"I suppose we could hardly expect to have a reply," sighed Ethel Blue, "but it would have been so splendiferous if it did come!"

Thanks to Dicky's escapade the last Saturday afternoon had been so broken in upon that the Club decided that they must have an all-day session on the next Saturday. Roger had promised to teach the others how to do the leather and brass work in which he had become quite expert, and he was talking to himself about it as he was dressing after doing his morning work.

"This business of working in leather for orphan children makes a noise like toil to me," he soliloquized. "But think of the joy of the kids when they receive a leather penwiper, though they aren't yet old enough to write, or a purse when they haven't any shekels to put into it!"

"Ro—ger," came a voice from a long way off.

"Let's go over to Dorothy's now," Roger called back as if it had been Ethel Brown who was late.

"I should say so! The Watkinses and Hancocks said they'd be there at ten and it must be that now. I'll call Ethel Blue and Helen," and Ethel Brown's voice came from a greater distance than before.

The other girls were not to be discovered, however, and when Roger and Ethel arrived at Dorothy's they found all the rest waiting for them.

"Where's this professor of leather?" called Tom as he heard Roger's steps on the attic stairs.

"And brass," added Roger grandly as he appeared in the doorway.

"No one disputes the brass," returned Tom, and Roger roared cheerfully and called out "Bull's-eye!"

"Now, then," began Roger seating himself at the head of the table, "with apologies to the president I'll call this solemn meeting to order—that is, as much order as there can be with Dicky around."

Dicky was even then engaged in trying to make a hole in Ethel Blue's shoe with a leather punch, but he was promptly suppressed and placed between the Ethels before his purpose was accomplished.

"You've got him interned there," remarked James, using a phrase that was becoming customary in the newspaper accounts of the care of prisoners.

"I'm going to start you people making corners for a big blotting pad," said Roger, "not because the orphans will want a blotting pad, but because they are easy to make and you can adapt the idea to lots of other articles."

"Fire ahead," commanded James.

"You make a paper pattern to fit your corner—so fashion," and Roger tore a sheet of paper off a pad and cut a slip ten inches long and four inches wide. A point in the middle of the long side he placed on the corner of the big blotter that lay before him and then he folded the rest of the paper around the corner. The result was a smooth triangle on the face of the blotter and a triangle at the back just like it except that it was split up the middle.

"Here's your pattern," said Roger slipping it off. "When you make this of brass or copper it's a good plan to round these back corners so there won't be any sharp points to stick into you or to scratch the desk."

"The orphans' mahogany."

"Or Grandfather Emerson's. I'm going to inflict a set on him at Christmas."

"I should think it would be hard to work on such dinky little things," remarked James who had large hands.

"You don't cut them out of your big sheet of copper or your big piece of leather yet. You draw the size of this small pattern on to a larger piece of paper and you draw your ornamental design right where you want it on the face of the triangle—so."

"More work for Ethel Blue, making original designs."

"She might get up some U. S. C. designs and have them copyrighted," suggested Helen.

"Until she does we'll have to use these simple figures that I traced out of a book the other day."

"Why couldn't we use our stenciling designs?"

"You could, if they are the right size. That star pattern you put oh a doll's skirt would be just the ticket—just one star for each corner."

"We might put U. S. C. in each corner."

"Or U. in one corner and S. in another, and C. in a third and a star or something in the fourth."

"Or the initials of the person you give it to."

"We've got the size of the corner piece as it is when it's unfolded and with its design on it, all drawn on this piece of paper. Now you tack your sheet of brass on to a block of wood and lay a sheet of carbon paper over it and your design on that and trace ahead."

"I see, I see," commented Margaret. "When you take it off, there you have the size of your corner indicated and the star or whatever you're going to ornament it with, all drawn in the right place."

"Exactly. Now we tackle the brass itself."

"It seems to me we ought to have some tools for that."

"A light hammer and a wire nail—that's all. See the point of this nail? It has been filed flat and rather dull. I made enough for everybody to have one—not you, sir," and he snatched away one of them from Dicky just as that young man was about to nail Ethel Brown's dress on to the edge of her chair.

"Dicky will have to be interned at home if he isn't quiet." The president shook her head at the honorary member.

"First you go around the whole outline, tapping the nail gently, stroke by stroke, until the line of the design is completely hammered in."

"That isn't hard," said Tom. "Watch me."

"When the outline is made you take another wire nail that has been filed perfectly flat on the bottom and go over the whole background with it."

"I see, I see," cried Ethel Blue. "That makes the design stand out puffily and smooth against a sort of motheaten background."

"For eloquent description commend me to Ethel Blue," declared Margaret.

"She's right, though. You can make the moth holes of different size by using nails of different sizes. There are regular tools that come, too, with different pounding surfaces so it's possible to make quite a variety of backgrounds."

"This mothy one is pretty enough for me," declared Margaret.

"I don't much like that name for it, but it is pretty, just the same," insisted Roger. "When you've hammered down the background you take out the tacks and cut out your whole corner with this pair of shears that is made to cut metal. Then you fold over the backs just the way you folded over the paper to find the shape originally."

"It's not so terribly easy to bend," commented Ethel Blue.

"Shape them along the edge of your block of wood. Persuade them down—so, and fold them back—so. Tap them into place with your wooden mallet. There you are."

The finished corner was passed from hand to hand and duly admired.

"Rub it shiny with any brass polish, if you like it bright," directed Roger.

"It's fashionable for coppers to be dull now," said Helen.

"You ladies know more about fashions of all sorts than I should ever pretend to," said her brother meekly. "I like metals to shine, myself."

"What are some of the articles we can start in to make now that we know how?" questioned Margaret.

"All sorts of things for the desk—a paper knife and a roller blotter and a case to hold the inkwell and a clip to keep papers from blowing away. The work is just the same, no matter what you're making. It's all a matter of getting the outlines of different objects and then bending them up carefully after you've hammered the design and got them cut out well."

"Why can't you make all sorts of boxes?" asked James whose mind had run to boxes ever since his week of work upon them.

"You can. All sorts and sizes. Line them with silk or leather. Leather wears best."

"How far is the leather work like the metal work?" asked Ethel Brown. "It seemed to be the same as far as the point where you tacked them on to the wooden block."

"It is the same except that you wet the leather before you tack it on to the block. When you put your design on to the leather you don't need to use carbon paper. Borrow one of Ethel Brown's knitting needles and run it over the design that you have drawn on the paper placed over the leather, and it will leave a tiny groove on the damp leather."

"That's a simple instrument."

"The steel tooler you take next is simple, too. You deepen the groove with its edge and then take the flat part of the tooler and go over every bit of the leather outside of the design, pressing it and polishing it with great care."

"I suppose that gives the leather a different texture."

"It seems to. It makes the design show more, anyway."

"I saw a beauty leather mat the other day with a cotton boll design that puffed right up from the background.

"The cotton boll caught our little Dorothy's eye, of course! You make your design puff out by rubbing it on the back with a round headed tool. Your mat probably had the puffed up part filled with wax so it wouldn't smash down again when something heavy was placed on it."

"I think it did; it felt hard."

"If you do puff out any part of your pattern you have to tool over the design again, because the outline will have lost its sharpness."

"The mat I saw was colored."

"That's easy. There are colors that come especially for using on leather. You float them on when the leather is wet and you can get beautiful effects."

"You ought not to cut out your leather corners until they are dry, I suppose?"

"They ought to be thoroughly dry. If you want a lining for a purse or a cardcase you can paste in either silk or a thin leather. It's pretty to make an openwork design and let the lining show through."

"How about sewing purses? It must be hard work."

"Helen does mine on the machine. She says it isn't much trouble if she goes slowly and takes a few stitches back at the ends so they won't come apart. But I'm going to show you how to make a little three cornered purse that doesn't need any sewing—only two glove snappers."

So simple was this pattern that each of them had finished one by the time that Grandmother Emerson's car came to take them all over to luncheon at her house.