"Goodness, I don't think they'd get their money's worth," smiled Betty whimsically. "A dollar's rather a lot of money to pay for a lawn party." "Well, they ought to be willing to give something, just for the sake of patriotism," said Amy quietly--for there was no better patriot in all of Deepdale than Amy. "Yes, but don't you see, we want to give them their money's worth," Mollie argued excitedly. "Because then we'll feel we've really earned whatever we raise." "Well, we will earn it," said Betty earnestly. "We have, as Doctor Morely says, 'a good deal of local talent' that we ought to be able to win over to our side, and if we really go into the thing to make it a success, it will be one. And a successful lawn party is no end of fun." "Goodness, you've got me so excited, I can't wait to begin," cried Mollie, waving her needles about in a way to endanger seriously Betty's eyesight. "I want to start something." "If you don't stop poking me with those needles, you will start something," threatened Betty, moving to the opposite corner of the swing, and as far from danger as possible. "You wouldn't need a bayonet in the trenches, Mollie dear. The whole German army would drop dead, if they saw you moving down upon them with a knitting needle. Stop it, I tell you, or I shall be forced to take them away from you." "Oh, look who's going to take them away," mocked Mollie, continuing her wild dabs and dashes. "There isn't a man, much less a woman, on this earth could take these knitting needles away from me, against my will." "Looks as if I'd have to start a little war of my own," remarked Betty ruefully, carefully putting away her own knitting and preparing for action. "I never yet let a challenge like that pass me by--Oh, Allen, you startled me!" "Sorry," said Allen, making his usual, though undignified, entrance over the railing of the porch, and seating himself with a sigh of content in one of the big chairs. "Say, what was all the row about?" he added, looking with interest at Mollie's still threatening needles, and Betty's general air of preparation for attack. "About a mile away I heard the noise, and thought I'd drop in to see who was getting killed." "A mile away," sniffed Mollie, abandoning the attack, while Betty once more opened her knitting bag. "If girls are good fibbers I wonder what they'd call men." "Li--I mean prevaricators," said Allen cheerfully, and the girls gasped in dismay. "Well, you asked me, didn't you?" he argued, laughing at their shocked faces. "I only tried to be obliging." "Then we like you better when you're not," said Betty primly. "But what was the row?" he persisted. "I'm sure I interrupted something, and if I'm still intruding, I'll go away so you can finish it." "Oh, we were just starting a new kind of war," Mollie explained. "We call it the war of the knitting needles." "That's just what I told the fellows," said Allen, shaking his head sorrowfully, "only they wouldn't believe me."