"I'm perfectly crazy to hear everything you've learned this morning," said Margaret, "but before we start talking about it I want to make a beginning on a basket so I can be working while I listen."

"Me, too," said James. "I've pasted enough boxes and gimcracks to fill a young cottage. In fact they are now packed in a young cottage that Father is going to bring over some day when he hasn't any other load. He said the car wouldn't hold it and Margaret and him and me all at the same time this afternoon."

"We've been making all sorts of things this week," said Ethel Brown. "I'm just finishing the last of a dozen balls that I've been covering with crochet. It's the simplest thing in the world and they're fine for little children because the slippery rubber balls slide out of their fingers and these are just rough enough for their tiny paws to cling to."

"I've been making those twin bed-time dolls," said Ethel Blue. "You've seen them in all the shops—just ugly dolls of worsted—but mine are made like the Danish Nisse, the elves that the Danes use to decorate their Yuletide trees."

She held up a handful of wee dolls made of white worsted, doubled until the little figure was about a finger long. A few strands on each side were cut shorter than the rest and stood out as arms. A red thread tied a little way from the top indicated the neck; another about the middle defined the waist; the lower part was divided and each leg was tied at the ankle with red thread, and a red thread bound the wrists. On the head a peaked red hat of flannel or of crochet shaded a face wherein two black stitches represented the eyes, a third the nose, and a red dot the ruby lips. From the back of the neck a crocheted cord about eighteen inches long connected one elf with his twin.

"What's the idea of two?" inquired Tom.

"To keep each other company. You tie them on to a wire of the baby's crib and they won't get lost."

"Or on to the perambulator."

"They don't take long to make—see, I wind the wool over my fingers, so, to get the right length, and then I tie them as quick as a wink; and when I feel in the mood of making the caps I turn off a dozen or two of them—"

"And the cord by the yard, I suppose."

"Just about. I've made quantities of these this week and I'm not going to make any more, so I'll help with the baskets or the stenciling."

"I've been jig-sawing," said Roger. "I've made jumping jacks till you can't rest."

"Where did you get your pattern?" asked Tom who also was a jig sawyer.

"I took an old one of Dicky's that was on the downward road and pulled it to pieces so that I could use each part for a pattern. I cut out ever so many of each section. Then I spent one afternoon painting legs and arms and jackets and caps, and Ethel Blue painted the faces for me. I'm not much on expression except my own, you know."

"Have you put them together yet?"

"Dorothy has been tying the pull strings for me this afternoon and I'm going to do the glueing now while you people are learning baskets."

"James ought to do the glueing for you," suggested Margaret in spite of James's protesting gestures.

Roger laughed.

"I wouldn't be so mean as to ask him," he said. "He's stuck up enough for one lifetime, I suspect."

"I've been jigging, too," confessed Tom.

"Anything pretty?" asked Roger.

"Of course something pretty," defended Helen. "Don't you remember the beauty box he made Margaret?"

"I certainly do. Its delicate openwork surpassed any of my humble efforts."

"It was pretty, wasn't it?" murmured Margaret. "The yellow silk lining showed through."

"What I've been doing lately was the very simplest possible toy for the orphans." Tom disclaimed any fine work. "I've just been cutting circles out of cigar boxes and punching two holes side by side in each one. Then I run a string through the two holes. You slip it over your forefinger of each hand and whirl the disk around the string until it is wound up tight and then by pulling the string you keep the whirligig going indefinitely."

"It doesn't look like much of a toy to me," said Della crushingly.

"May be not, ma'am, but I tried it on Dad and Edward and they played with it for ten minutes apiece. You find yourself pulling it in time to some air you're humming in the back of your head."

"Right-o," agreed James. "I had a tin one once and I played with it from morning till night. I believe the orphans will spend most of their waking hours tweaking those cords."

"I'm glad you think so," said Tom. "Roger was so emphatic I was afraid I'd been wasting my time."

"What's Dorothy been up to this week?" asked James.

"Dorothy couldn't make up her mind whether she wanted most to make bags or model clay candlesticks or dress dolls this week," responded Dorothy, "but she finally decided to dress dolls."

"Where did you get the dolls?"

"Some of them I got with treasury money—they're real dolls, and I made galoptious frocks for them out of scraps from piece-bags."

"Were you patient enough to make all the clothes to take off?" asked Della.

"Every identical garment," replied Dorothy emphatically. "Dolls aren't any fun unless you can dress and undress them. I never cared a rap for a doll with its clothes fastened on."

"Nor I."

"Nor I."

"Nor I."

Every girl in the room agreed with this opinion.

"The rag dolls are the ones I believe the children will like best," said Helen; "that is, if they are at all like American children."

"Isn't it funny—I always liked that terrible looking old rag object of mine better than the prettiest one Father ever sent me," agreed Ethel Blue.

"Every child does," said Margaret.

"Dorothy made some fine ones," complimented Helen.

"Did you draw them or did you get the ones that are already printed on cloth?" asked Della.

"Both. The printed ones are a great deal prettier than mine, but Aunt Marion had a stout piece of cotton cloth—"

A shout arose.

"Cotton cloth! That's enough to interest Dorothy in making anything," laughed Tom.

"Almost," agreed Dorothy good-naturedly. "Any way, I used up the piece of cloth making dolls and cats and dogs. I drew them on the cloth and then stitched them on the machine and, I tell you, I remembered the time when Dicky's stuffed cat had an awful accident and lost almost all his inner thoughts, and I sewed every one of the little beasties twice around."

"What did you stuff them with?"

"Some with cotton."

"Ha, ha!"

"Ha!" retorted Dorothy, "and some with rags, and one with sawdust, but I didn't care for him; he was lumpy."

"I didn't know you could paint well enough to color them," said Roger.

"I can't. I did a few but Ethel Blue did the best one. There was a cat that was so fierce that Aunt Marion's cat growled at it. He was a winner!"

"All the rag dolls were dressed in cotton dresses," explained Ethel Brown.

"Of course."

"But the real dolls were positively scrumptious. There was a bride, and a girl in a khaki sport suit, and a boy in a sailor suit, and a baby. They were regular beauties."

All the time that these descriptions had been given Dorothy and the Mortons had been opening packages of rattan and raffia and laying them out on the dining table. James sat in state at one end, his convalescent leg raised on a chair, and his right hand to the table so that he could handle his materials easily.

"I'm simply perishing to hear about FrÄulein," he acknowledged. "Do start me on this basket business, Dorothy, so I can hear about her."

"We don't know such an awful lot," said Dorothy slowly as she counted out the spokes for a small basket. "In fact, we don't know anything at all."

"Misery! And my curiosity has been actually on the boil! How many of those sticks do I need?"

"Let's all do the same basket," suggested Ethel Brown. "Then one lecture by Miss Dorothy Smith will do for all of us."

"Doesn't anybody else know how to make them?"

"Della and I do," replied Ethel Blue. "We're going to work on raffia, but you people might just as well all do one kind of basket. We can use any number of them, you know, so it doesn't make any difference if they are all alike."

"We'll start with a basket that measures three inches across the bottom and is two and a half inches deep," announced Dorothy, who was an expert basket maker. "You'll need eight spokes sixteen inches long and one nine inches long."

There was a general cutting and counting of rattan spokes.

"Are you ready? Take your knife and in four rattans make slits long enough to poke the other four rattans through."

"They're rather fat to get through," complained James.

"Sharpen them to a point. Have you put them through so they make a cross with the arms of even length? Then put the single short piece through on one arm—no, not way through, James; just far enough to catch it."

"That's pretty solid just as it is," commented Tom with his head on one side.

"Nevertheless, you must wrap it with a piece of raffia. Watch me; lay your raffia at the left side of the upright arm and bring it across from left to right. Now pass it under the right hand arm and over the bottom arm and under the left hand arm. Instead of covering the wrapping you've just done you turn back and let your bit of raffia go over the left hand arm."

"That binds down the beginning end of the raffia," cried Helen.

"Exactly. That's why you do it. Go under the bottom arm and over the right hand arm behind the top arm."

"Back at the station the train started from," announced Margaret.

"So far you've used your weaver—"

"What's that? The raffia?"

"Yes. So far you've used it merely to fasten the centre firmly. Now you really begin to weave under and over the spokes, round and round."

"I could shoot beans through mine," announced James.

"You haven't pulled your weaver tight as you wove. Push it down hard toward the centre. That's it. See how firm that is? You could hardly get water through that—much less beans or hound puppies, as they say in some parts of North Carolina."

"This weaving process makes the spokes stand out like wheel spokes, doesn't it?"

"That's why they're called spokes. By the time you've been round three times they ought all to be standing apart evenly."

"Please, ma'am, my raffia is giving out," grumbled Tom.

"It's time to use a rattan weaver, then. You used raffia at first because the spokes were so near together. Now you use a fine rattan, finer than your spokes. Wet it first. Then catch it behind a spoke and hold on to it carefully until you come to the second time round or it will slip away from you. You're all right as soon as the second row holds the first row in place."

"My rattan weaver is giving out," said Ethel Brown.

"Take another one and lap it over the end of the one that is on the point of death, then go right ahead. If they're too fat at the ends shave them down a bit where they lap."

"This superb creation of mine is three inches across the middle," announced James.

"It's time to turn up the spokes then. Make up your mind how sharply you want the basket to flare and watch it as you weave, or you'll have it uneven."

"Mine seems to have reached a good height for a small work basket," decided Helen, her head on one side.

"Mine isn't quite so high, but I can seem to see a few choice candies of Ethel Brown's concoction resting happily within its walls," said Tom.

"Let's all make the border. Measure the spokes and cut them just three inches beyond the top of the weaving. You'll have to sharpen their tips a little or else you'll have trouble pushing them down among the weavers."

"I get the idea! You bend them into scallops!"

"Wet them first or there'll be broken fence pickets. When you've soaked them until they're pliable enough bend each spoke over to make a scallop and thrust it down right beside its neighbor spoke between the weavers."

"Mine is more than ever a work basket," said Helen when she had completed the edge. "I shall line it with brown and fit it up with a thimble and threads and needles and a tiny pair of scissors."

"Mine, too," was Ethel Brown's decision.

"My sides turn up too sharply," James thought. "I shall call mine a cover for a small flower pot. Then I shan't have to line it!"

"Here are some of the most easily made mats and baskets in the world," announced Della. "They're made just like the braided rugs you find in farm houses in New England. Mother got some in New Hampshire once before we started going to Chautauqua for the summers."

"I've seen them," said Margaret. "There are yards and yards of rags cut all the same width and sewed together and then they are braided and then the braid is sewed round and round."

"You make raffia mats or baskets in just the same way, only you sew them with raffia," explained Della. "You braid the raffia first and that gives you an opportunity to make pretty color combinations."

"A strand of raffia doesn't last forever. How do you splice it?"

"Splice a thick end alongside of a thin end and go ahead. Try to pick out strands of different lengths for your plaiting or they'll all run out at once and have to be spliced at once and it may make them bunchy if you aren't awfully careful."

"I saw a beauty basket once made of corn husks braided in the same way. The inside husks are a delicate color you know, and they were split into narrow widths and plaited into a long rope."

"Where the long leaf pine grows," said Dorothy, "they use pine needles in the same way, only they wrap them around with thread—"

"Cotton thread?"

"Cotton thread—of about the same color."

"You can work sweet grass just so, except that you can wrap that with a piece of itself."

"When you have enough material," went on Della, "you begin the sewing. If you're going to make a round or an oblong mat you decide which right at the beginning and coil the centre accordingly. Then all you have to do is to go ahead. Don't let the stitches show and sew on until the mat is big enough."

"And for a basket I suppose you pile the braids upon each other when you've made the bottom the size you want it."

"Exactly. And you can make the sides flare sharply or slightly just as we made them do with the rattan."

"What's the matter with making baskets of braided crÊpe paper?" asked James. "My whole being has been wrapped in paper for a week so it may influence my inventive powers unduly, but I really don't see why it shouldn't work."

"I'm sorry to take you off your perch," remarked Ethel Brown, "but I've seen one."

"O—oh!" wailed James in disappointment. "They were pretty though, weren't they?"

"They were beauties. There was a lovely color combination in the one I saw."

"You could make patriotic ones for Fourth of July—red, white, and blue."

"Or green and red ones for Christmas."

"Or all white for Easter."

"Or pinky ones for May Day."

Just at this moment there came a rush of small feet and Dicky burst into the room.

"Hullo," he exclaimed briefly.

"Hullo," cried a chorus in return.

"I've seen her," said Dicky.

"Who is 'her'?" asked Roger.

"FrÄulein."

"FrÄulein! Dicky, what have you been doing?"

Helen seized him by the arm and drew him to the side of her chair, while all the other members of the Club laid down their work and listened.

Dicky was somewhat embarrassed at being the object of such undivided attention. He climbed up into Helen's lap.

"I heard you talking at breakfatht about FrÄulein and how thomebody perhapth wath dead and perhapth wathn't dead, tho I went and athked her if he wath dead."

"Oh, Dicky!"

Helen buried her face in his bobbed hair, and the rest of the Mortons looked at each other aghast.

"We were wondering if it would be an intrusion to send FrÄulein some flowers," explained Helen,—"and—"

"—and here Dicky butts right in!" finished Roger.

"I went to the houthe and I rang the bell," continued Dicky, "and an old lady came to the door."

"Mrs. Hindenburg."

"I thaid 'Ith Mith FrÄulein at home?' The old lady thaid 'Yeth.' I walked in and there wath Mith FrÄulein in front of the fire. I thaid, 'Ith he dead?'"

"You asked her?"

"Great Scott!"

"FrÄulein thaid, 'I don't know, Dicky.' And I thaid, 'Here ith a chethnut I found. You can have it.' And FrÄulein thaid, 'Thank you, Dicky,' and I that on her lap and the talked to me a long time about the man that perhapth ith dead, and thometimeth the thaid queer wordth—"

"German," interpreted Margaret under her breath.

"And onthe the cried a little, and—"

"Dicky, Dicky, what have you done!"

"I ain't done anything bad, 'coth when I thaid, 'Now I mutht go,' the old lady thaid, 'Thank you for coming.'"

"She did?"

"Perhaps it did FrÄulein good to cry. Poor FrÄulein!"

"I'm going again."

"Did she ask you?"

"Of courth the athked me. And I thaid I'd go if the'd wear a white dreth. I don't like a black dreth."

Silence reigned about the table.

"I wish I knew whether he's done harm or good," sighed Helen.

"Good, I should say, or FrÄulein's mother wouldn't have asked him to come again," said Ethel Blue.

"At this uncertain moment I think we'd better have some refreshments," said Dorothy.

"I'm certainly in need of something sustaining," groaned Roger.

"Then try these sugar cookies of Ethel Brown's."

"Let me write down right now how she makes them," exclaimed Della, borrowing a pencil from Tom. "This is the kind you're going to make for the orphans, isn't it?"

"Yes, they'll keep a long time, especially if they're wrapped in paraffin paper and put into a tin."

"Recite the rule to me."

"I never can remember rules. Dorothy's got it copied into her cook book. Ask her for it."

"Here you are," said Dorothy who had overheard the conversation, "here on page twenty. And I know you're going to ask for the fudge receipt as soon as you taste Ethel Blue's fudge so you might as well copy that at the same time. It's on the next page."

So Della copied diligently while Dorothy brought in the cookies and fudge in question and Helen and Roger discussed Dicky's performance under their breath.

Here is what Della wrote:

"Blanch the almonds by putting them in boiling water, let them stand on the table five minutes, remove a few at a time from the water, rub off the skin and dry them in a towel; then chop them.

"Cream the butter, add the sugar gradually, then the beaten eggs. Sift flour and baking powder together, add to the butter mixture gradually, using a knife to cut it in. Add the nuts. If stiff and dry add a few tablespoons milk to moisten slightly, and mould into a dough with the hands. Roll out portions quite thin, on a floured board, cut out with a cutter, brush with the extra whites, slightly beaten. Mix the cinnamon and the two extra tablespoons sugar together, sprinkle over the cookies. Place on a greased tin, bake about five minutes in a moderately hot oven."

"Mix sugar, milk, butter and chocolate in a saucepan; let it melt slowly; bring to a boil and boil about ten minutes, or until a little forms a soft ball when dropped in a cup of cold water. Add the vanilla, stir a few minutes until slightly thick, turn at once into greased tin plates. Cool and cut into blocks. If it crumbles and is sugary, add half a cup or more hot water, melt, boil again, and try as before. If it should not be hard enough it may be boiled a second time."