She pointed out to them the exact spot on which they might place their flowers and agreed to let them arrange the flowers daily for her rooms and tables and to pay them for it.
"I have no flowers for cutting this summer," she said, "and I've been bothered getting some every day. It has taken George's time when he should have been doing other things."
"We'll do it for the rent," offered Ethel Blue.
"No, I've been buying flowers outside and using my own time in arranging them. It's only fair that I should pay you as I would have paid some one long ago if I could have found the right person. I stick to the percentage arrangement for the rent."
On the way home the girls realized with some discomfiture that without consulting Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith they had made an arrangement that would keep them away from home a good deal and put them in a rather exposed position.
"What do you suppose Mother and Aunt Louise will say?" asked Ethel Brown doubtfully.
"I think they'll let us do it. They know we need the money for Rose House just awfully, and they like Miss Foster and her mother—I've heard Aunt Marion say they were so brave about undertaking the Inn."
Her voice quavered off into uncertainty, for she realized as she spoke that what a young woman of Miss Foster's age did in connection with her mother was a different matter from a business venture entered into alone by girls of fourteen.
The fact that the business venture was to be carried on under the eye of Mrs. Foster and her daughter, ladies whom Mrs. Morton knew well and respected and admired, was the turning point in her decision to allow the girls to conduct the affair which had entered their minds so suddenly. She and Mrs. Smith went to the Inn and assisted in the arrangement of the first assortment of flowers and plants, saw to it that there was a space on the back porch where they could be handled without the water or vases being in the way of the workers in the Inn, suggested that an additional sign reading
PLANTS and CUT FLOWERS