Now they went back to the kitchen to look again at the gingham.
"I wish there was some way I could earn a little money," said Louisa wistfully.
The knitted face cloth on the back of the kitchen chair was responsible for Rosemary's idea.
"You could knit a bedspread, Louisa!" she said with enthusiasm. "I'll show you how; Miss Clinton told me they sell for lots of money and Warren has a cousin who is a domestic science teacher in a large city; he said she was out here last summer and offered to get orders for Miss Clinton, but she wouldn't agree to sell her spreads. She doesn't need the money, but you do."
Louisa was as excited as Rosemary and before an hour had passed the two girls had, in imagination, knit four elaborate spreads and disposed of them for eighty dollars apiece.
Then Louisa came down to earth and spoke more practically.
"It will take a long time to do a full-sized spread," she said, "but I will have plenty of time to knit this winter. You show me how and Miss Clinton will help me, if I get stuck in the middle of a pattern. You are too lovely, Rosemary, to think of something I can do!"
"I wish I could earn some money for the Gays," sighed Shirley, trotting home beside Rosemary when they had left the cheerful Louisa.
"Well, you're a pretty little girl to earn money, darling," Rosemary told her, "but I'll try to think of something you can do. We'll ask the boys; they know more about money than we do, Warren and Rich especially."
Her intuition proved to be right, for Warren, consulted, suggested that Shirley might pick herbs, wild ones, and get the Gay children to help her.