scraps thrown away, old man," decreed Tom, "for even a cube of an inch each way will hold a few sweeties."

"Orders received and committed to memory," acknowledged the invalid, saluting.

"By the way, I learned an awfully interesting thing to-day," said Helen.

"Name it," commanded Roger, busy with knife and pastepot making one of the twine and tag boxes that he had described.

"I'll tell you while we each make one of the things we've been talking about so that we can leave them for patterns with James."

Dorothy had already set about applying her wistaria vine to the cover of a box whose body Tom was putting together. Ethel Blue was making a string box from a mailing tube, covering it with a scrap of chintz with a very small design; Ethel Brown was hunting in an old magazine for figures suitable for making silhouettes; James was writing in a notebook the various hints that had been bestowed upon him so generously that he feared his memory would not hold them all without help; Helen and Della were measuring and cutting some cotton cloth that was to be used in the gifts that Della was eager to tell about.

"By the time Helen has told her tale I'll be ready to explain my gift idea," she said.

"Go on, then, Helen," urged James, "I'm ready to 'start something' myself, in a minute."

"You and Margaret have heard us talk about our German teacher?"

"We've seen her," said Margaret. "She was at our entertainment."

"So she was. I remember, she and her mother sat right behind the old ladies from the Home."

"And they knitted for the soldiers whenever the lights were up."

"I guess Mrs. Hindenburg knitted when the lights were off, too," said Helen. "I've seen her knitting with her eyes shut."

"She sent in some more wristers for the orphans the other day," said Dorothy. "She has made seven pairs so far, and three scarfs and two little sweaters."

"Some knitter," announced Roger.

"FrÄulein knits all the time, too, but she says she can't keep up with her mother. This is what I wanted to tell you—you remember when Roger first went there she told him that FrÄulein's betrothed was in the German army. Well, yesterday she told us who he is."

"Is it all right for you to tell us?" warned Roger.

"It's no secret. She said that the engagement was to have been announced as soon as he got back from Germany and that many people knew it already."

"Is he an American German?"

"It's our own Mr. Schuler."

Roger gave a whistle of surprise; the Ethels cried out in wonder, and the Hancocks and the Watkinses who did not know many Rosemont people, waited for the explanation.

"Mr. Schuler was the singing teacher in the high school year before last and last year," explained Helen. "Last spring he had to go back to Germany in May so he was there when the army was mobilized and went right to the front."

"It does come near home when you actually know a soldier fighting in the German army and a nurse in a hospital on the Allies' side," said Roger thoughtfully.

"It makes it a lot more exciting to know who FrÄulein's betrothed is."

"Does she speak of him?" asked Margaret.

"She talked about him very freely yesterday after her mother mentioned his name."

"I suppose she didn't want the high school kids gossiping about him," observed Roger.

"As we are," interposed James.

"We aren't gossiping," defended Helen. "She looks on the Club members as her special friends—she said so. She knows we wouldn't go round at school making a nine days' wonder of it. She knows we're fond of her."

"We are," agreed Roger. "She's a corker. I wonder we didn't think of its being Mr. Schuler."

"Her mother always mentioned him as 'my daughter's betrothed'; and FrÄulein yesterday kept saying 'my betrothed.' We might have gone on in ignorance for a long time if Mrs. Hindenburg hadn't let it slip out yesterday."

"Well, I hope he'll come through with all his legs and arms uninjured," said Roger. "I hope it for FrÄulein's sake, and for his, too. He's a bully singing teacher."

"Has she heard from him since the war began?"

"Several times, but not for a month now, and she's about crazy with anxiety. He was in Belgium when he got the last letter through and of course that means that he has been in the very thick of it all."

"Poor FrÄulein!" sighed Ethel Blue, and the others nodded seriously over their work.