"They have beds like your school garden here in Rosemont, but they have to give the vegetables to the house and I suppose it isn't much fun to raise vegetables and then have them taken away from you."
"They eat them themselves."
"But they don't know Willy's tomato from Johnny's. If Willy and Johnny were allowed to sell their crops they'd be willing to pay out of the profit for the seed they use and they'd take a lot of interest in it. The housekeeper would buy all they'd raise, and they'd feel that their gardens were self-supporting. Now they feel that the seed is given to them out of charity, and that it's a stingy sort of charity after all because they are forced to pay for the seed by giving up their vegetables whether they want to or not."
"Do they enjoy working the gardens?"
"I should say not! James and I said the other day that they were the most forlorn looking gardeners we ever laid our eyes on."
"Don't they grow any flowers at all?"
"Just a few in a border around the edge of their vegetable gardens and some in front of the main building where they'll be seen from the street."
The girls looked at each other and wrinkled their noses.
"Let's send some there every week and have the children understand that young people raised them and thought it was fun to do it."
"And can't you ask to have the flowers put in the dining-room and the room where the children are in the evening and not in the reception room where only guests will see them?"