l your initiative."

"You needn't call me by your slang terms. 'Calico,' indeed!" exclaimed
Jessie. "Calico hasn't been worn since long before the war."

"You might at least call us 'ginghams,'" sniffed Amy.

"Wait!" commanded Jessie. "Here comes something else. You take my
ear-tabs, Darry."

"Wait a moment," cried Amy, who still had her phones to her ears. Then
she groaned horribly. "It's a lecture! Oh! Merciful Moses' aunt! Here!
You listen in, Darry!"

"What's it all about?" asked her brother.

"A talk on 'The Home Beautiful,'" giggled Burd, "by One of the
Victims. Come on, Darry. You may have my phones too."

As all three seemed perfectly willing to let him have their listening
paraphernalia, Darry refused. "Your unanimity is poisonous," he said.
"The Greeks bearing gifts."

"Let's get a rain check for this," suggested Burd.

"It will last only twenty minutes, according to the schedule," Jessie
said, with a sigh. It was such a fine plaything that she disliked
giving it up for a minute.

They talked, on all kinds of subjects. The boys had had no time before
to tell the girls about the _Marigold_. Just such another craft it was
evident had never come off the ways!

"And it is big enough to take out a party of a dozen," Darry declared.
"Some time this summer we are going to get up a nice crowd and sail as
far as Bar Harbor--maybe."

"Why not to the Bahamas, Darry?" drawled his sister.

"And there, too," said Darry, stoutly. "Oh, the _Marigold_ is a
seaworthy craft. We are going down to Atlantic Highlands in her next.
Burd's got a crush on a girl who is staying there for the summer," and
he said it wickedly, grinning at his sister.

"Sure," his chum agreed quickly, before Amy's tart tongue could
comment. "She's my maiden aunt, and I've got a lot of things to thank
her for."

"And she can't read writing, so we have to go to see her," chuckled
Darry.

"Send us a snapshot of her, Darry," begged Jessie, not unwilling to
tease her chum, for it was usually Amy who did the teasing.

"I should worry if Burd has a dozen maiden aunts," observed Amy
scornfully, "and they all knitted him red wristlets!"

"How savage," groaned Darry. "Red wristlets, no less!"

The girls had news to relate to the boys as well. The church society
was going to have a summer bazaar on the Fourth of July and a prize
had been offered by the committee in charge for the most novel
suggestion for a money-making "stunt" at the lawn pa