"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."