Ethel Morton at Chautauqua
Date: 2011-05-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Swimming -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Amusements -- Juvenile fiction; Chautauqua County (N.Y.) -- Description and travel -- Juvenile fiction; Niagara Falls (N.Y. and Ont.) -- Description and Travel -- Juvenile fiction; Recreation -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: Ethel Morton at Chautauqua

Author: Mabell S. C. Smith

Release date: May 2, 2011 [eBook #36010]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36010

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan, Emmy and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ETHEL MORTON AT CHAUTAUQUA ***

ETHEL MORTON
AT CHAUTAUQUA

BY
MABELL S. C. SMITH

M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
CHICAGO                 NEW YORK

Made in U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | PAGE
I | On the Road | 9
II | Getting Settled | 21
III | Opening of the Assembly | 32
IV | Personally Conducted | 44
V | Learning to Swim | 54
VI | Ethel Brown a Heroine | 69
VII | Dorothy Cooks | 81
VIII | The Spelling Match | 91
IX | Grandfather Arranges His Time | 101
X | A Chautauqua Sunday | 115
XI | The United Service Club Is Organized | 127
XII | Old First Night | 137
XIII | Flying | 150
XIV | Niagara Falls | 168
XV | The Pageant | 182
XVI | Think Help! | 199
XVII | Recognition Week | 205
XVIII | In Camp | 216
XIX | "My Brave Little Girl!" | 227
XX | Following a Clue | 238
XXI | "Who Are We?" | 248

ETHEL MORTON AT
CHAUTAUQUA

CHAPTER I

ON THE ROAD

IT was a large and heavily laden family party that left the train at Westfield, New York. There was Grandfather Emerson carrying Grandmother Emerson's hat-box and valise; and there was their daughter, Lieutenant Roger Morton's wife, with a tall boy and girl, and a short girl and boy of her own, and a niece, Ethel, all burdened with the bags and bundles necessary for a night's comfort on the cars and a summer's stay at Chautauqua.

"The trunks are checked through, Roger," said Mrs. Morton to her older son, "so you won't have to bother about them here."

"Good enough," replied Roger, who was making his first trip, in entire charge of the party and who was eager that every arrangement should run smoothly. After a consultation with his grandmother who had been to Chautauqua before, he announced,

"The trolley is waiting behind the station. We can get on board at once."

Roger was a merry-faced boy of seventeen and his mother smiled at the look of responsibility that gave him an expression like his father. Mrs. Morton sighed a little, too, for although she was accustomed to the long absences required of a naval officer yet she never went upon one of these summer migrations without missing the assistance of the father of the family.

Lieutenant Morton had been with the fleet at Vera Cruz for several months, but although there had been rumors that our ships would be withdrawn and sent north, which might mean a short leave for the Lieutenant, it had not come to pass, and it looked as if he would have to spend the summer under the Mexican sun. His wife drew a little comfort from the fact that his brother, Ethel's father, Captain Richard Morton, was with the land forces under General Funston, so that the two men could see each other occasionally.

"How far do we have to go on the trolley, Mother?" asked Dicky, the six-year-old, who had already announced his intention of being a motorman when he grew up, and who always chose a front seat where he could watch the operations that made the car go.

"I forget, dear. Ask Grandmother."

"Twelve miles, son, and over a road that is full of history for Helen. Grandfather will tell her all about it. We are turning into it now. Do you see the name on the tree?"

"'Portage Street,'" read Helen.

The party made a brave showing in the car. Helen, who was almost as tall as Roger and who was in the high school, sat on the front seat with Dicky so that he could superintend the motorman's activities. Mrs. Morton and Roger sat behind them, he with his hands full of the long tickets which were to take them all to Chautauqua and home again. Back of them were the two girl cousins of nearly the same age, about thirteen, both named Ethel Morton and strikingly alike in appearance. Their schoolmates had nicknamed them from the color of their eyes, "Ethel Brown" and "Ethel Blue." "Ethel Brown" was Lieutenant Morton's daughter, and sister of Roger and Helen and Dicky. "Ethel Blue" was Captain Morton's daughter and she had lived almost all her life with her cousins, because her mother had died when she was a tiny baby.

Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson, Mrs. Morton's father and mother, were in the last seat of the four, Grandmother eagerly looking out of the window to recall the sights that she had seen on her previous trip to Chautauqua, ten years before.

"Why is it called 'Portage Street'?" asked Helen, when everybody was comfortably settled. Helen was fond of history and had just taken a prize offered to the first year class of the high school for the best account of the Indians in the colonial days of that part of New Jersey where the Mortons lived.

"'Portage' comes from the French word 'carry,' as you high school people know," answered grandfather. "A portage is a place where you have to carry your boat around some obstruction. For instance, suppose you were an Indian traveling in a canoe from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, you would have to carry your canoe around the rapids of the Niagara River because your little craft could not live in that tremendous current, and around Niagara Falls because—"

"Because it couldn't climb a tree," laughed Roger.

"Just about that," accepted grandfather.

"Are there any waterfalls around here?" asked Ethel Brown.

"Not any waterfalls, but the very land we are on was an obstacle to the Indians who wanted to travel from Canada southward."

"Oh, I begin to see," said Helen. "They paddled across Lake Erie—"

"That was Lake Erie we were riding side of this morning," interrupted Ethel Blue.

"Yes, that was Lake Erie and the gray cloud that we could see way over the water was Canada."

"O-oh," cried both Ethels at once; "we've seen Canada!"

"When they reached the American shore," went on grandfather, "they had to carry their canoes over the twelve miles of country that we are passing over now until they reached the head of Chautauqua Lake."

"Where we are going!"

"Just beyond the village of Mayville we shall see the very spot where they put their canoes into the water again and tumbled in themselves to paddle southward."

"Weren't their feet tired?" asked practical Dicky.

"I guess they were, old man," returned Roger, leaning forward to tweak his ear affectionately.

"If they were," went on grandfather, "they had plenty of time to rest them, for they didn't have to leave their boats again unless they wanted to until they got to the Gulf of Mexico."

"The Gulf of Mexico!" rose a chorus that included every member of the party except Dicky whose knowledge of geography was limited to a very small section of Rosemont, the New Jersey town he lived in.

"It's a fact," insisted Mr. Emerson. "The outlet of Lake Chautauqua is the little stream called the Chadakoin River. It flows into Conewango Creek, and that loses itself in the Allegheny River."

"I know what happens then," cried Ethel Brown; "the Allegheny and the Monongahela join to form the Ohio and the Ohio empties into the Mississippi—"

"And the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico!" concluded Ethel Blue triumphantly.

"Good children," commented Roger patronizingly as he turned around to give a condescending pat on the two girls' heads. Finding that their hats prevented this brotherly and cousinly attention he contented himself with tweaking each one's hair before he turned back as if he had accomplished a serious duty.

"Can't you see the picture in your mind!" murmured Helen, looking out of the window. "Just imagine all those tall brown men carrying their canoes on their shoulders and tramping through the forest that must have covered all this region then."

"More interesting men than Indians went over this stretch of country in the olden days," said Mrs. Emerson.

"Who? Who?" cried the Ethels, and Dicky asked, "Was it the President?" Mr. Wilson, the former Governor of his own state, having been the most interesting personage he had ever seen.

"In a minute Grandfather will tell you about the Frenchmen who came here, but I want you to notice the farms we are going through now before we climb the hill and leave them behind."

"I never saw so many grape vines in all my life," said Roger.

"No wonder," commented his grandmother. "This is one of the greatest grape-growing districts of the whole United States."

"You don't say so!" cried Roger. "Why is it? Is the soil especially good for them?"

"Do you remember how flat it was in the village of Westfield? We are only just now beginning to climb a little, and you see we are some distance from the station and the station is some distance from the lake."

"That must mean that there's a strip of flat land lying along the lake," guessed Roger.

"That's it exactly," said his grandmother. "It's a strip about a hundred miles long and from two to four miles wide, and it is called the Grape Belt."

"I saw a man in the train this morning reading a newspaper called that," said grandfather.

"I suppose it is published in one of the towns in the Belt," suggested Mrs. Morton. "I've been told that some of the very best grapes in the country were grown here."

"I've read in our geology that sometimes the soil is peculiarly rich in places where there had been water long ages ago," said Roger. "Perhaps this flat strip used to be a part of Lake Erie."

"I dare say," agreed grandfather. "At any rate the soil seems to be just what the grapes like best, and you can see for yourself as we climb up that these vines look less and less thrifty."

"How queerly they train them," commented Ethel Blue. "I've only seen grapes on arbors before."

"You've only seen them where they were wanted for ornament as well as use," said Mr. Emerson. "Along the Rhine and in the French vineyards the vines are trained on posts."

"Letting them run along those wires that connect the posts must give a better chance to every part of the plant, it seems to me," said Mrs. Emerson.

"Do you notice that the rows are wide enough apart for a wagon to drive between them? When they are picking, that arrangement saves the work of carrying the baskets to the cart. These are the days when you have to make your head save your heels if you want to compete successfully in the business world."

"That's a good stunt in scientific management, isn't it?" commented Roger, who had almost made up his mind to enter the factory of one of his grandfather's friends and who read carefully everything he came across about labor-saving machines and time-saving devices.

"I wonder if Westfield isn't the place where Secretary Bryan gets his grape juice," said Mrs. Morton. "I noticed a big establishment of some kind after we left the station."

"There are two or three grape juice factories there," said her mother, "so I shouldn't be a bit surprised."

"It's good stuff," and Roger's lips moved as if he were remembering the grape juice lemonade that was a pleasant part of the refreshments at the high school graduation reception.

"I've never been here in picking time," went on Mrs. Emerson, "but I've been told that it is something like the hop picking in Kent in England."

"I've read about that," said Helen. "People who aren't well go down there and live out of doors and the fresh air and the fragrance of the hops does them a lot of good."

"It's much the same here. People come from Buffalo and Cleveland to 'work in grapes' as they call it."

"I should think it would be pretty hard work."

"It must be, for the picker has to be on his feet all day, but he is paid according to the amount he picks, so his employer does not lose if he sits down to rest occasionally or stops to look over at the lake."

Mrs. Emerson made a gesture that caused them all to turn their heads in the direction they were leaving.

"What is it, Grandmother? A cloud?" asked Helen.

Grandmother smiled and shook her head.

"Look again," she insisted.

"I see, I see," cried Ethel Brown. "The front part is water, blue water, and that's Canada way, way off beyond."

Sure enough it was, for the car had climbed so high that they could look right over Westfield to the vineyards that lay between the railroad track and the lake, and then on across the water to the dim coast line of another country.

"There's a steamer! Oh, see, Mother," cried Roger, pointing to a feather of black smoke that hung against the sky.

"And I believe that's a sail boat with the sun on it quite near the shore on this side," returned Mrs. Morton.

"We must make an excursion some day this summer to Barcelona," said Mrs. Emerson. "When I was here before we had a delightful picnic there."

"Where is it?" asked her husband.

"That sail is just off it, I should say," she replied. "It is a tiny fishing village, with nets hung up picturesquely to dry and cliffs on one side and a beach on the other."

"I wonder how it got its name," questioned Roger, who always gathered bits of stray information as he went along and never lost anything because of shyness in asking questions.

"They say," replied his grandmother, "that Barcelona was the very spot at which the Indians from Canada used to land when they came over to make a visit on this side of the great lake."

"The place was known long ago, then."

"Apparently. So it wasn't strange that when some Spanish and Portuguese fishermen a long time afterwards wanted to establish a fishing business somewhere along the shore they chose this locality."

"Can we fish when we go there?" asked Ethel Blue.

"If Grandfather and Roger will take you out. Or we can all go in a motor boat."

"Wow, wow, wow!"

This was an expression of joy from Dicky who was happy if he could go anywhere with Roger, happier if his grandfather went, too, and happiest if the excursion was in a boat. His father's love of the water had become his, also.

"Right on the top of this hill," said grandmother, whose memory was serving her well after ten years, "there used to be an inn in the old stagecoach days. A man named Button kept it."

"Button's Inn," murmured Mrs. Morton. "Why does that sound familiar to me?"

"Probably you've read Judge Tourgée's novel of that name. The scene was laid hereabouts, and the drawing is all good because the author lived in Mayville."

"Where's that?" asked Ethel Blue.

"We're coming to it in a few minutes."

"Don't you remember Grandfather said the Indians used to put their canoes in Lake Chautauqua just after they passed Mayville?" said Ethel Brown severely.

Roger roared.

"He did," insisted Ethel, flushing.

"As if Mayville was built then," chortled Roger, and all the rest of them laughed unsympathetically except Mrs. Morton who leaned back and nodded to her daughter.

"Never mind," she said. "We can't be expected to know every date in the history book, can we?"

The town of Mayville, perched on its ridge with distant views visible between the houses, and fields and low hills rolling away from its elevation, seemed bright and attractive to the travellers. The new courthouse stood resplendent in the heart of the village, and just beyond it the road fell to the head of Chautauqua Lake.

"Here's where your Indian friends got in their fine work," called Roger who had been going from one side of the car to the other so that nothing might escape his eyes.

Ethel would have liked to stick out her tongue at him, but she knew that her mother had a strong objection to that expression of disapproval so she contented herself with scowling terribly at her brother.

"What is the story about the Frenchmen, Grandfather?" asked Helen. "You forgot to tell us."

"So I did, but Grandmother says that we are so near to Chautauqua now, so I shall have to postpone it until we have a rainy evening."

"Are we really almost there?" cried the two Ethels, rushing to the other side of the car. "See, how near the lake is. See, there's a high fence with buildings behind it—a funny old fence!"

"That's the famous Chautauqua fence, I suspect," said Mrs. Morton, smiling.

"Why famous? How long is it? What's that little tent on the other side? Oh, what funny, tiny houses!"

Everybody chattered and nobody paid much attention to grandmother although she answered patiently every question.

"It's famous because there isn't another town in the United States that is surrounded by a fence. It's a mile along the road and about a half mile at each end from the road to the lake. That's a fence guard's tent. What's a fence guard? A man to show the nearest way to the gate to people who want to take a short cut through the fence. That's Piano-town. The people who are studying music practice in those little houses where they won't annoy their neighbors in the living cottages."

"Here we are," cried grandfather. "Have you all got your bundles? Don't forget your hat, Dicky."

"'All ashore that's going ashore,'" quoted Roger who had seen many steamers sail, and then he suddenly grew quiet and assisted his mother with his best manner, for on the platform were several young men who looked as if they might be good friends if they were impressed at the start that he was worth while and not just a kid; and there were also some girls of Helen's age and a little older whose appearance he liked extremely.

CHAPTER II

GETTING SETTLED

GETTING the Emerson-Morton party inside the grounds of Chautauqua Institution was no mean undertaking. Roger was still acting as courier and he asked his mother to wait until the other passengers from the car had gone through the turnstile so that the gateman might give them his undivided attention. They all had to have season tickets and when these had been made out then one after another the family pushed the stile and the gateman punched number one from the numerals on their tickets as they passed.

"If only you were eighty or over you would have your ticket given you by the Institution, Father," said Mrs. Morton.

"Thank you, I'm a long way outside of that class," retorted Mr. Emerson with some tartness.

"What's the idea of the punching?" asked Helen, of her grandmother.

"You have to show your ticket every time you go outside of the fence or out on the lake," explained Mrs. Emerson. "The odd numbers are punched when you come in—as we do now—and the even numbers when you go out. It circumvents several little tricks that people more smart than honest have tried to play on the administration at one time or another."

"Why do we have to pay, anyway?" asked Roger. "I never went to a summer resort before where you had to pay to go in."

"That's because you never went to one that gave you amusement of all sorts. Here you can go to lectures and concerts all day long and you don't have to pay a cent for them. This entrance fee covers everything of that sort. Where else on the planet can you go to something like twenty or more events in the course of the day for the sum of twelve and a half cents which is about what the grown-up season ticket holder pays for his fun."

"Nowhere, I'll bet," responded Roger promptly. "Are there really as many as that?"

"There are a great many more if you count in all the things that are going on at the various clubs and all the classes in the Summer Schools."

"Don't you have to pay for those?"

"There's a small fee for all instruction because classes require teachers, and teachers must be paid; and the clubs call for a small fee because they have expenses which they must meet. But all the public entertainments are free."

"This is just the place I've been looking for ever since Father gave me an allowance," grinned Roger, whose struggles with his account book were a family joke.

"Mother," drawled Dicky in a voice that seemed on the verge of tears, "why don't we ride? I'm so tired I can hardly walk."

"Poor lamb, there aren't any trolleys here or any station carriages," explained Mrs. Morton. "Roger, can't you get another porter to take your bags while you carry Dicky?"

Thus reinforced the New Jersey army marched down the hill from the Road Gate to the square.

Mrs. Morton had taken a cottage, and the porters said that they knew exactly where it was situated. Roger, bearing Dicky perched upon his shoulder, walked between them soaking up information all the way. He noticed that both young men wore letters on their sweaters, and he discovered after a brief examination that they were both college men who were athletes at their respective institutions.

"There are lots of fellows here doing this," one of them said.

"Working, you mean?"

"I sure do. Jo and I think you really have more fun if you're working than if you don't. There are college boys rustling baggage at the trolley station where you came in, and at the steamer landing, and lots of the boarding houses have them doing all sorts of things. Jo and I wait on table for our meals at the Bismarck cottage."

"Do you get your room, too?"

"We get our rooms by being janitors at two of the halls where they hold classes. We get up early and sweep them out every day and we set the chairs in order after every class. Then we do this porter act at certain hours."

"So your summer really isn't costing you anything."

"I shall come out a little bit ahead, railroad ticket and all. Jo lives farther away and he won't quite cover his expenses unless something new and lucrative turns up—like tutoring."

"Or running a power boat, Henry," smiled silent Jo.

"Did you get that job at the Springers?" asked Henry eagerly.

"I did, and it's more profitable than toting bags."

"Good for you," exclaimed the genial Henry, and Roger added his congratulations, for the young men were so frank about their business undertakings that he was deeply interested.

The Ethels, walking at the end of the procession, held each other's hands tightly so that they might look about without straying off the sidewalk.

"It's queer for a country place, isn't it?" commented Ethel Brown. "I haven't seen a cow or a chicken since we came in the gate."

"The houses are so close together there isn't any room for them," suggested Ethel Blue. "I haven't seen a cat either."

"I know why. Mother told me she read in a booklet they sent her that there was a Bird Club and you know bird people are always down on cats. They must have sent them all out of town."

"Oh, here's quite a large square. See, there are stores in that big brick building with the columns and the place opposite says Post Office—"

"And there's a soda fountain under that pergola."

"Dicky's hollering for soda right now."

"Mother won't let him have any so early in the morning but we'll remember where the place is."

Yet the procession seemed to be slowing up at the head and, Oh, joy, there was Grandfather making a distribution of ice-cream cones to grown-ups and children alike. Even the porters ate theirs with evident pleasure, consuming the very last scrap of the cone itself.

Then they led the way down a very steep hill and along a pleasant path to a cottage that faced the blue water of the lake.

"Here you are," they said to Mrs. Morton.

"And this must be our landlord's son waiting to open the house for us," said Mrs. Morton as a boy of Roger's age came forward to meet them.

Her guess was right and James Hancock instantly proved himself an agreeable and useful friend. The Hancocks lived in New Jersey in a town not far from the Mortons, but they never had happened to meet at home.

"How many people are there here now?" asked Roger as James helped him carry the bags into the house.

"Oh, I don't know just how many to-day, but there are usually about twelve or fifteen thousand at a time when the season gets started."

"There must be awful crowds."

"The people do bunch up at lectures and concerts but if you don't like crowds you don't have to go, you know."

"What do the fellows our age do?"

"Swim and row and sail. Do you like the water?"

"My father is in the Navy," replied Roger as if that was a sufficient answer.

"Then you'll go in for all the water sports. The older chaps in the Athletic Club let us use their club house sometimes, and they say that this summer there's going to be a club especially for boys of our age—too old for the Boys' Club and too young for the Athletic Club."

"Good enough, I'll join," declared Roger, who was the most sociable lad on earth.

"Can I help your mother any more? So long, then. I live two houses off—in that red one over there just beyond the boarding house—so I'll see you a lot," and James leaped over the rail of the porch and strolled off toward the Pier.

"He seems like a nice boy," said Mrs. Morton; "I'm glad he lives so near."

"I wonder if he has any sisters," queried Helen. "Did you ask him, Roger?"

Roger had not and he admitted to himself that it was a mistake he would remedy the next time he saw James. Just as he was thinking about it the baggage wagon drove up with the trunks. On top was Jo, the porter.

"Hullo," he called.

"Hullo," returned Roger. "I didn't know you rustled trunks as well as bags."

"I don't. I rode down to ask you something," and he proceeded to swing down a trunk to the other two young men as if to hurry up matters so that he could attend to his errand.

"Now, what is it?" asked Roger when all the pieces of luggage had been placed about the house to his mother's satisfaction, and the dray had gone.

"I don't know whether you'll care for it or not, but you were so interested I thought I'd give you first chance if you did want it," Jo tried to explain.

"Want what?"

"My job. You see how I've got this work for the Springers running their motor boat I've got to be somewhere within call of their house about all the time, so they've given me a room there, and I shall have to give up janitoring and bag-toting and waiting on table and everything. I thought if you'd like to try one or all of my jobs I'd speak about you and perhaps you could get in. As late as this you generally can't find any work, there are so many applications. What do you say?"

Roger thought a moment.

"I'd like like thunder to do something," he said, and added, flushing: "I suppose you'll think it queer but I've never earned anything in my life and I'm just crazy to."

"There are awfully good fellows doing it here. You've seen me and Henry," Jo went on humorously, "and a son of one of the professors is a janitor and the nephew of another one is waiting on table at the same cottage I am, and—"

"Oh, I wouldn't be ashamed to do anything honest," Roger said quickly. "I was thinking about Mother. You see with Father in Mexico I sort of have to be the man of the family. I shouldn't want to undertake things that would keep me from being useful to her."

"And you've got a good house here so you don't need a room, so I guess I'll just run along," answered Jo.

"Wait a minute," cried Roger. "Let me speak to Mother."

Just at that moment Mrs. Morton came out on the porch, a little frown of anxiety on her face.

"Here you are, Roger—and you, too,—Mr.—"

"Sampson," filled in Jo.

"Mr. Sampson. I came out to consult with you, Roger. It seems to me that the room in the top story that I counted on for you is going to be so warm that you can't possibly sleep there. I wish you'd run up and look at it."

Roger's face burst into a happy smile.

"Good enough, Mother, I hope it is a roaster," he cried.

Mrs. Morton looked perplexed.

"Jo came to tell me that he thinks he can get me his janitor's job that will earn me my room," Roger explained. "If you don't mind I'd like mighty well to do it, and it will settle this trouble here."

"Would you really like it?"

"You bet."

"You'd have to stick to it; and it might mean that you'd have to give up some pleasures that you'd have otherwise."

"I know. I'm willing, Mother," insisted Roger eagerly.

"I don't see, then, why you shouldn't take it," said Mrs. Morton slowly, "and we shall be much obliged to you if you can arrange it for Roger," she continued, smiling at Sampson.

"How about the table-waiting and the bag-toting?" he inquired.

"I think one job will be about all he'd better undertake for his first experience," decided Mrs. Morton. "I should be sorry not to have him with the family at meals, and I want him to have time for some sports."

"All right, then, I'll try to fix it up," said Jo, and he swung off up the path, pulling off his cap to Mrs. Morton as she nodded "Good-bye" to him.

"Hi," exclaimed Roger joyfully as Jo disappeared; "isn't he a good chap! Now then, Mater, if your oldest son were a little younger or your younger son were a little older one of them might be a caddy on the golf links and earn his ice-cream cones that way," and he danced a few joyous steps for his mother's admiration.

"If you undertake a thing like this you'll have to stick to it," Mrs. Morton warned again, for Roger's chief fault was that he tired quickly of one thing after another.

"A postage stamp'll be nothing to me, and you're a duck to let me do it. Here, kids," he cried as the two Ethels came out of the house, "gaze on me! I'm a horny-handed son of toil. I belong to the laboring classes. I earn my living—or rather my rooming—by the perspiration of my eyebrow," and he explained the situation to the admiring girls and to Helen, who joined them.

"I wish there was something I could do," sighed Helen enviously. "I suppose I could wait on table somewhere."

"I'm afraid it will have to be in this cottage right here," responded her mother. "Even when Mary comes to-morrow we shall be short handed so everybody will have to help."

Mary had been Roger's nurse and had stayed on in the family until now, when Dicky was too old to need a nurse, she had become a working housekeeper. She had remained behind to put the Rosemont house in order after the family left, and she was expected to arrive the next day by the same train that had brought the family.

"I will, Mother," said Helen. "It's only that doing something to earn your living seems to be in the air here, and I must have caught a germ on the way down from the trolley gate."

"You'll be doing something to earn your living by helping at home, and all you would get by waiting on table at a boarding cottage would be your meals and not money."

"Still, it would relieve Father's pocketbook if there were one mouth less to feed."

"True, dear, but Father is quite willing to pay that much for his daughter's service to her family, if you want to look at it in that light."

"It sounds sort of horrid and mercenary, but when I'm older then I'll really do some sort of work and repay Father," and Mrs. Morton nodded her appreciation of Helen's understanding that a Lieutenant's pay is pretty small to bring up four children on.

"This is an age of mutual help and service," she said. "We must be a co-operative family and help each other in every way we can. What you will do for me this summer will be just as much help to me as what Roger will do by providing himself with a room."

"Somehow doing things at home never seems to count," complained Helen.

"But it does count. Service is like charity; they both begin at home."

"I know just how you feel, though, Sis," confided Roger when his mother had gone into the house. "I don't think I ever felt so good in all my life as I do this minute just because I'm going to earn my own room."

CHAPTER III

OPENING OF THE ASSEMBLY

"NOW then, people dear," said grandmother, joining the group on the porch, "even if we don't have the house in the exact order that we want it in to-day we must take time to go to the formal opening of the Assembly."

"What happens?" asked Helen.

"If there's a lecture," said Roger apprehensively, "me for the woods."

"If you stand on the edge of the Amphitheatre you can slip away after the introduction but it is worth your while to be present when the gavel falls because you want to follow every important event as it happens right through the season."

So the whole family fell into line when the bell in the tower on the lake shore rang to indicate that in five minutes a meeting would begin.

"That tower has been built since I was here," said Mrs. Emerson.

"It's called the Miller Memorial Tower," said Ethel Blue gravely.

"How in the world did you find that out so quickly?"

"We saw it from the porch and ran down there to look at it," she replied.

When either of the Ethels said "we" the other Ethel was the partner in the plural form.

"Who told you it was called the Miller Tower?"

"A nice girl about our age who was sitting on the bench near it. She heard us wondering and she came over and said it was named in memory of Mr. Miller. He was one of the founders of Chautauqua Institution."

"He's dead now," explained Ethel Brown, "but Bishop Vincent is alive and he'll be here on the grounds in a few days. He's the other founder. He's the one that had the Idea."

"What idea?" asked Helen.

"Dorothy said—"

"Who is Dorothy?"

"Dorothy is the girl who was talking to us. Dorothy said it was a great Idea that Bishop Vincent had to make people come out into the woods to study and to hear lectures and music."

"Bishop Vincent is a remarkable man," said Grandmother, who had been listening with interest to the girls' explanations. "You are lucky young people to be able to see him and perhaps to speak to him."

From the lake the family procession walked up another steep hill to the Amphitheatre, a huge structure with a sloping floor, covered with benches, and having a roof but no sides. At one end was a platform and behind it rose the golden pipes of a large organ. The audience was gathering rapidly. Only the pit was full, for on this opening day of the Assembly people had not yet come in great numbers, while many, like the Emersons and Mortons, had but just arrived and were not settled.

As the bell finished ringing the Director of the Institution walked upon the stage and after rapping three times with his gavel declared the Assembly open.

"Chautauqua Institution has three activities;" he said, "its Assembly, its Summer Schools and its all-the-year-round Home Reading Course. Its work never begins and never ends. Chautauqua has given a new word to the language; has been the pioneer in summer assemblies and summer schools, and has become the recognized leader of the world in home education. Since 1874 the Chautauqua movement has spread until there are 3,000 summer gatherings in this country alone which have taken the name.

"During these years this platform here at Chautauqua has been one of the greatest forums of our modern life. Here every good movement has received a hearty welcome. During the first year, from this place went out the call for the organization of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Here was held the first successful summer school in America.

"Here new organizations have found their first opportunity. Here great political and social and economic problems have been discussed by those who by knowledge and experience are able to speak with authority. Chautauqua, the place, has been beautified and equipped with every convenience for community life. It has been a paradise for little children, has offered every opportunity for wholesome recreation, has given the best of music, literature, poetry and art freely to those who enjoy them.

"Every one who enjoys any of the privileges of this great Institution has a corresponding measure of obligation. The measure of what you take away from Chautauqua is wholly determined by what you bring to it. No system of lectures or of individual study can compare with this great co-operative opportunity which Chautauqua gives for living together, for working out one's own intellectual and religious salvation in terms of intercourse with others. Here are gathered people of vision, people who are striving for efficiency of personality, people who realize that we live in a time of new opportunities and new duties."

A burst of applause followed these inspiring words. Then the young people all left quietly, except Roger, who stayed with the elders after all, when he found that the speaker was to be the President of Berea College, Kentucky. Roger had read of President Wilson's calling these Southern highlanders "a part of the original stuff of which America was made," and he wanted to hear about their sturdy life from a man who knew them well.

The girls went exploring toward the southern end of the grounds.

"I believe this must be the Girls' Club," said Ethel Brown. "Dorothy told us where it was. She said she was going to join it."

"They learn to make baskets and to cook and to swim and to do folk dancing and all sorts of things," explained Ethel Blue. "Don't you think Aunt Marion will let us belong, Helen?"

"I'm sure she will," agreed Helen, as they went up the steps of the hospitable looking building and peered through the windows.

"When will it open?"

"Next week. I'm perfectly crazy about it; I can hardly wait," and one Ethel seized the other Ethel's hand and skipped down the steps with her.

"This next place must be the Boys' Club building if there is such a thing," said Helen.

"There is," cried Ethel Brown. "Dorothy told us so."

"Dorothy seems to know all about everything."

"She does. She was here last summer, and she says she has been all over the United States and she never had such a good time anywhere as she had here."

"We'll certainly have to belong, then. Are there any girls as old as I am?"

"Yes, and I asked if Dicky was too little to belong to the Boys' Club and Dorothy said that he wasn't if he wasn't babyish."

"Dicky isn't babyish."

"I told her that he could dress himself and that Mary didn't pay much attention to him any more and that he tried to do all the things that he saw Roger do and that he went on really long walks with us."

"So she thought they'd take him."

"I told her Roger called him a 'good little sport' and she said she guessed he was all right."

"Over there must be the bathing beach," said Ethel Blue as they turned away from the lake and started up another hilly street lined with houses.

"I hope there's a swimming teacher for you girls," said Helen. "Father taught me when I was smaller than you are, but you've never had a chance to learn yet."

"I'm going to learn this summer if I don't do another thing," exclaimed Ethel Brown enthusiastically.

"So am I," said Ethel Blue.

At the top of the hill the girls came out on an open place with a rustic fountain in the centre. At the left was a beautiful building shaped like a Greek temple. It was creamy in color and gleamed softly against a background of trees.

"What is that do you suppose?" wondered Ethel Blue.

"A-U-L-A C-H-R-I-S-T-I," spelled Ethel Brown as they stood gazing at the inscription over the door. "What does that mean?"

"Aula, aula," repeated Helen slowly. "Oh, I know; it's Latin for hall. That must mean Hall of Christ. It looks quite new."

"Probably it's another thing that's been built since Grandmother was here."

"We must ask her about it. Perhaps they have church there."

"It's a lot prettier than this building," and Ethel Blue nodded her head toward a large wooden house painted cream color. "C.L.S.C. Alumni Hall," she read. "What does that mean?"

"Children, Ladies, Sons and Chickens," guessed Ethel Brown.

"Come Let's See Chautauqua," contributed Ethel Blue.

"Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle," supplied a pleasant voice and the girls turned to meet the smile of a tall, slender woman who was on her way into the building. "That's the name of the association that does the Home Reading Course work."

"Oh, I know," cried Helen; "Grandmother joined when she was here ten years ago and Mother and Grandfather belong, too."

"Did your grandmother graduate?" asked the lady, who seemed much interested.

"She had her diploma sent to her. She hasn't been here since that first time."

"You must tell her that she must watch the Daily for notices of meetings of her class and that there are many festivities during Recognition Week that she can take part in."

"Grandfather and Mother are in this year's class," said Helen shyly.

It proved that the lady knew their names and where they lived.

"You see I am the Executive Secretary of the C.L.S.C.," she explained in answer to the girls' look of surprise, "so I correspond with many people whom I never have a chance to meet unless they come here in the summer."

"Why, you must be Miss Kimball," cried Helen. "I've heard Mother speak of having letters from you."

"Yes, I'm Miss Kimball, and I hope you're going to be a Reader when your school work gives you time for it."

"It will be Roger's turn to join next," said Ethel Brown timidly; "he's older than Helen. And Ethel Blue and I'll belong later. There ought to be some member of the family joining every little while so that we can all go to special things every summer we come up here."

Miss Kimball laughed.

"I see you're already converted to Chautauqua though this is only your first day," she said. "Would you like to go into the C.L.S.C. building? I have an errand here and then I'll walk over to the Hall of Philosophy with you."

The interior of the C.L.S.C. building was not more beautiful than the exterior, but it was full of interest as Miss Kimball explained it to her new companions. The C.L.S.C. classes, it seemed, occupied the rooms for their meetings. So many classes had graduated since the reading work began in 1878 that they could no longer have separate rooms. Sometimes three or four occupied the same room.

"There are plans on foot now," said Miss Kimball, "to have each room's decoration designed by an artist and when that is done it will be as perfect to look at as it is now to feel, for the C.L.S.C. spirit is always harmonious if the color schemes aren't.

"Here is your mother's and grandfather's classroom, down stairs near the door. You've seen that every room has its treasures, its mementoes that mean a great deal to the class members. The 1914 Class hasn't had time to pick up mementoes yet but they have a really valuable ornament in these pictures. They are from a first edition of 'Nicholas Nickleby' which one of the members found in her attic and sacrificed to the good cause."

The girls examined carefully the funny drawings of men with impossible legs and women with extraordinary skirts. Then they glanced at the bust above them.

"It's Dickens," said Helen.

"1914 is the 'Dickens Class.' They began to read in the English Year—the year when all the topics were about England—so they took the name of an English author. Now if you've seen enough we can go over to the Hall of Philosophy for a minute before I must go back to my office."

The three girls were almost overcome by the wonder of being at Chautauqua only one day and meeting and talking with this officer whose name had been familiar to Helen, at least, for a long time. Her geniality prevented them from being speechless, however, and they walked across the open place with happy thoughts of all they would have to tell the family when they got home.

The rustic fountain was a gift from a C. L. S. C. class, they learned as they passed it, and here, ahead of them was the Hall of Philosophy.

"It's almost exactly like the picture in Helen's 'History of Greece,'" cried Ethel Blue, "the temple at Athens, you know."

"The Parthenon," murmured Helen.

"It does make you think of the Parthenon," said Miss Kimball. "In a small way this is beautiful, too, in its setting of green trees, though that was larger of course and its stone pillars gleamed against the vivid blue sky."

"You must have seen it," guessed Helen, struck by the enjoyment of Miss Kimball's tone.

"Ah, Athens is one of the joyous memories of my life!" she exclaimed.

Like the Amphitheatre the building had no sides. The dark beams of the roof were supported by pillars and the breeze blew softly through. Miss Kimball and the girls sat down to rest a while. A sort of wide pulpit faced them, and the chairs were arranged before it in a semi-circle.

"See those mosaic squares laid in the floor," cried Ethel Brown. "They are all different. Look, each one has a name on it and a date and a flower or something."

"They have been put in by the C.L.S.C. classes," explained Miss Kimball, and Helen added, "I remember reading in Mother's Chautauqua magazine that her class had their tablet put down last summer but it was not to be dedicated until this summer when a lot of people would be here to graduate. Let's see if we can find one marked Dickens."

"They're all put in in order," cried Ethel Brown. "The numbers run right along except where there's a square skipped once in a while. Yes, yes, here's Mother's; here's the Dickens square," and the little group gathered around the Dickens tablet, feeling an ownership that they had not felt before. They were yet to learn that everybody has a sense of ownership at Chautauqua because all the public buildings are built for everybody and are used by everybody all the time.

"Here are 'Dickens' and '1914' on Aunty's square," said Ethel Blue, "and a rose."

"The English rose is the class flower," said Miss Kimball.

"Is the course very hard?" asked Ethel Blue shyly.

"We say it's 'Easy for Anybody; Worth While for Everybody,'" laughed Miss Kimball. "We don't mean to make it hard; just sensible and—well, 'worth while' describes it as well as anything."

"We'll be awfully proud of Helen when she belongs," said loyal Ethel Blue, slipping her arm around her tall cousin's waist.

"Be sure to tell your grandmother that she may pass through the Golden Gate on Recognition Day behind the graduating class," said Miss Kimball, smiling and walking quickly away to her work.

The girls called after her a "Good-bye" and thanks for her guidance.

Leaving the Hall they turned in the direction of home, passing through a street lined with cottages, one of which, they noticed, was marked "Unitarian Headquarters," another "Baptist House," and another "Disciples' House," while up a side street they saw a Lutheran sign.

"They seem to have houses instead of churches here," said Ethel Blue.

"I noticed a 'Methodist House' back of the Amphitheatre," said Helen.

"And a 'Congregational House' on one side and a 'Presbyterian House' on the other," cried Ethel Blue. "You can go to any kind you want to just the same as if you were at home. Look, the people are coming out of the Amphitheatre now," she added.

"There's Mother—there are Grandmother and Grandfather. Hullo, hullo," called Ethel Brown, and the two children tore along the matting laid down beside the auditorium to keep the noise of passing feet from disturbing the audiences.

"What do you think we did? Whom do you think we saw?" they cried breathlessly, and recited all their adventures as fast as they could talk.

"You're very lucky children," said Grandfather, "and we must celebrate the event," so they went across the square and investigated the refreshment booth in the pergola. Then the elders strolled slowly back over the road the young people had just come, for there was to be a reading at five o'clock in the Hall of Philosophy and they thought they would see the Hall of Christ and the C.L.S.C. building before it began.

Helen and the Ethels went with them part of the way and then turned down a side street to catch a glimpse of the lake again.

"Perhaps we'll come across Roger somewhere," said Helen.

But it was not Roger but James Hancock whom they met as they walked along the lake front.

CHAPTER IV

PERSONALLY CONDUCTED

JAMES pulled off his cap as the girls bowed to him.

"Did you know this was the Bishop's house you're in front of?" he whispered, glancing up at the veranda to make sure that he was not overheard.

"Which is the house, the wooden part or the tent?" asked Ethel Brown.

"When he first came here forty years ago there were only one or two houses and for a summer or two everybody lived in tents."

"What fun!" cried Ethel Blue.

"The seasons weren't very long then, only two weeks, so nobody minded if things weren't very comfortable. The Bishop and Mr. Miller had these combination arrangements built because they had lots of guests and needed larger places."

"I wonder if there are any people here now who came that first summer?"

"Yes, indeed, my father was here then. He was a little kid in skirts."

"Naturally he doesn't remember anything about it."

"No, but my grandmother brought him and she often tells me about it. You just wait till Old First Night. There are often twenty people who stand up when they ask how many present were here at the first session. The Chancellor, that's Bishop Vincent, was here, of course, and his son, he's the president now, and the Executive Secretary of the C.L.S.C.—"

"That's Miss Kimball. We know her. We just met her," and they told their new friend all about it.

"You're sure in luck," was his comment.

"Old First Night is the anniversary of the very first meeting, I suppose."

"Just you wait and see," hinted James promisingly. "Grandmother thinks it's the most interesting thing that happens all summer."

"How long have we got to wait?" asked Ethel Blue who liked to have things happen right off.

"Till the first Tuesday in August."

"That won't be for a long time. Isn't anything interesting going to happen before then?"

"Oodles of things. Next week all the clubs begin and a little later there'll be a pageant, and the Spelling Match is great."

"Why?" questioned Ethel Blue in a doubtful tone that made the others smile.

"You can see what Ethel Blue thinks about spelling," laughed Helen. "Why is it such good fun?"

"Oh, it's fun to see the grown-up people trying it just as if they were kids. They don't let anybody under fifteen go in. Mr. Vincent, the president, says young people are 'such uncomfortably good spellers.'"

"Ethel Blue wouldn't agree with him."

"It's true, though, because when you're in school you're getting practice every day, and the grown-up people don't get so much practice. They look up words in the dictionary instead of remembering the right way to spell them."

"It must be funny to see grown-up people fail, but I suppose they give them the hardest words there are."

"They take the words out of the Home Reading Course books for the next year. Miss Kimball told you about the Home Reading Course, didn't she?"

"Oh, we knew before," the girls all cried in chorus. "Our grandmother is a graduate."

"And Aunt Marion is in this year's class."

"And so is Grandfather."

"My father is, too," said James. "He's a doctor, you know, and he says that if he didn't read that he wouldn't know anything but bones and fevers."

"What does he mean?" asked Ethel Brown, who liked to have everything perfectly clear.

"He means he wouldn't read anything but his medical journals and he'd 'go stale.'"

"Is your father coming on Recognition Day?"

"He's coming if nobody has a smashed head or smallpox just at the wrong time. He says he wouldn't miss it for anything. The Recognition Day procession marches along this path we're on."

"When will Recognition Day be?" asked Ethel Brown.

"The middle of August."

Ethel Blue groaned.

"Everything is so far off!" she exclaimed.

"Here's the hotel—the Hotel Athenæum," and James nodded toward a large building with a tower and with a veranda on which guests were sitting looking out upon the lake.

"The band concerts are right here all summer. The band plays up on the hotel piazza and the people walk around below here and sit on the grass. It looks pretty when the girls have on pretty dresses."

"Are there lots of girls here?" asked Helen.

"About five million," returned James cheerfully. "I've got a sister who's going over to call on you as soon as she sees you on your porch. That's the only way people can make calls here. Everybody's out all the time going to lectures and classes so you have to catch them when you see them."

"You're neighbors so we'll see her right off," said Helen hopefully. "What's this building?"

"This is the Arcade. There are some shops in it and doctors and things. The women all learn to embroider here—see, round this corner on the piazza is where the teacher stays. Mother goes there all the time, and my married sister. You know they joke at Chautauqua women for embroidering right through lectures and concerts. Somebody wrote some rhymes about it once."

"Let's have them."

"I never fail to oblige when I'm asked for them. Listen. It's dedicated 'To the Wool-Gatherers.'

"I don't go out on Sundays
At Chautauqua, for you see
To just set still and listen,
Are the hardest things that be.

"At 'Devotional' 'tis different,
There my crochet-work I take,
The one-two-three, skip-two, do-one,
Just keeps me wide awake.

"I haint heard much the preacher said
To-day,—I dropped a stitch—
But 'twas splendid, and I think
'Twas on the duties of the rich.

"With lectures, sermons, concerts,
And all such things as that,
'Tis nice to think they culture me
While I set there and tat.

"All hail to old Chautauqua,
I'll carry off this year,
Some thirty yards of edging,
To prove that I was here."

"Right here on this open space is where they used to have the lectures forty years ago," James went on, somewhat abashed by the applause he received. "It's called Miller Park now."

"What became of the hall?"

"There never was any hall. There was a raised platform and the people sat in front of it and when it rained they had to put up their umbrellas."

"The trees have grown since, I suppose."

"There were trees there then, but they thinned them out to make room. The first houses were built around the edge of the open place. Those over there are some of the original articles."

The girls saw a row of small cottages rising side by side, their porches almost touching.

"They aren't bad looking," said James patronizingly, "but the Institution doesn't allow houses to be built so close together now."

"Why not?"

"They say that there's no reason why a cottage shouldn't be as good looking on a small scale as a big house and no house can look its best if it's jammed up into another one's lap, so now they require people to leave some land around them."

They had crossed Miller Park and passed between two houses to a walk that ran along the lakeside.

"Here's our house, right here," said James, "and there's Margaret on the porch now."

"And Dorothy," cried the Ethels together.

Margaret Hancock ran down the steps at her brother's call and asked her new friends to stay a while.

"If you don't mind making the first call," she laughed.

She was a clear-eyed girl, not as pretty as Helen, but with a frank expression that was pleasant to see. "Nobody stands on ceremony at Chautauqua," she went on, "and if you want to see anybody you've got to seize her right where you find her."

They all laughed, for she had used almost the same words as her brother.

"You see how the Hancock family holds together," said James.

"This is Dorothy Smith."

Margaret introduced the young girl on the porch to Helen, for she was already speaking to the Ethels.

"Helen, Helen," they cried, "this is our friend Dorothy we told you about."

Helen looked with interest at the girl who had seemed to know all about Chautauqua as her new acquaintances reported her conversation. She saw a girl about the age of the Ethels but not so tall and lacking in their appearance of vigor. Otherwise she was not unlike them, for she had curly brown hair and her nose was just the least bit "puggy," to use Roger's descriptive word. Her eyes, however, were unlike either Ethels', for they were gray. She had easy manners with a pretty touch of shyness that seemed to Helen quite remarkable since she had travelled all over the United States.

"I wouldn't miss the Girls' Club for anything," she was saying. "I learned how to make lots of things there last summer, and at Christmas time I sold enough to pay my club fee this year, and more too."

Helen looked at her with renewed interest. Here was a girl two years younger than she and she was earning money to pay for her pleasures this summer. It gave her something to think about.

"You and I must join the Young Women's Vacation Club," said Margaret to Helen. "They say they are going to have picnics and plays and great fun. It's a new club."

"I certainly shall. What kinds of things did you learn to make?" Helen asked Dorothy.

"I put almost all my time on baskets. Mother said she thought it was better to learn how to do one thing very well than to do a lot of things just middling well; so I learned how to make ten different kinds of baskets and trays."

"All different shapes?"

"Different materials, too; wicker and splints and rushes and some pretty grasses that I found across the lake one afternoon when Mother and I went over to Maple Springs on the steamer."

"I know they were beauties," said Helen heartily.

"They were," confirmed Margaret. "I saw some of them. I thought the prettiest of all was that small tray made of pine needles."

"Pine needles!" exclaimed James. "How could you work with them? I should think they'd come bristling out all the time."

"They were needles from the long-leaved pine that grows in the South. I got them in North Carolina when Mother and I were there the winter before."

"And you sold a lot of them?" ventured Helen, who was not quite sure that it was polite to ask such a question but who was eager to know just how Dorothy had managed.

"It was easy," explained Dorothy simply. "Mother and I were in a town in Illinois last winter. Mother was teaching embroidery in an art store, so she got acquainted with the ladies who were getting up a bazar at Christmas time and they let me sell my things there on commission."

"On commission? What's that?" asked Ethel Blue to Helen's relief, for she did not like to acknowledge that she did not know.

"On commission? Why, I made a table full of baskets and when they sold them they kept one-tenth of the price for their commission. It was like paying rent for the table you see and a salary to a clerk to sell it. That's the way Mother explained it to me," ended Dorothy rather shyly, for James was staring at her with astonishment that a girl and not a very old girl either should know as much as that about business.

"Hullo, here comes Roger," he exclaimed. "Let's hear what he's been up to," and he left the porch by his usual method—over the rail—and joined his new friend before he reached the house. As they strolled off the girls heard scraps of conversation about "baseball," "first and second crew" and "sailing match."

"Are you all going to the Amphitheatre this evening?" asked Margaret as the Mortons prepared to leave.

"I think Mother will let us go to-night because it's our first night and we're crazy to see everything," replied Ethel Brown, "but she says we've got to go to bed early here just as we do at home or else we'll get thin instead of fat this summer."

"Mother lets me go whenever there are pictures," said Margaret. "Often there are splendid travel lectures that are illustrated. I love those. And once in a while I go to a concert in the evening, but usually I go to the afternoon concerts instead."

"Do you suppose we'll ever be big enough to go to bed just as late as we want to?" Ethel Blue asked Helen as they went up the steps of their own house.

"Even Roger doesn't do that. I remember Father's telling me once that he used to growl about going to bed early when he was a boy and that when the time finally came when he could go to bed as late as he liked he didn't care anything about it and used to go early half the time."

"I don't believe I shall be that way," sighed Ethel. "How queer grown people are!"

But since they had these curious and insistent ideas about the need of repose she eagerly took advantage of any break in the routine such as was offered by the chance to go to the Amphitheatre that evening. It was a wonderful sight, the immense open building, the glittering organ, the brilliant electric lights, and, facing the thousands of people that made up the audience, a slender woman with a marvellously rich voice, who sang negro melodies and told negro stories that brought laughter and tears.

After the recital was over the whole audience went to the lakeside, and there watched the lighting of the signal fires that for years have flashed to the country around the news that another Assembly has opened. Higher and higher the flames roared at different points along the shore. Point Chautauqua, across the water, saw the beacon and flashed on the news down the lake until fires far beyond the sight of the people on the Assembly grounds told their story to the dwellers near-by and the glare of the sky passed it farther afield.

"Isn't it just too wonderful," whispered Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown, and Ethel Brown answered, "I can't believe we're really here."

CHAPTER V

LEARNING TO SWIM

BY the middle of the next week the Ethels were established in the Girls' Club and the Club was well under way. Dorothy went with them on the opening morning and introduced them to the director of the Club so that they felt no embarrassment in beginning their new activities. Miss Roberts was a fresh-faced, wholesome young woman whose cordial manner made the girls think of their teacher at home. They liked her at once, and so they were eager to follow any suggestions that she made.

The very first was that which Dorothy's mother had urged upon her the summer before, the suggestion which had made so good a basket-maker of her that she had been able to sell her work during the winter.

"It's a great deal better for you to work hard at one thing," said Miss Roberts in a little speech she made at the opening of the club, "than to learn a little bit about several things. Don't be a 'jack of all trades and good at none' girl; be a thorough work-woman at whatever craft you select. Pick out the thing you think is going to interest you most and put your whole strength on it."

"Stenciling for me," whispered Dorothy, "and invalids' cooking."

"Me, too," said Ethel Brown, who admired her new friend so much that she wanted to have the pleasure of being in the same class with her. Ethel Blue looked disturbed when she heard what the others were saying, for she had made up her mind to learn basketry, but it seemed rather forlorn to be in a class with girls she did not know at all. She thought she would ask Miss Roberts what she thought about it.

"Another thing I want every girl here to do," went on Miss Roberts, "is to take some physical exercise every day. You'll never have a better chance to learn to swim, for instance, and it is one of our customs to have light gymnastic movements every morning. In about a week the School of Physical Education will have an exhibition in the Amphitheatre and we must send a squad of girls to represent the Club, so the harder you work to become exact and uniform in your exercises the better showing we shall make."

When it came to enrolling in the classes both Ethels registered as wanting to swim.

"I must learn," said Ethel Blue, "because I've got an uncle in the Navy."

"And I've got to," laughed Ethel Brown, "because her uncle is my father."

Ethel Brown and Dorothy gave their names for the class in stenciling, but Ethel Blue crossed to Miss Roberts's side before she enlisted.

"I know I'd like stenciling," she said, "only I made up my mind that I wanted to make baskets and I really want to do that more than to do stenciling."

"But you think you'll be lonesome? Is that it?" asked the Director with her kind eyes on Ethel's face.

"You see I don't know anybody here but Ethel Brown and Dorothy."

"Come here a minute, Della," called Miss Roberts to a short, rosy-faced girl whose crisp red hair was flying behind her as she skipped across the room.

"Della, this is Ethel Morton," she said. "And Ethel, this is Della Watkins. Now you know at least one other member of the Girls' Club, and it happens that Della is going to take basketry, unless she has changed her mind about it since yesterday."

"I haven't, Miss Roberts," declared Della; "I'm going to work at baskets until I can make a tray like one I saw at the Arts and Crafts Studios last summer. Mamma says it would take a grown person two summers to learn how to do it, but I'm going to try even if it takes me three."

"Della never gives up anything she once takes hold of," smiled Miss Roberts. "She's like her dog. He's a bull dog, and I should hate to have him take a fancy to anything I didn't want him to have!"

Both girls laughed and Della slipped her arm around Ethel Blue's waist and ran with her to the basketry teacher who was recording the names of her fast growing class.

For an hour the girls worked at their new tasks and then they did some easy arm and leg exercises and ended the morning with a swift march around the big room.

"We must hand in our names for the camping trip," directed Dorothy.

"What is that?" asked both Ethels in chorus.

"Across the lake is a camp that both the Boys' and Girls' Clubs use in turn. There's a great rush to go so we'd better be on the list early."

"How long do we stay?"

"Just one night and plenty of grown people go, too, so the mothers never object. It's the grandest thing."

"I've never slept in a tent," said Ethel Blue, "and I'd love to do it because my father has to do it so much. I think he'd like to have me."

But when they told Mrs. Morton of the plan she was not quite so eager as the girls would have liked to have her.

"How do you go there?" she asked.

"In a motor boat, Dorothy says."

"We shall be on the water a good deal this summer," said Mrs. Morton after thinking a minute, "and you girls can't learn to swim too quickly. I think I will say that you may go to the camp when you can both swim at least twenty strokes."

"If my bathing dress is all ready I'll begin to-morrow, Aunt Marion."

"May we go in every day, Mother?"

"Every suitable day."

"I'll bet on Ethel Blue," pronounced Roger solemnly. "She's a landsman's daughter so she'll work harder to learn than Ethel Brown will. Ethel Brown will think she'll take to it like a duck because her father is a duck, so to speak."

"You just wait," cried Ethel Brown defiantly.

"I believe they'll both be swimming in ten days," declared Grandfather Emerson.

At least they tried hard. They went regularly to the bathing beach, listened attentively to their instructor's directions, practiced carefully in the water, and were caught by the family a dozen times a day taking turns lying on benches and working each other's legs, and making gestures expressive of their desire to imitate the fishes that they could see slipping through the water when they looked down into it from the dock.

"They just flip a fin and off they go," sighed Ethel Blue. "I flip two fins and wag my feet into the bargain and I go down instead of forward."

"I'm not scared any longer, anyway. Teacher says that's a big gain."

"'Keep air in your lungs and you needn't be afraid,' she's told me over and over. 'Poke your nose out of water and you're all right.' It was kind of goo-ey at first, though, wasn't it, ducking your head and opening your eyes?"

"I got used to that pretty quick because I knew the water wasn't up to my neck and all I had to do to be all right was to stand up. The three arm movements I learned quickly; make ready, put your palms right together in front of your chest—then—"

"One,—push them straight forward as far as you can—"

Make Ready
"Put your palms right together in front of your chest."
She pushed Ethel Blue's legs forward as close to her body as they would go.

Number One
"Push the arms straight forward as far as you can."
She pulled the legs as far apart as she could and as far back as possible.

Number Two
"Turn the palms flat and swing them as far back as the shoulder."
She brought the legs together again, the heels touching.

"Two,—turn the palms flat and swing them as far back as the shoulder—"

"Make ready again—bring your palms together in front of your chest again and repeat."

"What in the name of sense are you two kids chanting," ejaculated Roger, poking his head inside.

"Go away, Roger. We can breathe and we can work our arms and that means we can keep afloat. If only we can get the leg motions right!"

"Let me give you a pointer," said Roger, who was a fine swimmer; "while you're learning try hard not to make any useless movements. They tire you and they don't get you anywhere."

"That's just what our teacher says. 'Lost motion is bad anywhere, but in swimming it's fatal.'"

"She's all right," commended Roger. "You just keep up that bench system of yours and you'll come out O.K."

So Ethel Blue stretched herself again face down on the bench and Ethel Brown put her cousin's heels together and her toes out and pulled her legs straight back.

"Ready," she cried.

Then she pushed Ethel Blue's legs forward as close to her body as they would go, and a muffled groan came from the pupil, head down over the bench.

"Hold your head up. Can't you make your arms go at the same time? Now leg Number One goes with the arm Number One."

"I can't do it yet," gurgled Ethel Blue; "I want to learn these leg movements by themselves first."

"Here's Number One, then," said Ethel Brown, and she pulled the legs as far apart as she could and as far back as possible, the feet still being horizontal; "and here's Number Two," and she brought the legs together again, the heels touching.

"I forgot to wag my feet when you did that last one," panted Ethel Blue. "If you wag them it gives you an extra push forward you know."

"I know; it really does; I did it accidentally yesterday and I popped right ahead some distance. Now let me try," and she took her turn on the bench while Ethel Blue counted and pulled laboriously, "Number One, Number Two, Make Ready."

"I floated for two minutes to-day."

"You did!" There was envy in Ethel Brown's voice as she resumed her upright position and helped her cousin move the bench back against the wall.

"I thought I'd try, so I turned over on my back and put my nose and mouth as high out of water as I could and tried to forget that my forehead was being swashed. Then I filled my lungs up full and there I was, just like a cork."

"Or a barrel," substituted Roger, poking his head in again. "Grandfather sends you his compliments—or he would if he happened to think of it—and says that when he was a boy they used to ask him 'What does a duck go down for?' Do you know the answer?"

"Grandfather told me that when I was Dicky's age—'for divers' reasons'; and he comes up again 'for sun—dry reasons.'"

"You're altogether too knowing, you kids. Where's Helen?"

"Gone on a tramp with the Vacation Club. Mother and Grandfather have gone to the five o'clock reading hour, Grandmother is taking her embroidery lesson at the Arcade, and Mary is down on the lake front. There isn't a soul in the house except Dicky and he's taking a nap."

"Then here's the best time I know to teach you young ladies how to resuscitate a drowned person. If one of you will oblige me by playing drowned—thank you, ma'am."

With solemnity Roger removed his coat and proceeded to his self-imposed task as Ethel Blue dropped limply on the floor.

"If you happen to have your wits about you still in about the usual amount, all I have to do is to start up your circulation by rubbing you like the mischief and then rolling you up in hot blankets to stave off a chill. But if the few senses that you possess—"

"Thank you!"

"—have left you then I have two things to do instead of one; first, I must start up your breathing once more, and second I must stir up your circulation."

"Yes, sir," agreed both girls meekly.

"You keep his nose out of the sand by putting his arm under his own forehead."

"When a person is unconscious his tongue is apt to fall back and stop up his throat. To prevent that you turn your victim over on his face."

"Ow! My nose!" cried Ethel Blue as Roger suited the action to the word.

"You keep his nose out of the sand by putting his own arm under his own forehead, thus making him useful. Fixed this way his tongue slips forward and the water in his mouth will run out. Sometimes this is enough. If it isn't, then turn the patient on his side—" he rolled Ethel Blue on edge—"and try to arouse breathing by putting ammonia under his nose or tickling his nose and throat with a feather. Somebody ought to be rubbing his face and chest all the time and throwing dashes of cold water on them."

"Poor lamb!"

"If he doesn't begin to breathe promptly under these kind attentions then you must try artificial breathing."

"Artificial breathing—make-believe breathing! How do you do that?"

"Don't let people crowd around and cut off the air. Turn him on his face again,"—and over went Ethel Blue—"putting something thick like this rolled up coat under his chest to keep it off the ground."

"Umph—that's a relief!" grunted Ethel Blue.

"Then roll him gently on to his side and then forward on to his face once more. Move him once in every four slow counts. Every time he goes on to his face give him a vigorous rub between the shoulder blades."

"Ow, ow," ejaculated Ethel Blue ungratefully.

"It must take a lot of people to do all these things," commented Ethel Brown.

"Three if you can get them; one to turn him and rub his back, one to keep his head off the ground as he is rolled over, and the third to dry his feet and try to warm them."

"The one who does the rolling is the most important if there don't happen to be many around."

"Put your strongest in that position. If you don't bring your patient to in five minutes of this, try putting him on his back with a coat or something under his shoulder-blades, and keeping his tongue out of his throat by tying it with a tape or rubber band."

"One person kneels back of the patient's head and takes hold of his arms between the elbow and the wrist and pulls them back along the ground until the hands touch above his head. This draws the air out of the lungs."

"It's Ethel Brown's turn now," remonstrated Ethel Blue, but she was silenced by a rubber band from Roger's pocket.

"When you move them to the side of the body again the air is pressed out of the lungs."

"Then one person kneels back of his head and takes hold of his arms between the elbow and the wrist and pulls them back along the ground until the hands touch above his head. This draws the air into the lungs, and when you move them to the sides of the body again the air is pressed out of the lungs just as in natural breathing."

"How long do you keep it up?" asked Ethel Brown interestedly while Ethel Blue made silent demonstrations of disapproval.

"For hours—two at least. Many a man has been resuscitated after a longer time. Make the movements about fifteen times a minute—that's pretty nearly what Nature does—and have relays of helpers. There you have the idea," and Roger slipped off Ethel Blue's gag, and helped her up.

"When he really does breathe—my, he must be glad when you do get through with him!"—she panted; "then you begin to work on his circulation, I suppose."

"Correct, ma'am. Rub him from his feet upward so as to drive the blood toward the heart and pack him around with hot water bottles and hot cloths. Give him some coffee to drink and put him to bed in a room with plenty of fresh air."

"He would be tired out, I should think, after having his arms waved around for hours."

"He is," agreed Ethel Blue.

"They generally go right to sleep from exhaustion."

"I'm not surprised. Personally I think I'd rather be rescued before these vigorous measures had to be applied to me."

"The best way to rescue a person who gets over his depth is to grab him from behind."

"So he won't grab you."

"Throw yourself on your back. Put your arms above your head with the backs of the hands together."

"Push your legs down and as far apart as they will go. Bring the arms in a steady sweep down to the sides."

"Exactly. A person who thinks he's drowning loses his head and struggles with his rescuer and perhaps they both drown. The best way is to grasp his arms from behind above the elbows and put your knees in the small of his back. That will throw him into a position where he will float. Then hold his arm with your left hand and swim on your back using your right arm and your legs."

"But I haven't learned to swim on my back."

"Bring the legs together and forward you'll shoot."
End of arm stroke.

"Learn how as soon as you can get on pretty well the other way. Throw yourself on your back and push your legs down and as far apart as they will go; then bring them together and forward you'll shoot. Draw them up to the body again, spread out, clap your heels—there you are. It's just like swimming on your face—"

"Except that you're upside down."

"You can help on by putting your arms above your head with the backs of the hands together and then bringing them in a steady sweep down to the sides. You'd better learn this; it's the thing to do when you have the cramp yourself as well as when the other fellow has it."

"Now let us practice on you," suggested Ethel Blue.

"No, you don't," replied Roger emphatically, and seizing his coat he made a run for liberty, escaping through the front door and slamming it after him.

CHAPTER VI

ETHEL BROWN A HEROINE

DICKY was no longer asleep. Roger's slamming of the front door had roused him and after drowsily rubbing his eyes he had rolled off his cot and stared out of the window to see in what direction Roger was going, for he recognized the footsteps of the brother he admired extravagantly.

Not seeing him from the front window he turned the latch of the door that opened on the upper porch and looked out toward Mayville.

Again there was no Roger and the youngster, still only half awake, wandered about the room hunting for amusement. The house was perfectly quiet, for the Ethels, tired after their strenuous afternoon, were lying in the hammocks behind the house, Ethel Blue working on a new basket and Ethel Brown drawing a design that she hoped to develop into a stencil.

Dicky's cot was in Helen's room and she had accumulated on her bureau a variety of souvenirs, most of which were pinned to the muslin that framed her dressing glass. Dicky climbed on a chair and examined them attentively. Most of them seemed to him quite valueless and he wondered that a person as grown up as Helen should want to keep them.

Wandering into his mother's room his eye was attracted by a shining tray on which stood an alcohol lamp. A box of matches lay beside it ready for instant use if hot water should be needed in the night. Dicky had not seen the lamp in action many times and never had he had the privilege of lighting it. It seemed an unparalleled opportunity.

Its present situation was not convenient, however. The shelf it was on was far too high. Still, that was easily remedied. Dragging forward a chair he mounted upon it, secured his prize, and then laboriously clambered down, breathing heavily from his exertions. Helen's bureau was not so high and on it he placed his treasure, kneeling in front of it on the chair which was still where he had left it.

Careful scrutiny resolved the apparatus into its parts. On top was a cup. He took it off its tripod and laid it on the tray. The tripod underneath held in its embrace a metal container—the thing out of which the pretty blue flame had shot up when Mother set a match on top. Dicky separated these two parts and pushed one to one side of the bureau and one to the other.

Where had the matches gone to? There they were, on the floor, and their rescue necessitated a scramble down and up again. They were safety matches and the production of a light from their unresponsive heads was only accomplished by accident after many attempts which strewed the floor with broken bits of wood.

At last, Oh, joy! a flame flashed up and Dick in ecstasy slipped off the cover of the lamp and dropped the match into the inside. It was a rapturous sight. The light leaped tall and slender, and bent as a breath of air from the window touched it.

Dicky leaned back in his seat and watched it as from an orchestra stall. It was the prettiest thing he had ever personally produced and he was proud of his handiwork.

A stronger puff made a fairy dance of flame. Another puff came in from the door and crossed it and together they raced through the door into mother's room and disappeared. But they seemed to have started a small tempest of breezes. One after another dashed in from door and window and played tag and jostled the flickering light. It bent this way and that way and crouched back into its holder and then leaped out just in time to meet a slap from a bold wind that drew heavily across the room and in passing, sent the flame, Zip! against Helen's muslin draperies.

In a second they were ablaze, shooting upward toward the ceiling. Dicky watched the fire, fascinated with its speed and its faint crackle as if it were chuckling with amusement at its own pranks.

But fun never lasts very long; Dicky had found that out before. In a minute pieces of muslin, all turned black now, began to float down on him. The mirror was not so pretty as it had been, even with Helen's silly souvenirs on it; indeed it had a queer look now as if it was cross at what was going on. In fact, it cracked on one side with a noise like a cat spitting with rage.

Dicky found himself too warm now that one of the muslin curtains from the window had blown over and caught a piece of the flame on its corner. It was nice to watch, but it was rather hot in this room and he was tired of it anyway. He thought he would go down stairs and see if the Ethels were at home.

But when he turned toward the entry door it was closed and another prank of the wind had shut the door into Mother's room. He could not get out anywhere except on to the roof of the porch and that had no stairs. The room roared in his ears and a bit of the hot black stuff fell on his hand. He rushed on to the porch and screamed a strong, piercing shriek that sent all the blood in her body into Ethel Brown's heart when it reached the back of the house and her ears.

With a leap she left the hammock and her drawing behind her and dashed into the house.

"Dicky! Dicky!" she called frantically as she plunged upstairs. "Dicky! Dicky!"

Into Mrs. Morton's room she ran and then pushed open the door into Helen's. A rush of smoke and flame filled her mouth and made her eyes smart.

"Dicky!" she screamed. "Dicky! Where are you?"

Chiming with the crackle of the fire she heard sobbing.

"Dicky!" she cried again. "Ethel's coming. Call me again."

She dropped to the floor where the smoke seemed lighter and under it she saw a gleam of blue—Dicky's rompers—on the porch. Creeping on her hands and knees she reached through the door and seized him by the abundant fulness of his garments. He yelled remonstrance as she tried to draw him back into the smoke-filled room.

"It's all right," she choked. "Shut your eyes and hold your nose. Don't be afraid; Sister's got you," and with talk and wheedling she pulled him through the porch door and across the floor to the entry door. As she opened it the fresh draught caused a new outburst of flame. She managed to shut it in. She and Dicky were safe on the outside.

"Run down stairs quick," she ordered Dicky; "run to James Hancock's and tell him the house is on fire."

As she spoke a whimpering caught her ear. It came from Ethel Blue who was crouching on the stairs.

"The house is on fire, don't you hear it?" shrieked Ethel Brown. "What's the matter? Can't you help? Run and call 'Fire.' Run, I say."

Ethel Blue, stirred to life, disappeared, and Ethel Brown seized one of the hand fire extinguishers which are in every Chautauqua cottage, and attempted to open the door into Helen's room again. A scorching blast drove her back and she gave up the attempt. Thrusting her head out of the window she screamed "Fire," and at the same time saw Dicky running safely toward the Hancocks'. Even in her terror she noticed that in pulling him out of the burning room she had torn his ample bloomers. A hanging rag streamed from them as he ran.

A new thought struck Ethel and she flung herself on the banisters and slid to the foot. When she looked from the window she had seen the red gleam of a fire alarm box on a tree almost in front of the house. She rushed to it and beat on the glass with her fists.

Almost immediately the wild shriek of a siren tore the air. Footsteps came running from all sides. She had been glad that it happened that no one was at home, but she was equally glad when she saw Mary running from the direction of the Pier. Margaret Hancock called to her that Dicky was safe. Ethel waved her understanding, and seizing the hand of Ethel Blue who appeared from somewhere and clung timidly to her skirt she ran back into the house to get the silver from the dining-room.

"Take this and this and this," she whispered breathlessly, piling Dicky's mug and a handful of forks and another of spoons into Ethel Blue's upheld skirt. "Here's the butter dish. It's lucky we left the tea set at home. Now then, take those to the Hancocks' and I'll go upstairs and see if I can save any of our clothes."

"Oh, Ethel, I ought to go with you," whimpered Ethel Blue.

"Run, I tell you," commanded Ethel Brown who found herself growing cooler every minute.

People were coming into the house now and rushing about with chairs in their hands, uncertain where to set them down. A woman from the boarding house next door began to carry out the china and lay it on the grass, and Mary tossed pans out of the kitchen window and piled the wash tubs full of groceries for the men to move.

From the lake front rose shouting and along the road came one of the chemical engines hauled by the bellboys of the hotel. Another rolled down the steep hill from the Post Office, these men struggling as hard to hold it back as those from the hotel were pulling. Down the same hill came the water hose, and yet other chemicals from the business block, the Book Store, wherever they were kept ready for emergencies. For a few minutes every man was a fire chief and every volunteer shouted commands which he himself was the first to disobey.

But order developed in an amazingly short time. The boarding house between the Mortons and the Hancocks caught fire in spite of the efforts of a bucket brigade which tried to wet down the roof. Consternation reigned when a shout drew the attention of the firemen to the flaming of the sun-dried shingles in one corner and almost at the same moment to the flash of a curtain fired by a mass of cinders whirled from the Mortons' cottage right through an open window.

It was a shout of apprehension, for if this large building went it would be increasingly difficult to save the houses closely crowded beyond. At this critical instant the honk of an automobile horn drew the crowd's attention. The unusual will do that even in times of stress and automobiles are not allowed inside the Assembly grounds.

"It's Mayville! It's the Mayville hose," cried some one, and a hoarse cry of satisfaction went through the onlookers. Just in the nick of time they came, two hose wagons usually drawn by man power but now attached to the automobiles of two public-spirited citizens who heard the telephone summons and offered their cars which happened to be standing at the sidewalk.

The salvage crew was working hard in both houses now, and the Hancocks thought it best to remove some of their goods and chattels in case the flames spread beyond the boarding house. The helpers were increased by the audience from the organ recital in the Amphitheatre who left the program unfinished at the first note of the siren. An unceasing procession marched from the burning and the threatened cottages to Miller Park bearing china and glass and furniture. Some one threw Grandmother Emerson's trunk out of the window. It proved not to be locked and its contents spurted all over the walk before the house. Ethel Brown saw it and stuffed clothes and books back into it and called to two men to take it away. Some excited person in the boarding house began to toss bureau drawers down from the top of the front porch. Most of them broke when they struck the ground but the people below gathered up the collars and cravats and underwear and ran with them to the Park. A young girl who was found wandering about the lower floor carefully carrying half an apple pie which she had rescued from the pantry was led in the same direction.

Mrs. Emerson, rushing across the green from her embroidery lesson on the veranda of the Arcade, met Margaret Hancock tugging Dicky along in the direction of the lawn. He was sobbing wildly and his grandmother took him in her arms and sat down on a chair amid the piles of furniture to comfort him. From the direction of the Hall of Philosophy where they had been awaiting the coming of the Reading Hour came Mrs. Morton and Mr. Emerson, breaking into a run as they approached near enough to see that the fire was in the direction of their cottage. As they rushed across Miller Park they almost stumbled over Ethel Blue, curled up miserably on top of the old stump that is said to have supported many eloquent orators in the olden days.

"Are you hurt, dear child? Quick, tell me," demanded Mrs. Morton, while her father ran on to the scene of action.

"I'm not hurt. It's our house. I didn't help Ethel," cried the child.

"Where is Ethel? Is Dicky safe?"

The questions seemed to increase the child's agony.

"Can't you tell me? Oh, there's Grandmother with Dicky. Stay with her. And—listen to me—"

Her aunt seized Ethel by the arm and looked her squarely in the eyes.

"You're perfectly safe here. Try to control yourself. Do whatever Grandmother says."

But the child was too wretched to be of any assistance until Mrs. Emerson gave her a specified task.

"Take Dicky over to the Arcade," she directed, "and keep him there. Then I can go and help."

Ethel Blue obeyed miserably, for her very soul was ashamed of her fear. Her father a soldier and she this weeping, curled-up bunch of cowardice! She burst into tears again as she crossed the green. Dicky, whom Mrs. Emerson had only partially succeeded in quieting, broke into renewed cries and the two soon became the center of a group of women whose sympathy served to increase the children's demonstrations.

"Poor lambs, they're frightened to death," said a cool, sweet voice, and a pink-cheeked, white-haired woman made her way through the throng and spoke to Ethel Blue.

"Come in where it is quiet," she said. "Now drink this water and bathe your eyes and sit down here quietly. Show the little boy these pictures," she directed, and Ethel, having something definite to do, obeyed her.

"I shall be just outside here if you need me. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Back at the fire the helpers were increased by the arrival of the onlookers at the baseball game. They had come on the run from the lower end of the grounds, the two teams, the umpire, and the scorer bringing up the rear. Roger and James and Helen were with this crowd, and they dashed frantically into action when they found out what houses were involved. James helped the men who were recharging the chemical engines. Helen joined the procession carrying household goods to the Park.

"Where are the children?" Roger screamed into his grandfather's ear above the throb of the water from the hose wagons.

"There's Ethel Brown carrying those clothes. Your mother's in Miller Park. I don't know where the others are. I'm going in to find your grandmother," and while Roger rushed after Ethel to question her the old gentleman dashed into the burning cottage and straight up the stairs to his wife's room.

It was only a few minutes before he was brought out again by two of the firemen and stretched on the beach by the lake, with a doctor from the crowd working over him and a nurse who had left her rest hour at the hospital to run to the fire, helping him give first-aid. When he recovered consciousness they summoned help and carried him to Miller Park and laid him on a mattress while the physician went back to see if his services were required by any other sufferers.

Fortunately for Mr. Emerson's peace of mind his wife soon discovered him and told him of the safety of all the other members of the family.

It was almost dark when the "All out" signal sounded from the fire-house, and the Mortons began to think of where they should spend the night. Offers of shelter were plentiful both to them and to the boarders, but Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Emerson accepted Mrs. Hancock's offer. The Hancocks owned the cottage on the other side of the one the Mortons had been occupying. By good luck, it seemed now, it had not been let for the summer, and by greater good luck it had come out of the fire unscathed, thanks to the direction of the wind. It was furnished and ready for use, and Mrs. Hancock and Margaret and James busied themselves carrying over bedding and towels and table linen. Roger and several neighbors bore Mr. Emerson from the Park on his mattress and established him in a comfortable lower bedroom. Ethel Blue and Dicky were found by Mrs. Morton in the art store and brought home. Helen was sent to the Indiana Cottage to order supper sent in, for Mary's department would not be in order until the next day.

Every member of the family was accounted for when the Director of the Institution stopped at the porch to see if he could do anything for their comfort.

"This young woman is a heroine," he said, patting Ethel Brown's shoulder. "I watched her all through and she behaved like a grown woman."

Ethel Brown, her skirt torn, her blouse smoke-begrimed and her face dirty, smiled at him shyly, and murmured "Thank you."

CHAPTER VII

DOROTHY COOKS

DOROTHY and her mother had a room in a house near the trolley gate. When they had first come to Chautauqua the year before a sign in front of the house had attracted their attention. It read:

LIGHT HOUSE
KEEPING
PERMITTED

Light housekeeping was just what Mrs. Smith wanted to do, so she made inquiries and was able to complete arrangements so satisfactory that she went to the same place when she returned for this second summer.

There were several reasons why she did not want to go to a boarding house. In the first place she wanted to have her expenses as small as possible, and in the next she wanted to teach Dorothy something about cooking, for she believed that every girl ought to know something of this important branch of home-making and in the wandering life they had led it had not always been possible for them to live otherwise than in a boarding house.

"You can take the domestic science work at the Girls' Club," she had said, "and then we can have our little home here and you can apply your knowledge for our own benefit."

So well had this plan worked and so competent had Dorothy become in simple cooking that this summer she was specializing in cooking for invalids.

"It's mighty lucky I took the invalids' cooking," she exclaimed as her mother came in from the art store at noon the day after the fire, and sat down to the nice little dinner that Dorothy had prepared.

"It's one of the things that may be valuable to you in many ways and at any time."

"It's valuable now. Have I told you about my friends at the Girls' Club, two cousins, both named Ethel Morton?"

"Morton? What are their fathers' names? Where do they live?" said Mrs. Smith, speaking more quickly than was usual with her.

"I don't know their fathers' names—their fathers aren't here."

"Oh!" Mrs. Smith leaned back in her chair as if she were especially weary.

"They live in the cottage that was burned yesterday."

"They do! I wonder, then, if it wasn't one of them that brought a little boy to the art store while the fire was going on."

"Did she call him Dicky?"

"Yes, Dicky."

"Did the girl have blue eyes or brown?"

"I didn't notice—or, yes, I believe I did—they were blue."

"That was Ethel Blue, then. They call the other one Ethel Brown to tell them apart. This morning they didn't come to the club because they had so much to do to put their new cottage in order, but Ethel Brown ran in just for a minute to ask me if I could cook some special things for her grandfather while he was sick. He was hurt yesterday at the fire."

"Oh, poor man."

"It's not very serious, Ethel Brown says, only he's bruised and he swallowed a lot of smoke and he can't eat what the rest of them do."

"Haven't they a maid?"

"They only have one here, and she has been Dicky's nurse until a little while ago, and he got so scared yesterday that he's almost sick to-day and keeps calling for Mary all the time. So Mrs. Morton is cooking for the family and she can't manage to do special things for her father."

"Do they want you to go there?"

"The kitchen is too small. That's why the grandmother or the older sister doesn't do it. They want me to make broths and jellies and things at home here and take them down there."

"You must do your very best, dear. It will be a splendid chance for you to take such a responsibility."

"The doctor says Mr. Emerson is to have chicken broth and toast at three o'clock, so I went to their house after the club and got a tray and a small bowl and some plates, and then stopped at the meat market on the way home, so the broth is started now."

She waved her hand toward the corner of the room where the low-turned flame of a gas plate was causing a soft simmering in a large saucepan.

"You put the chicken in cold water, didn't you, to draw the goodness out?"

"Yes, indeed. I cut up the chicken and cracked the bones so that all that inside goodness wouldn't be wasted. A quart and a pint of water covered it well and it's going to stay on until the meat all falls to pieces. That will be about three hours from the time I put it on."

"Are you going to put rice in it?"

"I'm going to take down the rice in a separate little bowl this time because I don't know whether Mr. Emerson likes rice."

"Be sure you don't over-cook it. Every grain should be separate."

"I learned the very simplest way to cook rice. Wash it and put it into boiling salted water, a quart of water to a cupful of rice. Putting the rice in will stop the boiling, so when it boils up again you give it just one stir to keep the kernels from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan. You mustn't stir it any more or you'll break the grains. It will be done in about twenty minutes. Then you pour it lightly into a colander and turn it lightly from the colander into your serving dish, and there you are, every grain separate."

"If you save the rice water it serves as a vegetable stock for a soup."

"Our teacher told us a story about the value of rice water. It was in a famine time in India and some of the natives went to the English and said that if they could have the water the camp rice was cooked in they wouldn't ask for anything else."

"They knew how strong and good it is. Mr. Emerson won't want more than a cupful of chicken broth this afternoon—what are you going to do with the rest of it?"

"One gill of it will make chicken custard with the beaten yolks of two eggs and a pinch of salt. You cook it in a double boiler until it is thick."

"That ought to taste good and be nourishing, too."

"I shall put on another gill of the broth, with a teaspoonful of Irish moss if I can find the kind that is prepared in powder form. After that has boiled about fifteen minutes I shall strain it through a piece of cheesecloth into a cup and when it has stiffened and I'm ready to serve it, I'll turn it out on a pretty little plate and lay a sprig of parsley on top."

"That will just about use up the broth from one chicken."

"I can give Mr. Emerson a variety by making mutton broth. A quart of cold water to a pound of meat is the right proportion, and then you make it just like chicken broth."

"You mustn't forget to trim off all the fat you can before you put it in, and to skim off any bubbles of fat that rise to the top."

"I shan't make any beef tea unless they ask for it especially, because the doctors say nowadays that there isn't much nourishment in it, it's just stimulating. I shall give my patient cereals and porridges made exactly according to the directions that are on the boxes."

"A thoroughly baked white potato served piping hot is delicious. Break it open at the last minute and put into it a dab of butter and a teaspoon of cream and a wee bit of salt, and a dash of pepper if your patient can stand pepper. A baked potato goes well with a broiled breast of chicken."

"If this 'case' of mine lasts long enough so that I have to make more chicken broth I shall cut off the breast before I cut up the chicken for the broth."

"Broil it until it is quite brown, and after you have put it on a warm plate ready to serve, add a tiny dab of butter and a little salt. Do the same with a lamb chop, and be sure that every bit of meat except the choice mouthful or two is cut away before you cook it."

"I shan't let the butcher trim it, though. Those bits that come off help out in a soup."

"Tapioca jelly is something you must try for one of your invalid's desserts."

"The doctor said he must have fruits mostly, but I'd like to try the tapioca once."

"Take half a cupful of tapioca and two cupfuls of water, the juice and a little of the grated rind of half a lemon, and a teaspoonful of sugar. Soak the tapioca in the water for four hours. Stir in the sugar just as you put it all in the double boiler. Cook it for about three-quarters of an hour. You should stir it often and it ought to be perfectly clear when it is done. Stir in the lemon at the last minute and then pour it into cups or molds."

"That sounds good to me. I think I'll try it for our own dessert some day."

"When you make toast always be careful to cut your slices of bread all of the same thickness and to cut off the crusts. Then warm the slices first and afterwards brown them delicately. When you make milk toast butter the slices and sprinkle on a few grains of salt and then pour over them a cupful of boiling milk thickened with half a teaspoonful of flour. Do it carefully. It is care about little things that makes a dish palatable for an invalid, you must remember."

"Della Watkins gave me some flowers to-day, so I shall have one to put on the waiter."

"I want to tell you, dear, why I am especially glad that you are having this opportunity to show that you can put your knowledge into actual practice."

"I did last winter when I made the baskets for Christmas."

"You did wonderfully. You've noticed that I am always advising you to learn things that will be valuable to you. I mean valuable in a money way as well as in giving pleasure to yourself and others."

Dorothy curled up in her mother's lap and made a soft hum of assent.

"The reason I've done that is because I've seen our little stock of money growing smaller and smaller all the time. Last winter I didn't make quite enough at the art store to support us both, and I had to draw on our principal in spite of your doing so splendidly with your baskets."

"But this summer you're all right, aren't you?"

"This summer I am meeting our expenses, but I'm not laying by a penny, and when the season ends here I don't know where we shall go or what I can do. So you see that every cent you are able to make is a great help."

"If I prepare these things all right for Ethel's grandfather I won't be scared if I have a chance to do it again."

"Certainly you won't. Every success gives confidence."

"We might start a kitchen somewhere in an especially unhealthy neighborhood and I could make invalids' stuff all the time at a hundred dollars a tray."

Mrs. Smith laughed.

"That's not such a bad idea," she agreed. "At any rate we must always have faith that work of some sort will be given to us. It hasn't failed as yet, even when things looked pretty bad."

"There was a postcard in the picture booth in the pergola the other day that said, Have Faith and Hustle."

"That's good advice. Prudence without worry and energy without scatteration of mind and faith woven into it all; that's my gospel."

After her mother had gone, Dorothy took out a pad and pencil and made a list of broths and dishes which she already knew how to make and another that she meant to ask her cooking teacher about. She knew that she had only to tell her teacher that she was putting her information into actual practice and she would have all the help that she needed. She wanted to rely on herself as much as she could, however.

If there was just a shade of doubt in the back of her mind about the success of her cooking it was gone when she went in to Mr. Emerson's room to take away the tray after he had finished his first meal of her preparation.

"Perfectly delicious, child," he whispered hoarsely, for his throat was still sore. "I shall want to be a king and engage you for my personal cook even after I get well. I think I can tackle another of those excellent combinations of yours in about four hours."

Dorothy was delighted and for the whole of the busiest week of her life she worked hard not only to have her cooking delicious, but to have the trays attractive. She never used the same cup and saucer twice in succession; at the shop in the business block she found funny little jelly molds for a few cents apiece, and Mr. Emerson never failed to notice that to-day he had a miniature jelly rabbit and the next day a tiny jelly watermelon.

Mrs. Hancock let her forage in her china closet and she found there bowls of many patterns, the odds and ends of the home china sent here for summer use.

"They're exactly what I want," Dorothy cried and went off with them in triumph. There was always a bit of parsley or watercress or a tender leaf of lettuce with the first part of the meal and a posy with the dessert.

"I want especially to thank you for one care you've taken," said Mr. Emerson on the day when he regretfully dismissed his cook with a roll of crisp bills in her capable hand. "I want to thank you for always having the hot things really hot and the cold things really cold."

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPELLING MATCH

THE evening of the Annual Spelling Match was one of those when the whole Emerson-Morton family down to Dicky went to the Amphitheatre. Usually Mary or one of the older members of the family stayed at home with the children. On this occasion, however, Mr. Emerson had announced that he intended to take part in the match so everybody was eager to be present to encourage him.

The Amphitheatre was fuller than they had seen it yet when they reached it and made their way as far forward as possible so that they might hear all that was said.

"Evidently this is popular," remarked Mr. Emerson to his daughter as he took his seat next to her, placing himself at the end of the bench so that he could get into the aisle quickly when the time came. There seemed to be an unusual spirit of gayety in the audience, they thought, for many people were being playfully urged by their friends to go up on to the stage, and others who had made up their minds to go were being coached by their companions who were giving out words from the C.L.S.C. books for them to practice on.

A short flight of steps had been arranged at the front of the platform on which two rows of chairs were placed ready for the contestants. At the back a large table was loaded with heavy dictionaries for the use of the judges who were to decide any questions of doubt.

A burst of applause greeted the Director of the Institution as he walked forward and introduced the announcer of words, a college president. After giving a short history of the Annual Spelling Match, which dated back to the early days of the Assembly, he announced that the contest of the evening was to be between representatives of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio on one side and the Rest of the World on the other.

Amid the laughter that followed the announcement Helen whispered to Margaret who sat next to her—

"Why New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio?"

"They send more people here than any of the other states. You ought to see them stand up on Old First Night! There are hordes of them."

The Director went on to state the rules that were to govern the contestants. They must be over fifteen years old. They might ask to have a word pronounced again but they could have only one chance to spell it. A spelling was to be accepted as correct if it were confirmed by any of the dictionaries on the stage—Worcester, Webster, the Standard, and the Century. The judges were professors from the faculty of the Summer Schools and their decision was to be final. No one who had taken a prize in previous years might enter. Lastly, a ten dollar gold piece was to add an extra inducement to enter the contest and to give an extra pleasure to the winner.

"Now," he concluded, "will the gladiators come forward, stating as they step on the platform on which side they are to fight."

There was a moment's pause until a courageous few advanced to the front. The Director announced their partisanship. They were all, as it happened, from New York, Pennsylvania, or Ohio and they sat down on the chairs at the right of the audience.

The next detachment added two to their number and half a dozen to the other side. Mr. Emerson was in the next group to go forward.

"There's my mother behind your grandfather," whispered Dorothy, who was between the two Ethels. They saw a slender woman with a mass of snow-white hair piled above a fresh face.

"It's the lady who took care of Dicky and me the day of the fire," cried Ethel Blue.

Bursts of applause greeted people who were well known. The editor of a newspaper in a near-by town was one of these favored ones and a teacher of stenography was another. Between the detachments the Director cheered on the laggards with humorous remarks, and after each joke there was sure to be heard from one part of the Amphitheatre or another a loudly whispered "You go" followed by a shrinking, "Oh, no, you go!"

At last all the Tri-state chairs were filled while there remained two vacant places on the side of the Rest of the World.

"It looks as if the Rest of the World was afraid to stand up against New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio," exclaimed the Director. "This can't be true!"

There was another pause and then two women rose at the same time. They were received by a hearty round of clapping.

"Do you see who it is? Roger, Roger, do you see?" cried Helen, leaning across Margaret to touch her brother's knee.

"Good for her. Isn't she the spunky mother!" answered Roger, while at the same moment Margaret and James were exclaiming, "Why, there's our mother, too, going up with yours!"

So the two brave little ladies took the last two seats for the defence of the Rest of the World and the announcer began to give out the words to the waiting fifty.

It took only a minute to bring trouble, for a Tri-state woman went down on "typographical." Others followed in rapid succession, every failure being as heartily applauded as every success. By the time that a girl misspelled "ebullitions" only seven representatives of the Rest of the World were left. A Kentuckian who had overpowered some giants was beaten by "centripetal"; Grandfather Emerson's omission of a "p" in "handicapped," Mrs. Morton's desperate but unavailing struggle with the "l's" in "unparalleled," and Mrs. Hancock's insertion of an undesirable "e" in "judgment" reduced the ranks of both sides to a brave pair of Tri-states faced by a solitary cosmopolitan.

"It's Mother, it's Mother," whispered Dorothy, clapping frantically, while the two Ethels told everybody near them, "It's Dorothy's mother. Isn't she splendid!"

"Correlation" and "exhilaration" were the bombs whose explosion swept away the last of the Tri-state forces, and Dorothy's mother stood alone, the winner of the prize.

"That was Dorothy's mother who took the prize," repeated Ethel Brown in high spirits to her grandmother as she took her arm to pilot her home.

"Dorothy's mother! Why, that is the Mrs. Smith who is my embroidery teacher at the art store."

"It is! How lovely for you to know Dorothy's mother. Ethel, Granny knows Dorothy's mother. She teaches her embroidery," called Ethel to her cousin.

"Don't you know Dorothy said her mother was teaching embroidery in an art store in Illinois last winter? Oh, I almost want to learn from her myself."

"Stick to your stenciling, child," said Mrs. Morton. "Does Dorothy embroider?"

"We don't know; we'll ask her," cried the two girls in chorus, and Ethel Brown added; "she makes ten kinds of baskets, and this year she's doing stenciling in my class, and her mother says that if she does it as well as she did the baskets, she can study next year at the Arts and Crafts Shops with the grown people."

"She must have inherited her mother's clever fingers," commented Mrs. Morton.

Roger and Helen, who had been walking with James and Margaret, stopped at their house and sat on the porch to round out this privileged evening until ten o'clock. The moonlight shone brilliantly on the lake and at its upper end, two or three miles away, the lights of Mayville twinkled through the trees. Boats and canoes were drawing in toward the shore, for Chautauqua custom demands that every one be at home by ten o'clock, and that quiet reign so that the people who have studying to do or are obliged to rise early for their classes and so must go to bed early may not be disturbed.

Some of the boats landed at the dock just below the Hancocks' house and their occupants stepped on the wet planks with happy shrieks of laughter; others went on to the lower dock in front of the hotel.

"It always says in books that moonlight is romantic," said Roger. "I don't see where the romance comes in; it's just easier to see your way round."

There were cries of protest from the two girls.

"Girls always howl when you say a thing like that," went on Roger, "as if a fellow was a hard-hearted fool, but I'd like to have you tell me where there is any romance in real life—any outside of books, I mean."

He stared challengingly at James as if he expected him either to support him or to contradict him, but James was a slow thinker and said nothing. Helen rushed in breathlessly.

"It's just the way you put things together. If you want to look at it that way there are things happening all the time that would look romantic in a story."

"What, I'd like to know," demanded Roger. "Tell just one thing."

"Why—why—" Helen hesitated, trying to put her feelings into words; "why, take to-night when Grandmother found out that it was Dorothy's mother she had been taking embroidery lessons from. Somehow that seems to me romantic—to know one person and to know another person and then to find that they are relations."

Helen ended rather lamely, for Roger was shouting with laughter.

"That sounds mighty commonplace to me," he roared.

"It would sound all right if a writer worked it up in a book." James suddenly came to Helen's rescue to her great gratification. "We've got a romance in our family," he went on.

"We have!" cried Margaret. "What is it?"

"Perhaps it wouldn't seem like one to Roger," went on James, "but it always seemed to me it was romantic because it was different from the way things happen every day, and there was a chance for a surprise in it."

"I know what you mean," cried Margaret. "Great-uncle George."

"Yes," acknowledged James. "He was our father's uncle and he was a young man at the time of the Civil War. Fathers were sterner then than they are now and Uncle George's father—Dad's grandfather—insisted that he should go into a certain kind of business that he didn't like. They had some fierce quarrels and Uncle George ran off to the war and they never heard from him again."

"Didn't he ever write home?"

"They never got any letter from him," said Margaret. "His mother always blamed herself that she didn't write to him over and over again, even if she didn't get any answer, so that he would know that somebody kept on loving him and looking for him to come back. But Great-grandfather forbade her to, and I guess she must have been meeker than women are now, just as Great-grandfather was stricter."

"Father says," went on James, "that all through his boyhood he used to hope that his uncle would turn up, perhaps awfully rich or perhaps with adventures to tell about. Now I call that romantic, don't you, old man?" ended James defiantly.

"Seems to me it would have been if he had turned up, but he didn't," retorted Roger, determined not to yield.

"We have a disappearance story in our family, too," said Helen. "I'd forgotten it. It's nearer than yours; it's our own aunt. Don't you remember, Roger? Mother told us about it, once."

"That's so; so we have. Now that is romantic," asserted Roger.

"Let's hear it and see if it beats ours," said James.

"It was our Aunt Louise, Father's and Uncle Richard's sister. She was older than they. She fell in love with a man her father didn't like."

"Ho," grunted James; "that's why you think your story is romantic—because there's some love in it."

"It does make it more romantic, of course," declared Margaret, going over to the other side.

"He was a musician and Grandfather Morton didn't think music was a man's business. People used to be funny about things like that you know."

"That was because musicians and painters used to go round with long hair looking like jays." So James summed up the causes of the previous generation's dislike of the masters of the arts.

"I don't know whether Aunt Louise's musician was long on hair or not, but he was short on cash all right," Roger took up the story. "Grandfather said he couldn't support a wife and Aunt Louise said she'd take the chance, and so they ran away."

"She had more sand than sense, seems to me—if you'll excuse my commenting on your aunt," said James.

"She had plenty of sand. She must have found out pretty soon that Grandfather was right, but she wouldn't ask for help or come home again, and after a while they didn't hear from her any more and now nobody knows where she is."

"I'm like your father, James," said Helen; "I always feel that some time she may turn up and tell us her adventures."

"She must have been very brave and very loyal," murmured Margaret. "What did she look like? Was she pretty?"

"I haven't any idea. Mother never saw her. She left home before Mother and Father were married."

"Father spoke to me about her once," said Roger gravely.

"Did he really?" cried Helen. "Mother told me he hadn't mentioned her for years, it hurt him so to lose her."

"He told me she was the finest girl he ever knew except Mother, and he thought Grandfather made a mistake in not helping the fellow along and then letting Aunt Louise marry him. You see he sort of drove her into it by opposing her."

"Wouldn't it be great if both our relatives should turn up," cried Helen. "I suppose your uncle is too old now, even if he's alive, but our aunt really may."

"Then Roger'll have to admit that there's romance in real life."

"There are the chimes; we must go," said Roger as "Annie Laurie" pealed out on the fresh evening air, and the Morton brother and sister said "Good-night" to the Hancock sister and brother and went down the path to their own cottage where Roger left Helen and then went on up the hill to his room in the Hall of Pedagogy.

CHAPTER IX

GRANDFATHER ARRANGES HIS TIME

The Mortons breakfasted rather later than most people at Chautauqua. This was on Roger's account. He had to put his building into perfect order before the classes began to assemble at eight in the morning. He always did some of his sweeping the afternoon before after the students had left the Hall, but there was plenty of work for him in the early hour after he had reluctantly rolled off his cot. He had grown up with the Navy and Army ideals of extreme neatness, and experience was teaching him now that if he expected to have the rooms as tidy as his father would want to see them he must go to bed early and rise not long after the sun poked his rosy head over the edge of the lake.

"Nix on sitting up to hear the chimes," he confided to the family at breakfast the morning after the Spelling Match. "Last night's the first time I've heard them in a week. That room is worth a lot to me just for the feeling it's giving me that I'm earning it, and I'm going to pay good honest work for it if it busts me."

"'Bust' means, I suppose, if you have to go to bed early and work till almost eight in the morning to do it," translated his mother. "You're quite right, my dear; that's what your father would want you to do. And none of us here have eight o'clock classes so we can just as well as not have our breakfast at eight and have the pleasure of seeing you here opposite me."

Ever since he was a little boy Roger had sat in his father's seat when Lieutenant Morton was on duty. He felt that it was a privilege and that because of it he represented the head of the family and must shoulder some of his father's responsibilities. It made his behavior toward his mother and sisters and Ethel Blue and Dicky far more grown-up than that of most boys of his age, and his mother depended on him as few mothers except those in similar positions depend on sons of Roger's age.

Every time that Helen heard Roger mention his room she was stirred again with the desire that had filled her on the first day when Jo Sampson had offered it to him. She told herself over and over that she was doing as much as Roger, for since they only had one maid and Mary was busy all the time with the work necessary for so large a family, Helen waited on the table. She earned her meals by doing that just as much as if she were doing it in one of the boarding houses. Yet it did not seem to her just the same. She did not really want to wait on table in one of the boarding houses; she would have been frightened to death to do it, she thought, although she had been long enough at Chautauqua to see many nice young teachers and college girls in the boarding cottages and at the hotel and in the restaurant, and if they were not frightened, why should she be? Perhaps they were and didn't show it. Perhaps it was because it would take courage for her to attempt it that she wanted to so much. Whatever the reason, she could not seem to rid her mind of the idea that it would be delightful to earn money or its equivalent. This morning Roger's talk about his room roused her again.

"Mother," she said, "Margaret Hancock is going to take sewing from the teacher in the Hall of Pedagogy. Do you think I might, too?"

"What kind of sewing, dear? Embroidery?"

"No, Mother dear; it's the purely domestic variety; plain sewing and buttonholes and shirtwaists and middy blouses and how to hang a skirt, if I get so far along. Don't you think I'd be a more useful girl if I knew how to do some of those things?"

"You're a useful daughter now, dear; but I think it would be a splendid thing for you to learn just the kind of sewing that we need in the family."

"That every family needs," corrected Helen.

The mother looked closely at her daughter.

"Yes," she assented.

Helen had a plan in her mind and she had not meant to tell her mother until the sewing class had proved a success and she had learned to do all the things she had mentioned, but she was straightforward and she could not resist sharing her secret with Mrs. Morton.

"I meet so many girls here who are doing something to pay for their holiday, just the way those porters who brought our things down the first morning are, that I'm just crazy to do something, too," she explained breathlessly. "It seemed to me that if I learned how to do the kind of sewing that everybody must have I could get some work to do here and make some money."

Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Emerson looked at each other in amazement. Neither spoke for a moment.

"Why do you need more money, dear? You have your allowance."

"I have plenty of money for all I need; what I want is to feel independent. I don't like to feel that I am a drag on Father and not a help."

"But Father is glad to pay for your living, dear. Just the fact that he has a big, loving daughter is enough return for him."

"I know, Father's a darling. I know he's glad to pay for Roger's education, too, but when Roger earns his room you think it's perfectly fine and when I want to do the same thing you seem to think I'm wanting to do something horrid."

Helen was nearly in tears and the fact that her mother made no reply did not calm her. Mr. Emerson shook his head slowly.

"It's in the air, my dear," he said to Mrs. Morton.

"You're partly right, Helen," said Mrs. Morton at last. "Since Roger is a boy we expect him to earn his living as soon as he is prepared to do so. We should not want him to do it now because his duty now is to secure his education and to make himself strong and well so that he'll be a vigorous and intelligent man. We had not thought of your earning your living outside your home, but if you want to prepare yourself to do so you may. I'm sure your father would have no objection if you selected a definite occupation of which he and I approved and fitted yourself to fill it well. But he would object to your taxing your strength by working now just as he would object to Roger's doing the same thing."

"But you're pleased when Roger earns his room and you seem to think it funny when I want to," repeated Helen.

"Perhaps you are right, dear. It must be because Roger is a boy and so we like to see him turning naturally to being useful and busy just as he must be all the time in a few years."

"But why can't I?"

"I have no objection to your learning how to sew this summer, certainly, if that will satisfy you; and if you'll learn how to make the Ethels' middy blouses and Dicky's little suits and rompers, I'll be glad to pay you for them just as I pay a sewing woman at home for making them."

"Oh, Mother," almost sobbed Helen, "that will be good; only," she nodded after a pause, "it won't help Father a bit. The money ought to come out of somebody else's pocket, not his."

"That's true," admitted Mrs. Morton, "but I should have to pay some one to do the work, so why not you? Unless, of course, you wanted to help Father by contributing your work."

"That sounds as if I didn't want to help Father or I'd do it for nothing," exclaimed Helen. "I do really want to help Father, but I want to do it by relieving Father of spending money for me. I'd like to pay my board!"

"This generation doesn't seem to understand family co-operation," said Grandfather Emerson.

"I do want to co-operate," insisted Helen. "I just said I'd like to pay my board and co-operate by contributing to the family expenses in that way. What I don't want is to have any work I do taken for granted just as if we were still pioneers in the wilderness when every member of the family had to give the labor of his hands. I'm willing to work—I'm trying to induce Mother to let me work—but I want a definite value put on it just as there will be a definite value put on Roger's work when he gets started. I'd like to make the middy blouses for the Ethels and have Mother pay me what they were worth, and then pay Mother for my board. Then I should feel that I was really earning my living. That's the way Roger will do when he's earning a salary. Why shouldn't I do it?"

Helen stopped, breathless. She was too young to realize it, but it was the cry of her time that she was trying to express—the cry of the woman to be considered as separate as the man, to be an individual.

"I understand," said Mrs. Morton soothingly; "but suppose you begin in the way I suggest; and meanwhile we'll put our minds on what you will do after you leave college. There are a good many years yet before you need actually to go out into the world."

"Then I may go this morning and arrange for my lessons?"

"Certainly you may."

"And—and I'm sorry I've done all the talking this morning," apologized Helen. "I'm afraid it hasn't been a very pleasant breakfast."

"A very interesting one," said Mr. Emerson. "It shows that every generation has to be handled differently from the last one," he nodded to his daughter.

"Nobody has ever been up on the hill to see my room—if Helen will excuse my mentioning it," said Roger.

Helen flushed.

"Don't make fun of me, Roger. You do what you want to and it's all right and I want to do the same thing and it's all wrong," burst out Helen once more.

"There, dear, we don't want to hear it all again. Go and arrange for your lessons and as soon as you can make good blouses I'd like to have a dozen for the Ethels."

"You're a duck, Mother," and Helen ran out of the room, smiling, though with a feeling that she did not quite understand it all. And well she might be puzzled, for what she was struggling with has puzzled wiser heads than hers, and is one of the new problems that has been brought us by the twentieth century.

"I'll walk up with you to see your room, Roger," offered Mr. Emerson, "if you're sure I can go without blundering into some class."

"I'll steer you O.K. Come on, sir," cried Roger and he and his grandfather left the cottage as Mrs. Emerson started for her nine o'clock class in the Hall of Christ to be followed by the ten o'clock Devotional Hour and the eleven o'clock lecture in the Amphitheatre. There she would be joined by Mrs. Morton, who went every morning at nine to the Woman's Club in the Hall of Philosophy, and then to a ten o'clock French class. Up to the time of the fire the Ethels had escorted Dicky to the kindergarten and had then run on to the Girls' Club.

Roger and his grandfather strolled northward along the shore of the lake talking about Helen.

"I understand exactly how she feels," said Roger, "because I should feel exactly the same way if you people expected me to do what you expect her to do."

"But she's a girl," remonstrated Mr. Emerson.

"I guess girls nowadays are different from girls in your day, Grandfather," said Roger wisely. "We were talking last night at the Hancocks' about fathers one or two generations ago—how savage they were compared with fathers to-day."

"Savage!" repeated Mr. Emerson under his breath.

"Wasn't your father more severe to his children than you ever were to yours?" persisted Roger.

"Perhaps he was," admitted the old gentleman slowly.

"And I'm sure Father is much easier on me than his father was on him although Father expects a sort of service discipline from me," continued Roger.

"May be so," agreed his hearer.

"Just in the same way I believe girls are changing. They used to be content to think what the rest of the family thought on most things. If they ever 'bucked' at all it was when they fell in love with some man the stern parent didn't approve of, and then they were doing something frightful if they insisted on having their own way, like Aunt Louise Morton."

"Surely you don't think she did right to run off!"

"I'm sorry she did it, but I believe if she had been reasoned with instead of ordered, and if Grandfather Morton had tried to see the best in the man she was in love with instead of booting him out as if he were a burglar, it might have come out differently."

"Perhaps it might. Personally I believe in every one's exercising his own judgment."

"And I tell you the girls nowadays have plenty of it," asserted Roger. "I know lots of girls; there are twenty of them in my class at the high school and I don't see but they're just as sensible as we boys and most of them are a heap smarter in their lessons."

"Helen seems to think as you do, at any rate."

"I'm going to stand up for Helen," declared Roger. "I'll be out of college a couple of years before she is and if she wants to study anything special or do anything special I'll surely help her to it."

"Your father's not likely to object to anything that she will want to do."

"Probably not, only," returned Roger hesitating, "perhaps dear old Dad will need a little education himself after being in Mexico and suchlike foreign parts for so long."

The path which they were following ran along the top of a bank that rose abruptly from the water. On the other side of the roadway were pretty cottages rather larger than most of those at Chautauqua.

"In this house we're passing," said Roger, "there lives the grandest sight in Chautauqua. I see him almost every time I go by. Look, there he is now."

He was a bull dog of enormous head and fiercest visage, his nose pushed back, his teeth protruding, his legs bowed. Belying his war-like aspect he was harnessed to a child's express wagon which was loaded with milk cans and baskets.

"Isn't that a great old outfit!" exclaimed Roger. "He goes to market every morning as solemn as a judge. His name is Cupid."

"Ha, ha! Cupid!" laughed Mr. Emerson.

The dog's master held a leash fastened to his harness and the strong creature tugged him along so fast that he almost had to run to keep up.

"You see 'everybody works' at Chautauqua, even the dogs."

"And I must say they all seem to like it, even Cupid," added Mr. Emerson.

Turning away from the lake they walked up the hill to a grove behind which rose the walls of a hall and of several school buildings.

"Over to the right is the Hall of Pedagogy where your affectionate grandson wields the broom and smears the dustrag, and the building beyond is the College. They aren't especially handsome either inside or out but they are as busy as beehives. Listen to that hum? I tell you they just naturally hustle for culture up at this end of the grounds!"

"What's this we're coming out on?"

"The Arts and Crafts Studios. Not bad, are they? Sort of California Mission effect with those low white pillars. This place beats the others in the busy bee business. They hum in the mornings but the Arts and Crafts people are at it all day long. Come along and look in; they keep the windows open on purpose."

Nothing loath, Mr. Emerson went up the ascending path and on to the brick walk behind the pillars. First they peered into a room devoted to the making of lace, but neither of them felt drawn to this essentially feminine occupation. Then they passed drawing and painting studios where teachers of drawing and painting were taught how to teach better. In a hall in the centre they found a blackboard drawing that was as well done as many a painting, but Mr. Emerson's interest began really to grow when they came to the next departments. Here they found looms, some of them old-fashioned and some of them new, but all worked by hand and foot power. Several young women and two men were threading them or weaving new patterns. It looked difficult yet fascinating. Beyond there was a detachment learning how to put rush bottoms into chairs, twisting wet cat-tail leaves and wrapping them about the edges of frames.

"Look, they're just like the chairs in your dining-room," whispered Roger. "I've half a mind to learn how to do it so that I can mend them for Grandmother."

A near-by squad was making baskets, using a variety of materials. In another room the leather workers were stretching and cutting and wetting and dyeing and tooling bits of leather which were to be converted into purses and card cases and mats, and at another table the bookbinders were exercising the most scrupulous care in the use of their tools upon the delicate designs which they had transferred to their valuable material.

Around the bend in the wall were the noisy crafts, put by themselves so that they might not interfere with the comfort of the quieter toilers. Here the metal workers pounded their sheets of brass and copper, building up handsome patterns upon future trays and waste baskets and lanterns. Here, too, the jewelry makers ran their little furnaces and thumped and welded until silver cups and chains grew under their fingers and settings of unique design held semi-precious stones of alluring colors.

Every student in the whole place seemed alive with eagerness to do his work well and swiftly; they bent over it, smiling, the teachers were calm and helpful; gayety and happiness were in the air.

"I'd really like to spend my mornings up here," murmured Mr. Emerson, "if I only knew what I could do."

"We didn't see the wood-carving room; perhaps you'd like that."

They turned into a door they had passed. A man of Grandfather's age was drawing his design on a board which was destined to become a book rack. Another man was chipping out his background, making the flowers of his pattern stand forth in bold relief. A young woman had a fireboard nearly finished.

"I believe I will come up here," exclaimed Mr. Emerson.

And so it happened that Grandfather's mornings were taken up as much as those of the rest of the family, and it was not long before he was so interested in his work and so eager to get on with his appointed tasks that he spent not only the mornings but almost all day drawing and carving and oiling in the midst of sweet-smelling shavings.

On the way back they stopped for a minute to see Roger's cell in the Hall of Pedagogy, and the boy showed his grandfather with pride his neat array of brooms and rags. As they passed through Higgins Grove and out on to the green in front of the Post Office a great clattering attracted their attention. Men ran, boys shouted, and over and above all rose a fierce and persistent barking.

"It's Cupid! As sure as you're born, it's Cupid!" cried Roger.

Sure enough it was Cupid. He had been trotting gently down one of the side streets, his wagon laden with full milk cans and with sundry bundles. A dog passing across the square at the end of the street attracted his attention, and he started off at full gallop. The cans rolled out of the cart and spurted their milky contents on the ground. A bag of eggs smashed disastrously as it struck the pavement. Tins—of corned beef, lentils, sardines—bounced on the floor of the wagon until they jounced over the side into the road. On, on ran Cupid, his harness holding strongly and the front wheels banging his hind paws at every jump. The uproar that he created drew the attention of the dog which had caused all the commotion by his mere presence on the plaza. Casting a startled glance at Cupid, he clapped his tail between his legs and fled—fled with great bounds, his ears flapping in a breeze of his own creation. Unencumbered as he was he had the advantage of Cupid, who was unable to rid himself of the equipment that marked him as man's slave. Seeing his quarry disappear in the distance the bull dog came to a standstill just as Roger seized the strap that dangled from his harness.

"Yours, I believe," he laughed as he handed the leash to the young man who came running up.

"Mine. Thank you. My name is Watkins and I'd be glad to know you better. I've noticed you passing the house every day."

"Thank you. My name is Morton," and the two young fellows shook hands over Cupid's head, while he sat down between the shafts and let slip a careless tongue from out his heated mouth.

CHAPTER X

A CHAUTAUQUA SUNDAY

ON the last Sunday in July the sun rose on a Chautauqua made serious by the portentous event of war actually declared in Europe. The Mortons felt a vital interest in it. With their father and uncle in the Navy and Army war in theory was a thing not new to them. Both Lieutenant and Captain Morton had served in the Spanish-American War, but Roger was a baby at the time and the other children had been born later. The nearest approach to active service that the children had actually known about was the present situation in Vera Cruz. They had been thrilled when Lieutenant Morton had been ordered there in the spring and Captain Morton had followed later with General Funston's army of occupation.

But the United States troops were not in Mexico to make war but to prevent it, while the impending trouble in Europe was so filled with possibilities that it promised already to be the greatest struggle that the world ever had known.

The horror of it was increased by the fact that for a week all Chautauqua had been giving itself over to the peaceful joys of music. For six days Victor Herbert's Orchestra had provided a feast of melody and harmony and rhythm and everybody on the grounds had participated, either as auditor or as performer, in some of the vocal numbers. Mrs. Morton and Mr. Emerson and Roger had sung in the choir and Dorothy had raised her sweet pipe in the Children's Choir. And at the end of the week had come this crashing discord of war.

Yet the routine of a Chautauqua Sunday went on unbroken. The elders went at nine o'clock to the Bible Study class in the Amphitheatre, and at half past nine the younger members of the family dispersed to the various places where the divisions of the graded Sunday School met. Roger and Helen found the high school boys and girls in the Hall of Christ; the Ethels met the children of the seventh grade at the model of Palestine by the lakeside, and Dicky went to the kindergarten just as he had done on weekday mornings, though what he did after he entered the building was far different.

At ten o'clock Sunday School was over and the older children and the grown-ups scattered to the devotional services at the various denominational houses which Helen and the Ethels had noticed on their first day's walk. At eleven all Chautauqua gathered in the Amphitheatre in a union service that recognized no one creed but laid stress on the beauty and harmony common to all beliefs.

The coming week was that of the special celebration of the founding of Chautauqua Institution forty years before, so it was fitting that Bishop Vincent should preach from the platform which owed its existence to the God-given idea of service which he had brought into being. The ideal church and the ideal Christian were his themes.

"Personality is always enlarged and ennobled by having to do with and becoming responsible for some great institution," he said and even the children understood that the Church suggests a pattern for good thoughts and for service to others which uplifts the people who try to shape their own lives by it.

"Isn't he a beautiful old man," whispered Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown. "Do you suppose we'll ever have a chance to speak to him?"

It seemed to Ethel Brown almost an impossibility; yet it happened that very afternoon.

At three o'clock the Junior Congregation met in the Amphitheatre and the Ethels went, although they had sat through the morning service. It was a glad sight—several hundred girls and boys smiling happily and singing joyously and often grown people sat in the upper seats of the auditorium where they would not intrude upon the gathering below but would be able to see and hear the fresh young faces and voices.

It happened that Bishop Vincent, passing by with Miss Kimball, stopped for a few minutes at the head of one of the aisles to listen to the last hymn, and he was still there when the young people poured out upon the upper walk. Miss Kimball recognized the Ethels and called them to her.

"Here are two little acquaintances of mine, Bishop," she said; "I know they want to speak to you and shake hands with you."

Ethel Brown looked frankly into the benign face above her and made a prompt answer to the question, "Is this your first summer at Chautauqua?" But Ethel Blue was overcome with the embarrassment that seemed to be growing upon her lately, and hardly raised her eyes. Yet as Miss Kimball turned to go on and Ethel Brown walked away beside her Ethel Blue found herself saying desperately in a small voice,

"Bishop, would you tell me something? I must—I want to know something."

"Come and sit down here and tell me what it is," answered the kind and genial tones that could make the huge Amphitheatre ring or could comfort a child with equal effect.

Drawing her to a seat a little way down the sloping aisle the Bishop and the young girl sat down.

"Now what is it?" he asked softly.

Again shyness seized Ethel and made her speechless. She looked desperately after Ethel Brown, unconscious that the others were not following. Ethel Blue turned cold at her own audacity; but she had delayed the Bishop in his afternoon walk and she must tell him what was on her mind.

"Do you think," she stammered, "do you think that a coward can ever become brave?"

"I do," answered the Bishop promptly and simply. "A coward is afraid for two reasons; first, he doesn't control his imagination, and his imagination plays him tricks and makes him think that if such or such a thing happens to him he will suffer terribly; and secondly, he doesn't control his will. His will ought to stand up to his imagination and say, 'You may be right and you may be wrong, but even if you're right I can bear whatever comes. Pain may come, but I can bear it. Trouble may come, but I can bear it.' Do you understand?"

Ethel's face was beginning to light up.

"You see," the Bishop went on, "God has given everybody the power to bear suffering and trouble. You may be perfectly sure that if suffering and trouble come to you you will be given strength to meet them. And God has given us something else; He has given us the power to avoid much pain and suffering."

"Oh, how?"

"One way is always to expect joy instead of pain. When you are looking for joy you find joy and when you are looking for pain you find pain. I rather think that you have been looking for pain recently."

Ethel hung her head.

"I was a coward at the fire at our house, and I'm so ashamed it doesn't seem to me I can ever see my father again. He's a soldier and I know he'd be mortified to death."

"He might be sorry; I don't believe he'd be mortified," said the Bishop, and somehow the half-agreement soothed Ethel. "They say that when soldiers go into battle for the first time they often are so frightened that they are nauseated. I dare say your father has seen cases like that among his own men, so he would understand that a sudden shock or surprise may bring about behavior that comes from nervousness and not from real fear. I rather think that that was what was the matter in your case."

Ethel drew a sigh of exquisite relief.

"Do you remember my two reasons for cowardice? I should think it was quite possible that in the sudden excitement of the fire your imagination worked too hard. You saw yourself smothered by the smoke or roasted in the flames. Didn't you?"

"I didn't really think it; I felt it," Ethel nodded.

"And you didn't stop to say to yourself: 'I'm going to do all I can to help and I'm going to be careful, but if anything does happen to me I'll be able to bear it.'"

"No, I didn't think that; I just thought how it would hurt. And Ethel Brown saved Dicky and wasn't afraid at all."

"She didn't let her imagination run away with her."

"I was so ashamed when she was doing splendid things and I couldn't move."

"It was too bad, but you'll have another chance, I've no doubt. You know the same Opportunity never comes twice but another one takes its place."

"I can't face Father unless it does."

"One thing you mustn't do," declared the Bishop firmly; "you mustn't think about this all the time. That isn't making your will control your imagination; it's doing just the opposite; it's letting your imagination run away with you."

Ethel looked rebuked.

"Now I want to tell you one more thing. I told you one way to avoid pain and suffering—by not expecting it. The best way of all is to do everything that comes into your life just as you think God would like to have you do it. If you work with God in that way God's peace comes to you. Have I preached too hard a sermon?" he asked as they rose to go. "You think about it and come and ask me anything else you want to. Will you?"

Ethel Blue nodded. She did not seem to have voice enough to trust herself to speak. Then she thrust her hand suddenly into the strong, gentle hand of the good man who had talked to her so kindly, gave it a big squeeze and ran away.

The Bishop looked after her.

"It was too hard a test for a nervous child; but she'll have her chance—bless her," and then he slowly walked around the edge of the Amphitheatre and rejoined his companion on the other side. Ethel Brown had just taken leave of her and was running after Ethel Blue as she dashed down the hill.

"I hope she won't catch my little friend," observed the Bishop. "She needs to sit and look at the lake for half an hour."

The address on the Holy Land given in Palestine Park in the afternoon was one of the most interesting things that Chautauqua had offered to them, Helen and Roger thought. Palestine Park, they had discovered early in their stay, was a model of Palestine on a scale of one and three-quarters feet to the mile. It lay along the shore of the lake, which played the part of the Mediterranean. Hills and valleys, mountains and streams, were correctly placed and little concrete cities dotted about in the grass brought Bible names into relation to each other in a way not possible on the ordinary map of the school geography.

"I'd like to study my Sunday School lesson right here on the spot," Helen had said when she first went over the ground and traced the Jordan from its rise through the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea, where, on week days, children sailed their boats and fished with pins for non-existent whales.

Now Helen and Roger stood with the throng that gathered and understood as they never had before the location of tribes and the movements of armies. Most living to them seemed the recital of the life of Christ as the speaker traced His movements from the "little town of Bethlehem" to Calvary.

The later activities of this Sunday again divided the Morton family. Mrs. Morton and Roger nodded to Dorothy at the Organ Interlude at four o'clock. Grandfather and Grandmother sat through the C.L.S.C. Vesper Service at five in the Hall of Philosophy, the westering sun gleaming softly through the branches of the oaks in St. Paul's Grove in which the temple stood. After supper came the Lakeside Service and Helen and Roger stood together in the open and sang heartily from the same book and as they gazed out over the water were thankful that their father was safe in his vessel even though he was far from them and on waters where the sun set more glowingly. Mrs. Morton stayed at home in the evening to keep watch over Dicky but all the rest went to the Song Service, joining in the soft hymn that rose in the darkness before the lights were turned on, and listening with delight to the music of the soloists and the choir.

It was after they were all gathered again at the cottage that there came one of those talks that bind families together. It was quiet Ethel Blue who began it.

"Bishop Vincent told me to-day that if you didn't think that things—bad things—were going to happen to you they were less likely to come," she said.

"Bishop Vincent told you!" exclaimed Roger. "What do you mean?"

"She had a long talk with him after the Junior Service," explained Ethel Brown. "I walked on with Miss Kimball."

"What I want to say is this," continued Ethel Blue patiently after Roger's curiosity had been satisfied; "it seems to me that you're less likely to be afraid that bad things are going to happen to you if you keep doing things for other people all the time."

"It's never wise to think about yourself all the time," agreed Mrs. Morton.

"The Bishop said that if you let your imagination run loose it might give you uncomfortable thoughts and make you afraid. If you're working for other people and inventing pleasant things to do to make them happy your imagination won't be hurting yourself."

"Our little Ethel Blue is becoming quite a chatterbox," commented Roger, giving her hair a tweak as she sat on the steps beside him.

"Hush, Roger. I wish you had half as much sense," said Helen smartly. "Anything more, Ethel?"

"Yes. I wish we had a club, just us youngsters, a club that would keep us doing things for other people all the time. Don't you think it would be fun?"

"H'm, h'm," began Roger, but a gentle nudge from Helen stopped him.

"I think it would be splendid, Ethel Blue," she said; "I know Mother thinks it's just what I need for my complaint. Mother, dear, I'm not selfish; I'm just self-respecting, and self-respecting people want to co-operate just as much as other people. I'd love to have this club to try to prove to you that I'm not a 'greedy Jo.'"

"I'm far from-thinking you a 'greedy Jo,' Helen. You're getting morbid about it, I'm afraid, and I believe this club idea of Ethel Blue's will be an excellent thing for you; and for Roger, too," she went on.

"What's the matter with me?" inquired Roger a trifle gruffly.

"You're a very dear boy," said his mother, running her fingers through his hair in a way that he was just beginning to like after years of considering it an almost unendurable habit, "but sometimes I think you've forgotten your Scout law, 'Do a kindness to some one every day.' It's not that you mean to be unkind; you're just careless."

"H'm," grunted Roger. "There seems to be a good reason for every one of us joining this club. What's the matter with Ethel Brown?"

"I know," answered Ethel Brown before her mother had time to reply; "Mother's going to tell you that I like to do things for people not to give them pleasure, but because it gives me pleasure and so I don't do things the way they like them but the way I like them. And that's really selfish and not unselfish."

"Upon my word," exclaimed Grandfather Emerson, "these children seem to be able to analyze themselves mighty closely! They agree on one thing, though—this club of Ethel Blue's is the cure that they all need for their different ailments."

"Let's have it," cried Roger. "Ethel Blue shall be president and we'll let Dicky be an honorary member and the grown-ups shall be the Advisory Board."

"Oh, I couldn't be president," said Ethel Blue shrinkingly.

"It's your idea. You ought to be," insisted Helen.

"No, you be president. And let's ask Margaret Hancock to belong, and James. You know we'll probably see a good deal of them next winter now that we know them. They're only forty minutes on the trolley from us."

"I wish we'd always known them; they're certainly great kids," pronounced Roger.

"If we have a club it will be an inducement to them to come over often."

"What'll we call the club?" Ethel Brown always liked to have details attended to promptly.

"Do for Others"; "A Thing a Day"; "Every Little Helps," were titles suggested by one voice and another.

"Why not 'The United Servers' if you are going to make it a club of service," asked Mrs. Emerson.

"Why not 'The United Service'?" demanded Roger. "With Father in the Navy and Ethel Blue's father in the Army we have the two arms of the Service united in the family, and if we call it 'The United Service Club' it will be a nice little pun for ourselves and express the idea of the club all right for outsiders."

Everybody seemed to like the suggestion.

"Now, then," declared Roger, standing below the steps and facing the family above him; "it has been moved that Helen be president. Do I hear a second?"

"You do," cried Ethel Blue.

"All right. Everybody in favor—"

"Aye."

"Contrary minded—"

Silence.

"It is a vote, and Miss Helen Morton is unanimously elected president of the United Service Club. What's the next thing to do?"

"Make Dicky an honorary member," suggested Ethel Blue.

"Go to bed," over-ruled Mrs. Morton. "There are the chimes."

So the president and members and Advisory Board of the United Service Club disappeared into the house and Dicky was not informed until the next day of the honor that had befallen him.

CHAPTER XI

THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB IS ORGANIZED

THE Hancocks were notified on Monday morning of their election to membership in the new club. They were delighted to join, especially as it would mean after they got home a regular meeting with the pleasant friends they had had to come many miles from home to know.

"What are we going to do first?" they asked Roger who took the invitation to them.

"Helen has called a meeting for this afternoon at five o'clock. We'll decide on something then."

"Where's it going to be?"

"Up in the ravine just before you get to Higgins Hall. Dorothy's going to make some sandwiches."

"Oh, Dorothy's going to belong."

"Sure thing. Our household can't do without her since Grandfather was sick. I asked Mother if Mary couldn't make us some sandwiches, but she said Mary was awfully busy to-day, and Dorothy said if the club was to help people she'd help Mary by making the sandwiches."

"Good old Dorothy! She's begun to be a United Server before the club has really got to working."

"I don't see why I can't come in on the sandwich business," said James. "I'm a dandy ham slicer."

"Come over, then. Dorothy's making them now on the back porch."

So it happened that there was almost a meeting of the club before the time actually set for it, but after all there was not a quorum, according to James, while at five o'clock every active member was present, though the members of the Advisory Board were detained by other engagements.

The ravine extended back from the lake toward the fence. Through it ran a brook which the dry weather had made almost non-existent, but its course was marked by an abundant growth of wild flowers, including the delicate blue of the forget-me-not.

"Let's have the forget-me-not for our flower," suggested Margaret as soon as they were settled on the bank under the tall trees. "We mustn't pick any of these, of course, but they won't be hard to find at home, and they'll be easy to embroider if we ever need to make badges or anything of that sort."

"Perhaps in the course of a few years we'll be advanced enough to have pins," said Helen, "and forget-me-not pins will be lovely. Even the boys can wear them for scarf pins—little ones with just one flower."

Roger and James approved this suggestion and so the matter of an emblem was decided not only without trouble but before the meeting had been called to order.

"We certainly are a harmonious lot," observed James when some one mentioned this fact.

"What I want to do," said Ethel Brown, "is to give a vote of thanks to Dorothy and James and Ethel Blue for making the sandwiches."

"Good idea; they're bully," commended Roger. "I move, Helen, that the people just mentioned be elected official sandwich makers to the club."

"Don't call the president by her name," objected James. "Don't you have parliamentary law in your school?"

"No; plenty without it."

"We do. We have an assembly every morning—current events and things like that and sometimes a speaker from New York—and one of the scholars presides and we have to do the thing up brown. You wouldn't call Helen 'Helen' there, I can tell you."

"What ought I to say?"

"'Miss President,' or 'Madam President.'"

This was greeted by a howl of joy from Roger.

"'Madam' is good!" he howled, wriggling with delight. "I do know how to put a motion, though. I'll leave it to Ethel Blue if I didn't set her idea on its legs last night by putting through a unanimous vote for Helen for president."

"You did, but you don't seem to be giving the president a chance to call the meeting to order now."

"I apologize, Madam President," and again Roger rolled over in excessive mirth.

"The meeting will come to order, then," began Helen. "Is that right, James?"

"O.K. Go ahead."

"Madam President," said Margaret promptly, "do you think it's necessary for us to be so particular and follow parliamentary law? I think it will be dreadfully stiff and fussy."

"Oh, let's do it, Margaret. I want to learn and you and James know how, so that's a service you can do for me. And Helen ought to know if she's going to be president," Roger urged.

"Here's where you're wrong at the jump-off, old man. You ought not to speak directly to Margaret. You ought to address the chair—that is, Helen."

"What are you doing yourself, then, talking straight to me?"

"Bull's-eye. Margaret was all right, though, Madam President. She addressed the chair. What does the chair think about Margaret's question?"

"I think—the chair thinks—" began Helen, warned by James's amused glance, "that Margaret is right. It won't do us any harm to obey a few parliamentary rules, but if we are too particular it'll be horrid."

"It's a mighty good chance to learn," growled Roger. "I want to make old James useful."

"If you talk that queer way I'll never open my mouth," declared Ethel Blue in a tone of lament.

"Then I move you, Madam President, that we don't do it," said James, "because this club is Ethel Blue's idea and it would be a shame if she couldn't have a say-so in her own club."

"I'm willing to compromise, Helen—Madam President," went on Ethel Blue, giggling; "I say let Roger be parliamentary if he wants to, and the rest of us will be parliamentary or unparliamentary just as we feel like it."

Applause greeted this suggestion, largely from Dicky, who was glad of the opportunity to make some noise.

"There's a motion before the house, Madam President," reminded James.

"Dear me, so there is. What do I do now?"

"Say, 'Is it seconded?'" whispered James.

"Is it seconded?"

"I second it," came from Margaret.

"It is moved and seconded by the Hancocks that we do not follow parliamentary rules in the United Service Club."

Helen had felt herself getting on swimmingly but at this point she seemed to have come to a wall.

"Are you ready for the question?" prompted James in an undertone.

"Are you ready for the question?" repeated Helen aloud.

"Let her rip," advised Roger.

"All in favor say 'Aye.'"

Margaret and James said "Aye."

"Contrary minded——"

"No," roared Roger.

"No," followed Ethel Blue meekly.

"No," came Ethel Brown in uncertain negative.

Helen didn't know just how to handle this situation.

"Three to two," she counted. "They don't agree," and she turned helplessly toward James.

"Right you are," he acknowledged. "Why don't you ask for Ethel Blue's motion?"

"But I didn't make a motion," screamed Ethel Blue, deeply agitated.

"Same thing; you said you were willing to compromise and let Roger be parliamentary if he wanted to and the rest of us do as we liked."

"I think that's a good way."

"Do you make that motion?" asked Helen, prompted by James.

"Yes, I make that motion," repeated Ethel Blue.

"Hurrah for the lady who said she'd never talk 'that queer way,'" cheered Roger.

"It isn't so bad when you know how," admitted Ethel Blue.

"Is that motion seconded?" Helen had not forgotten her first lesson.

"I second it." It was Roger who spoke.

"Question," called Margaret.

"It is moved and seconded that we all do as we like except Roger and that he talk parliamentary fashion all the time."

Thus the president stated the motion.

"Oh, say," objected Roger. "I call that unfair discrimination."

"Not at all," retorted the president. "You were the one who wanted to learn so it's only fair that you should have the chance."

"I can't do it alone."

"Perhaps some of us will be moved to do it, too, once in a while. You see the president ought to know how. These Hancock experts here said so."

"You haven't asked for the 'Ayes' and 'Nos' yet," reminded Margaret, and this time Helen sent it through without a hesitation.

"The next thing for us to decide," continued the president when Ethel Blue's motion had passed without a dissenting voice, "is what we are going to do. Of course we can't undertake any really big things here at Chautauqua where we have all our time pretty well filled and where we are studying things that we ought not to slight because they may help us out later in our plans for service. So I think what we must look out for is little things that we can do to be helpful. Does anybody know of any?"

"I know of one," offered James promptly. "Tomorrow is Old First Night. That's the only time in all the summer when there is a collection taken on the grounds. All the money they get on Old First Night is used for the benefit of the general public. The Miller Tower, for instance, was an Old First Night Gift, and part of the Arts and Crafts Studios was paid for by another one, and the Sherwood Music Studio."

"Great scheme," remarked Roger. "You take your contribution out of one pocket and put it into the other, so to speak. Where do we come in?"

"They want boys to collect the money from the people in the Amphitheatre. That's something you and I can do."

"Is there anything that girls do on Old First Night?"

Ethel Brown turned to Margaret as authority because the Hancocks had been at Chautauqua many summers.

"There never has been anything particular for them to do but I don't know why we couldn't offer to trim the stage. I believe they'd like to have us."

"How shall we find out?"

"I'll telephone to the Director to-night, and if he says 'Yes,' then we can go outside the gate to-morrow afternoon and pick wild flowers and trim the stage just before supper."

"You boys will have to go too," said Helen; "we'll need you to bring back the flowers."

"Right-o," agreed James. "Anybody any more ideas?"

"We'll have to keep our eyes open as things come along," said Ethel Blue. "There ought to be something every day. There's Recognition Day, any way."

"We're all too big for Flower Girls; they have to be not over ten; but Mother went to the 1914 Class meeting this afternoon and one of the members of the class proposed that they should have boys as well as girls—a boys' guard of honor—so there's a job for our honorary member, Mr. Richard Morton."

"If they have a lot of kids they'll want some big fellows to keep them straight and make them march right," guessed James; "that's where you and I come in, Roger, thanks to your mother and grandfather and my father being in the class."

"How about us girls?"

"The graduating class can use all the flowers they can lay their hands on, so we can bring them all we can carry and I know they'll be glad to have them," said Margaret.

"Can't we help them decorate?"

"They always do all the decorating themselves, but the evening before Recognition Day there's going to be a sale of ice cream for the benefit of the fund the C.L.S.C. people are raising to build a veranda on Alumni Hall and we can help a lot there."

"Where's that going to be?"

"There'll be hundreds of lanterns strung between the two halls, the band will play, and they'll have tables in the Hall of Philosophy."

"And we'll wait on the tables."

"We'll carry ice cream and sell cake and tell people how awfully good a chocolate cake that hasn't been cut yet looks so they'll want a piece of that to take home to one of the children who couldn't come."

"Foxy Margaret!"

"It'll be true."

"I suspect it will. My mouth waters now."

"You'll excuse my turning the subject, Madam President," said James excitedly, "but there are some of the jolliest little squirrels up over our heads. I've been watching them ever since we came and I believe I've learned a thing or two about them."

"What!"

They all threw themselves on their backs and stared up into the trees.

"They have regular paths that they follow in going from tree to tree. Did you see that fellow jump? He went out on the tip of that long twig and leaped from there. He just could grab the branch that sticks out from that oak. I believe that must be the only place where it is near enough for them to make the leap, for I've seen at least twenty jump from that same twig since I noticed them first."

"Twenty! How do you know it wasn't one leaping twenty times to show off to us?"

"It was more than one, anyway, for there was a chap with a grand, bushy tail and another one with hardly any tail at all."

"Cats," hissed Ethel Brown tragically.

"Very likely, since shooting isn't allowed here. Last summer I saw a cat catch a chipmunk right over there by that red cottage."

"Did she kill him?"

"Not much! Mr. Chip gave himself a twist and scampered back into his hole in the bank. I tell you the stripes on his back looked like one continuous strip of ribbon he went so fast!"

"Poor little fellow. Any more sandwiches left?" queried Roger. "No? Too bad. Let's adjourn, then. Madam President, I move we adjourn."

"To meet when?"

"When the president calls us," said Ethel Blue.

"And we'll all have our eyes and ears open so as to give her information so she'll have something to call us for."

Picking up the honorary member and setting him on his shoulder Roger led the procession back to the lake front, and so ended the first meeting of the United Service Club which was to fill so large a part in the lives of all its members for several years to come.

CHAPTER XII

OLD FIRST NIGHT

FOR several days after the fire Dicky had been far from well and Mrs. Morton had taken him out of the kindergarten. As he recovered his balance, however, it became evident that he would be very lonely in the mornings when all the rest of the family were away at their different occupations if he, too, did not have some regular task. He was so much stronger and taller than the other children at the kindergarten that Roger, who was proud of his manliness, urged his mother to let him join the Boys' Club.

"Will they take boys as young as he is?"

"It depends entirely on how young they behave, and Dicky's no baby."

"Then if you think they'll accept him suppose you take him to the Club and enroll him."

So Dicky marched bravely in among the hundreds of boys who help to make lively the southern part of the Assembly Grounds, and was duly registered as a member of the Boys' Club. If his rompers seemed to give him a too youthful air at one end the blue sweater adorned with the Boys' Club monogram which he insisted on donning at once, evened up his status. For a day or two Roger had happened in at the Club to see whether the little chap was holding his own and he had been so satisfied with what he saw that he no longer felt it necessary to exercise a daily watchfulness. Dicky came and went all over the grounds now, and often enlightened his elders about some locality of which they were not certain.

When the sun rises on the day that is to end with the Old First Night celebration there is always a suppressed excitement in Chautauqua. The young men of the Daily are listening to the Managing Editor's assignment of their extra duties in reporting the evening festivities; the boys who are to collect the money from the audience in the Amphitheatre and the men to whom they are to deliver it are receiving from the Usher-in-Chief their instructions as to their respective positions and duties; messengers rush their bicycles over the ground delivering notes of invitation to the people who are to sit on the platform.

In the homes the heads of the families are deciding how much they can afford to give to the Old First Night Fund and the other members down to the small children are examining their pocket books and shaking the pennies out of their banks so that every one may have a share, no matter how small, in the gift of Chautauquans to Chautauqua.

The Morton-Emerson household had had its share of the morning excitement and Mrs. Morton and her father were climbing up the hill, she to go to the Women's Club and he to occupy his usual stool at the Arts and Crafts Studios. At almost every step they nodded pleasantly to acquaintances, for they had many friends, some made before the fire, and others drawn to them by the spirit of helpfulness that makes Chautauquans run to the rescue of distress wherever they find it.

As they reached the hilltop and crossed the street to enter the Post Office for the morning mail their ears were saluted by the customary morning sounds. The ice cream booth and the bakery in the pergola were being replenished from heavy kegs and boxes which were in process of being unloaded from carts on to the ground before their destinations. Crowds of people on their way to classes and clubs were opening letters and calling out home news to other members of their families or slitting the wrappers from newspapers and shaking out the front page to come at the war news quickly.

Shrill cries of "Chautauquan Daily" rose on every side as boy venders of the local paper pressed among the people, for they did their best business in the early hours. People who would not take the time to stop and examine the program for the day posted in the tree boxes would read it in the paper as they hurried on to ensure punctuality at their classrooms.

"It really seems as if there was an extra hum in the air," laughed Mrs. Morton.

"I think there is," returned her father drily. His eyes were fastened on a figure approaching them.

"Chautauquan Daily" came from a small but earnest throat. "Chautauquan Daily; program for to-day and to-morrow."

"Upon my word!" ejaculated Mrs. Morton.

"Lecture by Mithter Griggth; addreth by Doctor Hurlbut," piped the piercing voice.

"Upon my word," gasped Mrs. Morton once more; "it's Dicky!"

It was. It was a radiant Dicky. His romper trousers were spread wide on each side and he strutted consumedly. His breast heaved proudly beneath the Boys' Club monogram on his sweater. The elastic under his chin did not hold his hat straight upon his bobbed hair and the brim was canted over one ear and gave him a rakish expression. He was the picture of a perfectly happy boy and he was doing a bigger business than any other newsboy in front of the Post Office. People crowded around him and every time he shouted "Lecture by Mithter Griggth; addreth by Doctor Hurlbut," they went into peals of laughter.

"What shall I do, Father?" asked Mrs. Morton breathlessly.

"You wouldn't have the heart to stop him, would you?" Mr. Emerson asked in return.

Dicky's mother gazed raptly at him for a whole minute.

"No," she said at last, "I haven't the heart to stop him."

"It's in the air, as I said the other evening when Helen was making her plea," said Mr. Emerson.

"Do you suppose it's money Dicky wants?"

"Money and excitement. Dicky will do a kindness to a friend and expect no pay for it just as you did when you were young, but I've no doubt that Dicky also likes the feeling of some extra coppers in his pockets. I suppose there are pockets in those extraordinary garments he wears?"

"Yes," returned Mrs. Morton mechanically. "What is behind it all?" she asked again; "are we Americans getting so thoroughly commercialized that even the babies want to go out in the street and earn money?"

"I believe it's a love of adventure as much as a love of money. At any rate we've seen it developed in three members of your own family and surely our family traditions and the traditions of the Army and Navy are all against commercialism. I believe it is one of the modern phenomena that we must bow before. Opposing it will bring unhappiness and trouble. The thing to do is to encourage such a spirit as your children are showing in this new club of theirs. Let them be commercial if they will but make them understand that their business interests must not make them less human, less friendly, less willing to serve any one who needs their service."

"It is very perplexing," sighed Mrs. Morton, but she walked away without speaking to Dicky, leaving him the centre of a throng lost in admiration of his cry, "Lecture by Mithter Griggth; addreth by Doctor Hurlbut."

Dicky's escapade was not the only one entered into by the Mortons on this memorable day. Right after dinner the whole club except Dicky who, it was decided, was not up to the long walk, went outside the grounds to pick wild flowers for the decoration of the platform of the Amphitheatre. The Director had given his consent and had expressed his pleasure, so the Hancocks and the Mortons and Dorothy set out in high spirits.

It was late in the afternoon when they returned laden with their spoils. Early goldenrod and asters filled their arms, feathery green boughs waved over their heads, and long vines of clematis trailed behind them.

The Ethels were not such good walkers as the others. Even Dorothy kept up with the big boys better than the two younger Mortons, so they found themselves quite alone some distance before they reached the trolley gate.

"Um," sighed Ethel Brown; "I'm tired. I'd like to stop right here."

"Peg along," urged Ethel Blue.

"If only it wasn't against the rule we might crawl under the fence just ahead there where the hole is."

Ethel Blue looked at the place with longing eyes. Dogs had burrowed their way under the pickets and had worn, out a hole that seemed big enough for thin people to get through. She turned to Ethel Brown.

"It would be wrong to do it," she said, "but it would save us a long distance, because there's a short cut right to the Amphitheatre just over there inside."

Ethel Blue was open to temptation to do anything that required daring, for she was trying hard to gain courage by following the Bishop's advice and by attempting little adventures about which she felt timid.

"I'm almost dead," groaned Ethel Brown plaintively. "Do you think they could possibly catch us? You know they tell a story of a fat woman who found a place like this and squeezed her way in and when she was all in a fence guard appeared and made her squeeze herself out again."

"She was trying to cheat the Institution out of her entrance money. We aren't doing that; we've got our gate tickets."

Somehow that made the matter seem better, though in their inmost hearts the girls knew that they were not doing what was right. Yet with a look around and a gasp of excitement they pushed their flowers through ahead of them and then struggled through themselves.

"There isn't anybody in sight," exclaimed Ethel Brown in the low voice of guilt, scanning the grounds as she helped Ethel Blue get on her feet.

"We've done it, anyway," answered Ethel Blue, and she even felt a touch of pride, in the adventure, for at least she had not been frightened.

They took their contribution to the Amphitheatre and helped the others, who had been at work for some time, to arrange the flowers around the edge of the platform. The result was beautiful and the group was delighted when a hearty voice said suddenly, "Is this the United Service Club? I want to thank you for doing this for us. We've never looked so fine as this before on Old First Night."

"Thank you, thank you," they chorused in return as the Director left them.

It was a happy though weary group that chattered its way along the lake front and across Miller Park. No sooner had they reached the cottage than the Ethels told their story to Mrs. Morton with much laughter. For some reason she did not take the joke just as they would have liked to have her.

"You know it is against the rule? Everybody is expected to go out and enter through the gates."

"Oh, we know that. But what harm did it do? We weren't cheating the Institution; we had our tickets."

"Suppose everybody did what you did. Can you see any objection?"

"It would look mighty funny," giggled Ethel Blue.

"It would be rather confusing, I suppose," admitted Ethel Brown; "they wouldn't be able to tell who had tickets and who hadn't."

"You don't really mind, do you, Aunt Marion?"

"I confess I shall have to make up a new opinion about my honest little girls," she replied slowly. "Have you thought what you are going to do about the punch on your tickets?"

This hint was alarming.

"What about the punch?"

"Everybody's ticket is punched on an odd number when you come in and on an even one when you go out. Your last punch was on an even number, when you went out this afternoon. What are you going to do when you want to go out again?"

Ethel Brown stared at Ethel Blue in dismay, and Ethel Blue's eyes began to fill with tears.

"It will be perfectly clear to the gateman that you came in in some improper way."

Mrs. Morton went into the dining-room to take a last look at the table and the Ethels went upstairs to dress. Somehow the fun of their adventure had faded away. In its place was a growing discomfort that was increasingly painful. They did not discuss their trouble and they put on clean dresses without their usual pleasure in their freshness and prettiness. Mrs. Morton did not allude to the subject again, and that gave the children additional feelings of uneasiness, for they felt that she was leaving the decision as to their future action entirely to them.

Roger, who was to pass a basket at the Amphitheatre, hurried through his supper and whooped to James as he passed the Hancocks' house. The other members of the two families went later and more slowly, enjoying as they walked along the lake front the familiar tunes that the chimes were ringing out. As they climbed the hill they were sorry that they had not made an earlier start, for people were gathering in flocks and the organ was already playing. Once more they had to say, "This is the largest audience yet." This time it was remarkable for its number of old people, for it seemed as if everybody who ever had been at Chautauqua made a point of returning to join in the celebration of the Fortieth Anniversary.

The service arranged by Bishop Vincent for the opening night was used for the forty-first time, and tears ran down the cheeks of old men and women who recalled the passing of the intervening years and gave their memento of esteem to the Chautauquans of bygone days when they joined the rest of the huge audience in lifting their handkerchiefs in a drooping salute to the dead.

The Chancellor introduced the President, and he, after a few words of historical reminiscence, introduced the speakers of the evening, a dozen of them, who spoke briefly and told some good stories. Between their speeches were sandwiched the events that make Old First Night different from any other night in the Amphitheatre. The members of the family of Mr. Miller, one of the founders of the Institution, were honored by a waving Chautauqua salute, invented long ago for a deaf speaker and continued because of its beauty. Mrs. Thomas Edison, a daughter of Mr. Miller, thanked the audience for its tribute to her father and called for a similar salute to the Vincent family.

"There's Miss Kimball standing with two other ladies to be saluted," cried Ethel Brown.

"And there's the president of the Women's Club with her," said Mrs. Morton.

Old songs were sung and "Dixie" brought a large Southern contingent to its feet. Mr. Vincent joked and cajoled his hearers while messengers and ushers gathered several thousand dollars, the Old First Night gift.

Best fun of all were the roll calls. Between sixty and seventy were present who had been a part of the original Old First Night. Thirty-two persons rose as having been at Chautauqua for forty-one summers and a Chautauqua salute sent them happily to their seats, for a Chautauqua salute is an honor, not achieved every day. "I've been waiting twenty-five years for this," said a professor in one of the Summer Schools who received the distinction as a "Good-bye" before a trip to Europe.

By way of gaining an idea of the breadth of Chautauqua's call, dwellers in different parts of the world and of the United States were called to their feet. A small group rose as from New England; a very large group from New York and Pennsylvania. The South stood solid in large parties all over the auditorium, and the West had sent many representatives. The showing from Canada and parts of the world outside of our own country was by no means small.

"Who are the people on the platform beside the speakers?" Helen asked Mrs. Hancock who sat next her.

"The officers and trustees of the Institution, almost all of the 'old originals' and some people of distinction who happen to be on the grounds."

Then they left the Amphitheatre to go to the lake front for the fireworks and found themselves passing through a forest of brilliant lanterns swinging from the trees and casting their soft light on the paths and grass. Thousands of happy people, some wet-eyed with memories, some wide-eyed with wonder, walked beneath them, talking of days gone by and days to come.

So large was the Morton-Emerson-Hancock group that Mrs. Morton did not notice until she was almost at her own door that the Ethels were not near her.

"They were in the Amphitheatre," she said.

"I saw them coming out," cried Margaret.

"We'll wait a few minutes and then if they don't come Roger must look for them," said Mrs. Morton anxiously.

But before she had had many minutes of anxiety the two girls came running up to the porch. They were laughing happily now, and in quite a different mood from that in which they had left the house earlier in the evening.

"What in the world have you been doing, children?" asked Grandmother Emerson. "Your dresses are covered with dirt."

"Mother knows."

"Aunt Marion can guess."

"I'm sure I don't and I can't. What have you been up to?"

"It's all right about our ticket," nodded Ethel Brown gleefully.

"How can that be?"

"We were so worried about the punching coming out wrong that as soon as we left the Amphitheatre we ran up to that hole in the fence and crawled out again, and then we ran down the road as fast as we could to the trolley gate and came in properly, so now our tickets punch all right."

"But there's still a hurt in my girls' consciences, isn't there?" asked Mrs. Morton, drawing them to her and kissing them "Good-night."

"You see," she went on, "when you broke a law of the Institution you were not law-abiding citizens."

"But we weren't wicked, because we had our tickets—we weren't cheating."

"That's true, but laws are made to help communities to run smoothly. If you do not obey them you are not co-operating with the people who are working for the happiness of the whole body."

"'Co-operation'—that's just team-work," mused Roger.

"Right," confirmed Mr. Emerson. "Co-operation is what makes life easy to live, it's what produces results, it's what makes the world better. Be a co-operator."

"Me a co-op," agreed Roger cheerfully, while the Ethels sat silently on the steps and thought about it.

CHAPTER XIII

FLYING

"NEWS, news, news," shouted Roger as he turned a cartwheel before the porch on which his mother was sitting. It was the day after Old First Night.

"What is it? Vera Cruz—?" asked Mrs. Morton and Ethel Blue, whose thoughts always were with the Navy and Army.

"Nothing to do with Vera Cruz," Roger reassured them. "This event is much nearer home. It isn't any farther away from home than from here to the steamboat dock."

"What is it, Roger?" demanded Helen. "You're so tantalizing!"

"Oh, for the white wings, sailing, sailing," sang Roger, advancing gracefully with outstretched arms and retreating abruptly as Dicky made a rush at him, head down like a young goat.

"Are you going to sail in the Humbug again?"

"Has she won another race?"

"Come, birdie, birdie, perch on this twig," cooed Ethel Brown with a gesture toward the piazza rail, "and tell us all about it."

Roger responded to this appeal, especially as it was re-enforced by the bait of a fresh cooky, held out invitingly.

"Ladies," he began impressively, as he roosted on the offered rail and took a generous bite out of the cooky.

"Just an instant, Roger, until that cooky disappears," begged his mother with upraised hand.

"I can talk all right," mumbled Roger.

"But we can't hear you all right," retorted Helen.

"Oh, come, you like cookies as well as I do," remonstrated her brother, taking in the last crumb.

"Certainly I do, and Ethel Brown's are the best ever, but I eat mine in sections."

"So do I—two sections," grinned Roger. "There, now I'm sufficiently refreshed to tell you the news. I suppose you poor creatures didn't realize there was any news, eh?"

"By a strenuous use of our wits we gathered that there was something in the air when we saw you approach," murmured Helen, who sometimes found Roger trying.

"List, then, beloved members of my family——"

"Hark to the troubadour," mocked Ethel Blue.

"Now, child, if you interrupt your uncle Roger you won't ever learn this thrilling piece of information that is about to fall from my ruby lips."

"Chirp on, then, ornithological specimen."

"Ma'am!" exclaimed Roger, burlesquing a fall from the railing. "Fortunately you don't catch me in the state of ignorance that you supposed when you hurled that awful language at me. I haven't got a grandmother who is a member of the Rosemont Bird and Tree Club for nothing. An 'ornithological specimen' is just slang for 'bird.' Look out or I'll retaliate with 'chicken.'"

"I'm no chicken," denied Ethel Blue instantly.

"Look at that, Mother!" implored Roger. "All fussed up over a trifle like that! And the funny part is that if I said she was 'no chicken' she'd be just as mad! Girls are so queer," and he heaved an exaggerated sigh of perplexity.

"Do let's have your news if it's worth telling," asked Mrs. Morton.

"She doubts me," commented Roger haughtily. "Ha! You'll see, madam, that you have no reason to throw asparagus on my announcement. It's real news that I'm bringing. Chautauqua, the spot that we're honoring by our presence this summer, Chautauqua—is to have a birdman!"

The result of Roger's announcement was all that he had hoped and more than he had expected. The Ethels fairly pranced with excitement. Helen clapped her hands excitedly, and Mrs. Morton laid down her embroidery to ask, "When is he to come?"

"How perfectly stunning!"

"Where will he fly from?"

"Where's he going to keep his machine?"

"Is he going to take passengers?"

The questions flew fast and Roger covered his ears as if they overwhelmed him. He answered his mother's question first.

"He's due to-morrow, Mother. They're starting right this minute to put up the tent he's going to use for his hangar. It's down side of the steamboat dock. His machine is what they call a hydro-aeroplane—"

"It will go both in the water and in the air?"

"So I understand. I saw a picture of it and it looked to me as if it could go on land, too, for men were pulling it down to the water's edge on its own wheels."

"Probably the engine doesn't work the wheels, though."

"Probably not enough for it to travel far on them. He starts off on the water, anyway, and then he rises from the water and the machine goes along like any aeroplane. It's a biplane."

"Meaning?" queried Ethel Brown.

"That it has two planes—two sets of wings on each side."

"You didn't tell us whether he's going to carry passengers."

"I don't know. I asked, but nobody seemed ready to answer."

"Let's go down to the dock and see them put up the hangar."

"After dinner, children, after dinner," insisted Mrs. Morton. "How long will he stay, Roger?"

"A week or two."

"Then you can surely eat your dinner before rushing off. We're so near the dock you can easily see every flight if you put your minds on it."

Mrs. Emerson smiled at her daughter's words, for they both recalled a time when the Morton children were so eager to see a new teacher who had just come to Rosemont that they almost lived on the sidewalk in front of her house, in order that no passage in or out might escape them.

Seldom was a meal in the Morton dining-room disposed of with such slight attention as this dinner which had to be met and conquered before the reconnaissance could be made. Both Ethels declared that they really did not feel at all like having dessert to-day, and they seemed grieved when Mrs. Morton regretted their lack of interest in it, but failed to take it as a reason for allowing them to leave the table before the rest of the family had finished.

"If we've got to stay we might as well eat it," said Ethel Brown sulkily.

"Mary would like to see that you appreciated her thoughtfulness," said Mrs. Morton gently. "She has taken pains to make caramel custard to-day because she heard you say a little while ago that you 'adored' it."

"Good for Mary. I'm a Selfish Susy," declared Ethel Brown promptly. "I'll eat two to make up for it," she added with a cock of her head.

"O-oh," groaned Roger, "and me planning to take advantage of the dear children's sudden and unusual lack of appetite!"

"Foiled again, villain!" declaimed Helen.

"Now, then, I'll race you to the beach," cried Roger as soon as dinner was over, and off they went, regardless of Grandmother Emerson's anxieties about the shock to their digestions.

After all, the hangar proved to be not much to see. There was a large tent to house the machine and there was a small tent for a dressing-room for the aviator and another to serve as a sleeping tent for his machinists who were also to act as watchmen against damage from a sudden storm or a heavy wind coming up in the night, or the too curious fingers of the inquisitive during the day.

The tents were entirely unremarkable, but drays were hauling from the freight station big boxes that contained the parts of the wonderful machine, and a rapidly increasing crowd stood about while their tops were unscrewed and the contents examined. A man who was directing the workers was proven to be the airman when some one called his name—Graham.

"It won't be assembled before to-morrow afternoon, I suspect," he had answered. "Then I'll try it out carefully. A man bird can't take any chances with his wings, you know."

"I'd like to ask him if he's going to take passengers," whispered Ethel Brown, and Roger was so eager to find out that fact himself that he worked his way nearer and nearer to Mr. Graham when he heard some one put the question.

"It depends," answered that young man diplomatically. "If the machine works well I may do it. Or I may make only exhibition flights. I shan't know for a day or two."

"What'th it'th name?" asked Dicky, who had heard so much talk about birds that he thought Mr. Graham was bringing to light some bird pet.

"Its name?" repeated the aviator. "It hasn't a name, kid. It ought to have one, though," he went on thoughtfully. "You couldn't suggest one, could you?"

"Ith it a lady bird or a boy bird?" he asked.

"H'm," murmured Mr. Graham, seriously; "I never thought to ask when I bought it. We'll have to give it a name that will do for either."

"There aren't any," announced Dicky firmly. "There'th only boy nameth and lady nameth."

"Then we'll have to make up a name. It wouldn't be a bad idea," said Graham, turning to one of his assistants. "Why not offer a prize to the person who suggests the most suitable name?"

"It would help keep up the interest."

"It doesn't look as if that would need any outside stimulus," smiled Graham, glancing at the crowd, held back now by ropes stretched from posts driven down into the beach.

When darkness fell electric lights were rigged so that the machinists might go on with their work, and all through the night they matched and fitted and screwed so that by morning the great bird was on its feet. By noon the engine was snapping sharply at every trial, and when the waning light of six o'clock fell on the lake all was in such condition that Mr. Graham was ready to make his first venture.

The Morton children were in the front rank of the crowd that thronged the grounds about the tents. An extra guard kept back the people who pressed too closely upon the preparations still under way, for a mechanical bird must be as carefully prepared for its flight as a horse for a race.

When all was well Mr. Graham mounted upon his seat. He wore just such a blue serge coat and just such white flannel trousers as a thousand men on the grounds were wearing, and the Mortons did not know whether to feel disappointed because his get-up was not more spectacular or to admire the coolness with which he stepped aboard for a flight that seemed to them fraught with peril in the every day garb of the ordinary man who never leaves the ground except in imagination.

"I like him this way," announced Ethel Blue. "It makes you feel as if he was so far from being afraid that he didn't even take the trouble to make any special preparations."

"I hoped he'd wear goggles and a leather suit and cap," said Roger, who was decidedly disappointed. "Those fellers look like some sports."

But if Mr. Graham's appearance was disappointing, his flight was all that their fancy had painted it and more. He mounted with apparent carelessness to his seat, and then the machine was pushed from the hangar to the beach. Leaving its beak in the water the helpers ran back and whirled its tail violently. A whir of remonstrance answered at once and the engine took up the complaint.

"There she goes! There she goes!" cried Roger and a hum of delight and wonder rose from the crowd.

Out into the water she swept, chugging noisily over the surface, her wings tipping gently from side to side as she sped. The people on the gallery of the Pier House cheered. Men waved their hats and women their hands.

"She's going up! See her rise?" they cried once more as the big bird's beak turned upward and the body followed with a swiftness that took the whole machine into the air while the spectators were guessing how long she would drag before she felt the wind under her wings.

And then, southward, straight southward, she flew, rising, ever rising until she was high in air and but a spot in the distance. Not until the spot had disappeared did the crowd breathe naturally.

"That's the most marvellous sight I ever saw!"

"I wonder how it feels."

"Wouldn't you like to try it?"

Then came a cry of "Here she comes back!" and in an incredibly short time, the engine's buzz once more struck their waiting ears. As he approached Chautauqua the airman sank lower and lower, until he looked like a mammoth bird darting toward one shore and then the other, swooping down to catch an insect, and rising again until the rays of the sinking sun glistened on his wings.

The Mortons were not the only Chautauquans who were eager to know if Mr. Graham was going to take up passengers. Never did he make a flight that he was not beset by would-be fliers urging their company upon him. Roger hung about with desire in his heart, but he never spoke to the aviator about it because he had seen so many grown men refused that he knew there was no chance for a boy.

One day, however, he overheard a conversation between Mr. Graham and one of his mechanics which put hope into his heart.

"I'm perfectly sure of her now," the airman said. "She flies like a real bird and I've got her tuned up just the way I want her. I believe I'll let the passengers come on."

Roger went home delighted. The next day he was at the hangar long before any one else, and spoke diffidently to Mr. Graham's helper.

"I heard Mr. Graham say yesterday that he was going to take passengers to-day," he said hesitatingly. "Of course I'm only a boy, but I do want to go up."

"Want to just as much as if you were a man, eh?" smiled the mechanician. "I shouldn't wonder if you did. Have you got the price?"

That there should be a "price" had not occurred to Roger. He flushed as he said, "I don't know. How much is it?"

"Twenty-five dollars."

Roger drew a long whistle and turned away.

"No flying for me, until flying's free," he chanted drearily. "Forget that I spoke," he added, nodding to the young man.

"Too bad, old chap. Perhaps your ship will come in some day and then you for the clouds," he called cheerily after Roger's retreating form.

"Uh, huh," grunted Roger skeptically, for never had he had the sum of twenty-five dollars to do what he chose with, and he set about banishing the thought of flying from his mind for many years to come.

There was no lack of passengers at any sum the aviator chose to ask, it seemed. All the Morton children were on the beach regularly at every flight and they saw man after man and woman after woman ascend. The novices always wore a nervously doubtful smile as they left the familiar ties of earth and water behind them and a laugh of delight as they came back unafraid and joyous.

"It looks as if it must be the most perfect feeling that you could have," sighed Ethel Blue as they watched a beaming woman approach over the water and then come down from her seat beside the air chauffeur. "I'm like Roger—I could almost die happy if I could have just one fly."

"The airman has offered a prize for the best name for his machine," Ethel Brown read from the Daily at breakfast one morning.

"Don't I wish I could get it!" ejaculated Roger.

"Or I!" "Or I!" "Or I!" came from Helen and Ethel Brown and Ethel Blue.

"It was Dicky's notion. He suggested it to Mr. Graham by asking him what the name of his bird was. He ought to give a prize to Dicky for putting the idea into his head," said Roger.

"Or to some member of Dicky's family who would enjoy the ride more," added Mr. Emerson slyly.

"What would be a good name for it?" wondered Mrs. Emerson.

"Hummer," said Roger. "It makes such a humming noise."

"Buzz-saw," suggested Grandfather Emerson.

"Bumble-bee," offered Mrs. Morton.

"Humming bird," suggested Helen.

"Swallow," "Hirondelle," cried both Ethels at once.

"Hirondelle? That means 'swallow,'" translated Grandfather Emerson. "You two had the same idea at the same moment."

"It's prettier than a noisy name," defended Ethel Brown.

"The swallow is prettier than the bumble bee or the humming bird," defended Ethel Blue at the same moment. "I'd rather give the machine a name that made you think of its graceful motion rather than one that makes you think of its horrid noise."

"I withdraw 'Buzz-saw.' You've convinced me," said Mr. Emerson.

"Mr. Graham says here," Ethel Brown picked up the newspaper again, "that he'd like to have the suggestions sent him by mail and that he'll decide to-morrow, and that the prize will be a ride in his hydroplane."

"Me for pen and ink," shouted Roger as he rose promptly from the table.

"Let's send ours in together," said both Ethels at once.

They often spoke together in this way. It seemed as if their being constantly together made them think the same thoughts at the same time.

"We'll tell him that we called out Swallow and Hirondelle at the same instant and so we're applying for the prize together, and we hope it will please him because it's the name of one of the most graceful birds there is and we think his airship is the most graceful one we ever saw."

"Perfectly true, considering it's the only one you ever saw," giggled Helen.

"Never mind," said Mrs. Morton soothingly. "Write him just that note and it will please him that you like his machine even if he doesn't care for the name you suggest."

Mrs. Morton had thought seriously about the possibility of one of the children's going up with Mr. Graham ever since the airman had come to the grounds. At first she had dismissed the thought as of something too dangerous for her to think of permitting. Then, as she watched Mr. Graham day by day and saw his extreme care and learned from his mechanician that he never failed personally to test every wire and nut before he started out, she grew to have such confidence in him that she was almost as disappointed as Roger when she learned the fee for a fifteen minute trip in the air. Now there was at least a chance that some member of the family might have the opportunity, so she made no objection to the sending in of the suggestions.

There was a great writing of letters, a mighty flurry of envelopes, a loud calling for postage stamps, and a march in procession of the younger members of the household up the hill to the Post Office.

"Mr. Graham flies to Mayville every morning to carry a special bag of Chautauqua postcards to the mail there," said Roger. "Let's go to the hangar when he starts. He always brings the bag down the hill himself and perhaps he'll have his own mail at the same time and we can sit off on the dock somewhere and watch him open it."

"Oh, I don't think we'd better do that," said Ethel Blue shrinkingly. "It would seem like intruding on him."

"Perhaps it might," agreed Roger. "The truth is, I'm so perfectly crazy to go up I'm losing my manners."

"Let's write postcards to Father and Uncle Richard, any way," suggested Ethel Brown. "You know they're stamped 'Aerial Delivery' or some such words and it will interest them awfully at Vera Cruz to know their mail started on its way to Mexico by airship."

They went into the writing room at the Post Office and prepared the special postcards, and had the pleasure of nodding to Mr. Graham when he came for the bag. They had slipped their own letters into the regular letter drop and they watched him receive a handful of personal letters, among which were their own, with a vivid interest because they felt that in a few hours their fate would be decided.

"I'm going to feel sorry if I don't get the prize," confessed Helen, "but not more than one of us can get it—unless he should take up the Ethels together because they're little—and I'll be glad if one of us has the chance to go."

"Me, too," said Roger stoutly. "But I wish he had an ark and could take the whole family."

"We needn't be so sure that a member of our family will take the prize," suggested Mrs. Morton when they came home. "There are one or two other families on the grounds and I've no doubt the poor man will regret his offer when he has to open his mail."

"He had some crop this morning," said Roger. "I dare say it will grow all day long."

It was the next day but one before the exciting question was decided. Then Mr. Graham inserted a card in the Daily. Ethel Brown read it again at the breakfast table.

"'Mr. Graham desires to announce,'" she read, "'that two young ladies have suggested the name he has been most pleased with—Swallow and Hirondelle. He prefers the French form but he will be glad to discharge his obligations to both the persons who suggested practically the same name.'"

"It's us," murmured Ethel Blue, too surprised to speak aloud.

"'If Miss Ethel Brown Morton and Miss Ethel Blue Morton will be at the hangar at six o'clock this evening Mr. Graham will redeem his offer.'"

"Isn't it too wonderful!" gasped Helen.

"I'm glad of it," declared Roger bravely and he tweaked each Ethel's hair as he left the room.

"I'm almost sorry," whispered Ethel Blue; "Roger wants it so much."

Mrs. Morton smiled at her.

"You've won it fairly," she said. "We'll all be at the dock to see you go this afternoon."

There could not have been a better evening for a first flight. There was not a breath of air to cause any anxiety either to passengers or to observers. The sun had sunk far enough for its rays not to be disturbing unless the aviator flew much higher than he was in the habit of doing. The crowd on the shore was the only upsetting feature to rather timid girls.

"We mustn't mind them," whispered Ethel Blue.

"There's always something disagreeable about everything nice; this time it's the people," agreed Ethel Brown.

"They're kind and interested. Forget all about them," advised Mrs. Morton.

Mr. Emerson escorted the two girls to the hangar.

"Here are the two young women who suggested the Swallow as the most appropriate name for your big bird," he said, smiling.

Mr. Graham shook hands with them both.

"I know your faces very well," he said. "You've been here every day."

"Yes," they nodded.

"We're so much obliged to you," said Ethel Blue.

"We've been perfectly crazy to go up," said Ethel Brown.

"Which of you suggested Hirondelle?" asked the aviator.

"Ethel Blue did"; and

"I did," answered both girls in unison.

"Then I'll ask Miss Ethel Blue to go up first, since it is her choice that I've had painted on my machine's wings."

Sure enough, as the aircraft came trundling out of the tent there were letters to be seen indistinctly on the under side of the lower planes. Ethel Blue clasped her hands nervously; but Mr. Emerson was speaking calmly to her, and Mr. Graham was taking a last look over the machine so that she felt sure that everything would be secure, and Aunt Marion and the children were smiling just the other side of the ropes, and Ethel Brown was waiting for her to come back so that she could have her turn, and above all, the words of the good Bishop rang through her mind. "Don't let your imagination run away with you."

Of a sudden she became perfectly cool, and when Mr. Graham helped her into the little seat and fastened a strap around her waist she laughed heartily at his joke about the number of holes difference between the size of her waist and that of the last passenger.

Then he climbed beside her, and the machine began to move clumsily forward as the men ran it down to the water.

"Hold tight," came a voice that was strong and kind.

The water splashed in her face and she knew that the hydroplane was pretending it was a duck.

Then came the kind voice again.

"We're going to rise now. Open your eyes."

She obeyed and of a sudden there thrilled through her the same delightful sensation she had felt in her dreams when she had been a bird and had soared higher and higher toward the sky. Then she had wept when she wakened to realize that it had not happened at all. Now it was truly happening. She was up, up, up in the air; the water was shining beneath her; the hilly land was growing flatter and flatter as she looked down upon it. Trees seemed like shrubs, boats like water beetles. A motor boat that had tried to race them was left hopelessly behind.

"It's Bemus Point," she screamed into Graham's ear, and he smiled and nodded.

"We're going to turn," he shouted back.

Then they dipped and soared, the aviator always telling her what he was going to do so that she might not be taken by surprise. As they approached Chautauqua again they saw the people on the shore and the dock applauding but the noise of the engine was so great that the sounds did not reach them.

"Down we go," warned Mr. Graham, and in landing they reversed the starting process.

There were smiles and shouts of welcome for both of them as they beached.

"Hirondelle looks bully painted on the wings," called Roger.

Mr. Graham helped Ethel from her seat.

"You're the youngest passenger I've ever taken up," he said, "but I've never had a pluckier."

"Never a pluckier." Ethel Blue said the words over and over while Ethel Brown took her turn and sailed away toward Mayville and then down the lake for a five mile stretch.

"Never a pluckier."

She knew exactly why she had not been afraid. She had not felt that she was a girl trying to be a swallow; while the flight lasted she really had been the Hirondelle of her dreams.

CHAPTER XIV

NIAGARA FALLS

"HOW would you two Ethels like to go to Niagara Falls?" asked Mrs. Morton a day or two after the famous flight, as she slipped back into its envelope a letter which she had just read.

"Oh!" cried both girls in long drawn joy.

"This letter is from Mrs. Jackson at Fort Edward in Buffalo," explained Mrs. Morton. "Lieutenant Jackson is your father's best friend, Ethel Blue, and Mrs. Jackson knew your mother and she wants to seize this opportunity of our being near Buffalo this summer to see her friend's little daughter."

"Not—me—and Niagara?" questioned Ethel Brown.

"She has a daughter about your age and she thought it would be a pleasant week-end for all three of you if you two could go to Buffalo on Friday afternoon and stay over Sunday. She will take you on Saturday to see the Falls."

"How perfectly magnificent!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.

"How shall we get to Buffalo?" asked Ethel Brown. "We've never been so far alone."

"Roger will put you on the train at Mayville and Mrs. Jackson will meet you at the station at Buffalo."

"All we'll have to do will be to sit still?"

"Between the parting with Roger and the meeting with Mrs. Jackson. Exactly," returned Mrs. Morton, smiling.

"Are we equal to it?" Ethel Brown demanded of Ethel Blue in the quizzical way that made her so much like Roger.

"We are," returned Ethel Blue promptly, and the two girls marched about the room, their arms over each other's shoulders, with the back-step that they delighted in—one, two, three steps forward, and the fourth step back.

"One, two, three, back; one, two, three, back," they chanted.

"Why this hilarity?" questioned Roger from the threshold.

"We are going to the Falls, the Falls, the Falls,
We are going to the Falls in the morning,"
chanted the prospective travellers.

"You are!" ejaculated Roger. "When? How? Are we all going?"

"Not you. Only the two best-behaved members of the family are invited," declared Ethel Brown.

"Mother, aren't my manners the top notch of perfection?" Roger demanded.

"They're very good at times," returned his mother calmly.

"'At times' means all the time, of course," insisted Roger. "Did Mother ever compliment you like that, kids?"

"You're going part way with us," they announced kindly.

"Good enough. How far? To Buffalo?"

Roger beamed.

"Not quite. To Mayville."

Roger groaned.

"To Mayville! Three miles. You'll be saying next that I may have the privilege of walking there to see you off and waving my hand as the train departs."

"That's just what we are saying, my child. Except that we'll all travel the three miles in our trolley car or on our steamer instead of on our feet."

"Mother, Mother! Help! Help!" cried Roger, holding his hands to his distracted brow. "Are these young women mad or do my ears deceive me? Do I 'lamp' Niagara Falls? Or does my part of the trip stop at Mayville?"

"If I get your meaning through your somewhat obscure language," replied Mrs. Morton who liked to take an occasional shot at Roger's slang, "you'll not see Niagara Falls, but you will escort your sister and cousin to the train at Mayville."

"But you don't mean to tell me that those babes, those infants in arms are going the rest of the way by themselves? They'll be lost in the vastnesses of Buffalo! They'll shoot the chutes or fall the Falls or—"

"When your breath gives out we'll tell you what has happened," remarked Ethel Brown loftily.

"'Pray do,'" quoted Roger.

"We've had an invitation—that is, Ethel Blue has—"

"I judged as much," commented Roger faintly.

"—from Mrs. Jackson at Fort Edward."

"Ah! A great light begins to break upon me!"

"She asked Ethel Blue to go to Buffalo for the week-end and to bring me—"

"—and we're to go to Niagara Falls on Saturday," finished Ethel Blue triumphantly.

Roger frowned.

"All I've got to say is that I'm proud to be the three-mile escort of such travelled young ladies. I bow before you and place my humble services at your disposal," which he did with an elaborate flourish and his hand on his heart.

It seemed to the Ethels that there were a thousand matters to be attended to before they went on Friday. They had to decide what dresses they should wear and what they should take. Each one had her own suitcase and they had been fitting their bags with small travelling comforts for several months before the summer trip to Chautauqua. One or two trifling affairs still remained undone and these they set themselves to make before the eventful day of departure.

"When I see a bag opened I know at once whether its owner is a tidy person or not," Mrs. Morton said. "Everything ought to be neatly arranged and covered with a tuck-in square over all."

It was the tuck-in square that neither of the girls had finished before leaving Rosemont. Now they were determined that if Mrs. Jackson happened to be about when they opened their bags she should see that these daughters were worthy of their neat soldier fathers. They went to the dry goods shop and bought each a half yard of silkoline. Ethel Brown's had yellow flowers on it and Ethel Blue's had cornflowers. These they finished with an inch-wide hem, featherstitched at the top, Ethel Brown's with yellow silk and Ethel Blue's with blue silk. When their bags were all packed they laid these pieces over everything and fastened the straps outside of them.

"The cloth prevents the straps from doing any injury to your freshly laundered clothes, you see," explained Mrs. Morton.

"And it keeps dust out, too," said Ethel Brown.

"And it certainly looks perfectly scrumptious," decided Ethel Blue with her head on one side admiringly.

The Ethels were up bright and early on the exciting morning.

"What's the use," demanded Roger, "of your going around like dizzy antelopes at this time of day when you don't have to take the boat until two o'clock?"

"You'd be doing it yourself if you were going," retorted Ethel Brown. "Somehow it spreads out the fun."

"For you," growled Roger. "For us stay-at-homes it flaunts your good luck in our faces—no, I didn't mean that," he added quickly as he saw a shadow grow in Ethel Blue's sensitive eyes. "Honest, I'm mighty glad you kids have got the chance to go. Of course I am. I was only fooling."

"I do wish you and Helen were going too," answered Ethel Blue. "It would be lots nicer."

Roger saw that he had made a mistake by insisting on his misfortune, a mistake that often is made when we try to be funny, and he laid himself out to be especially nice to the girls. He took every care of them, carrying their bags, passing them through the gate and helping them on to the boat with as much formality as he would have shown to his mother and grandmother.

Though not long, it was a pleasant sail from Chautauqua to Mayville. The boat touched at Point Chautauqua on the other side of the lake where a group of summer-boarder young people were saying "Good-bye" to a friend with many loud exclamations of grief. The boys wrung imaginary tears from their handkerchiefs and one of the girls pretended that she required a tub that was standing on the pier to contain the evidences of her woe.

The Ethels were hugely amused at this comedy and laughed heartily, while Roger, who was still in a serious mood, frowned and called it all "stupid."

At Mayville they had to walk the length of the pier, but at its head they found the station. Roger presented each of the girls with a magazine with which he had provided himself before leaving Chautauqua, and a box of candy and a package of sandwiches gave them the wherewithal for afternoon tea if they should become too hungry for endurance before they reached Buffalo.

"Afternoon tea without the tea," smiled Ethel Brown.

"I do wish Mrs. Jackson had asked you," repeated Ethel Blue as Roger helped her up the steps of the car.

"She would if she had known how nice I am," laughed Roger. "Good-bye, good-bye," and he waved a farewell as long as he could see their car.

Once under way the girls gave themselves up to the excitement of their first travelling by themselves. They examined the faces of all the passengers and decided that no one was very handsome but that they all looked very kind and that they should not hesitate to call upon them for help if they needed it.

"The old man just behind us is something like Grandfather," said Ethel Brown. "If we don't see Mrs. Jackson right off when we get out at Buffalo we'll ask him what we ought to do."

"Aunt Marion said we'd better not speak to anybody except the men wearing the railway uniform," objected Ethel Blue. "If she isn't in sight when we get off we'll ask the conductor or a brakeman or a porter where the waiting room is and we'll go right there and sit down till she comes."

But they need not have been at all concerned, for Mrs. Jackson was at the very steps of their car when they walked down them. A girl of their own age stood just behind her. Mrs. Jackson was tall, with light hair and her daughter was strikingly like her.

"I'm sure this is Ethel Blue!" cried Mrs. Jackson without hesitation. "You have your mother's eyes, dear child. And this is Ethel Brown. Here is my daughter. Her name is Katharine."

Katharine was not shy. She had lived all her life in garrisons and she was accustomed to meeting many people. She shook hands with her guests and took Ethel Blue's bag.

"A friend of Mother's let us have her car to come to the station in," she said. "It's just outside this door. It's more fun than going in the street car."

The Ethels thought so, too, though they flew along so fast that they hardly could see the sights of the new city.

Katharine chattered all the time.

"You came along the lake almost all the way, Mother says. It must have been lovely. I'm so glad we're here at Fort Edward. It's right on the water and the sunsets are beautiful."

"This is the memorial to President McKinley," Mrs. Jackson informed the Ethels as they drove through Niagara Square. "It was in Buffalo that he was shot, you remember."

It did not take many minutes to reach Fort Edward, which they found to be merely barracks and officers' houses, with no fortified works.

"When Canada and the United States decided not to have any fortifications between the two countries it looked like a dangerous experiment," said Mrs. Jackson when the Ethels, soldiers' children, remarked upon this peculiarity of the so-called fort. "It has worked well, however. There have been times when it would have been a sore temptation to make use of the forts if they had existed."

"I wonder what would have happened in Europe if there had been no forts between Germany and France," said Ethel Blue thoughtfully.

"Armament has not brought lasting peace to them," Mrs. Jackson agreed to the girl's thought.

It was an evening of delight to the Mortons. They always realized to the full that they actually belonged to the Service when occasion took them to a fort or a navy yard. They saw the flag run down at sunset and they beamed happily at everything that Katharine pointed out to them and at all the stories that Lieutenant Jackson told them. Ethel Blue was particularly interested in his tales of the days at West Point when he and her father had ranked so nearly together that it was nip and tuck between them all the way through.

"Until the end," Mr. Jackson owned handsomely. "Then old Dick Morton came out on top."

It was novel to Ethel Blue to hear her father called "old Dick Morton," but Lieutenant Jackson said it with so much affection that she liked the sound of it.

Of course the Niagara expedition was topmost in the minds of the Ethels.

"You've never been to the Falls?" Mrs. Jackson asked. "I'm glad Katharine is to have the pleasure of showing them to you first. I wish I could go with you but I have an engagement this morning that I can't put off, so Gretchen is going to take you."

"Gretchen is like your Mary," explained Katharine. "She used to be my nurse. I don't ever remember Gretchen's not being with us."

Gretchen proved to be a large, comfortable looking German woman of forty and the Ethels liked her at once. They went by trolley to the Falls.

"It takes a little longer," Mrs. Jackson said, "but if you're like me you'll enjoy seeing a new bit of country and you can do it better from the electric car than from the steam train."

It was a wonderful day for all the girls. The Mortons enjoyed all the new sights and were not ashamed to express their delight; and Katharine, although she had taken many guests on this same trip, took pleasure in seeing their pleasure.

Their first stop was before they reached the city of Niagara Falls.

"What is this big place?" asked Ethel Brown.

"They make use of the power of the water to run factories and to light towns," explained Katharine. "You see those wheels lying flat on their sides?"

She pointed down into a deep shaft whose dripping walls sent a chill up to the onlookers.

"Those are turbines," Katharine went on. "The water from the river is racing along outside not doing any good in the world except to look exciting, so they let some of it flow in through those openings way down there and it turns these turbines and they make machinery go."

"I noticed ever so many factories near here."

"There are a great many here because power is so cheap, but they are also able to send electric power many miles away. Buffalo is lighted by electricity from Niagara, and there are lots of factories all around here that take their power from the Falls."

"What becomes of the water that makes these turbines go?"

"When you see it come out of a small tunnel below the Falls and compare it with the amount that is still tumbling over the Falls you'll be wonderstruck that so small an amount can do so much work. We'll see the place later."

Taking the car again they completed their journey to the town and the girls could hardly wait to see the great cascade which they heard roaring in the distance. Katharine led them first to the very edge of the American Fall. The thick green water slid over the brink almost under their feet in a firm, moving wall, and they had to lean over to see it break into white foam on the rocks below. Like a great horseshoe ran the upper edge, the centre hollowed back by centuries of wear from the swift stream that pressed out of Lake Erie through the ever-narrowing channel toward Lake Ontario.

Over the bridge they went to Goat Island where they seemed on a level with the swirling mass that bore down directly upon them. Gretchen gave an occasional scream of anxiety.

"Dis water it makes me frighted," she confessed.

The girls raced over the islands called the Sisters and every sight on the American side except the Gorge ride was behind them by luncheon time.

Refreshed by food they started out again.

"We'll go down the Gorge on the American side," explained Katharine, "and come back on the Canadian side. I've tried both ways and I like that best."

The Gorge ride was all that Katharine had hinted.

"It takes your breath away," gasped Ethel Blue as the car traveled slowly beside the turbulent water, crowding and racing after its fall from the cliff above, and hurrying on, incredibly deep, to its outlet.

"I hardly want to look at it," admitted Ethel Brown as they passed the Whirlpool with its threatening circular motion.

Gretchen frankly closed her eyes.

"It is wonderful, but too big for me," she admitted.

"You'll not be frightened when we go back, because the track on the Canadian side runs high up on the cliff," said Katharine. "Then when we reach the Falls once more we'll go down to the water level on that side and take the Maid of the Mist."

"What's that?"

"A tiny steamer. It goes close up to the Falls—so near you almost feel you are under them."

"You can really go under them, can't you? I've heard people tell about it."

"Yes, but it's no place for children, Father says, so we'll have to put up with the 'Maid.'"

It proved, however, that they would have to put up with even less. For when they prepared to make the change of cars that was necessary for their return on the Canadian side, one of the men in charge stopped Gretchen.

"You're German," he said.

"Ja," she answered placidly.

"Then you can't come here."

"I can't come here! Why not? I been here many times—I und my young lady."

"No Germans allowed here," he insisted.

"She's my nurse," explained Katharine. "My father's an officer at Fort Edward. He's an American. We are neutral," she insisted.

It was all in vain. The Canadian had his orders and he could not be moved.

"Orders," was all that Katharine could get by way of explanation. Being a soldier's daughter she understood that orders were meant to be obeyed and she did not insist for long.

"It's too bad, but I don't see how we can help it," she said. "I suppose every German is suspected now, but it's silly to think Gretchen is a spy," and she threw her arm around the shoulder of the German woman. She had been frightened by the man's roughness.

"Don't you mind, Gretchen dear," she said. "When the war is over we'll come again. I'm sorry about the Maid of the Mist," she apologized to the girls, "but of course we can't go without Gretchen."

It was a rather thoughtful group that returned to Buffalo, for the little experience with Gretchen had made them all feel that the war they were hearing so much about was nearer than they had realized.

"Somehow it has seemed as far away as the moon," said Ethel Brown. "But now I feel as if it might jump out at us any minute."

"It won't," Lieutenant Jackson reassured her; "but Gretchen's experience gives us something to think about from many points of view."

Sunday passed happily and on Monday Mrs. Jackson and Katharine took their guests to the station and started them toward Mayville, where Roger met them.

"It has been a wonderful visit," said Ethel Blue to her aunt. "Mrs. Jackson told me a great deal about my mother. She must have been lovely."

"She was a very dear woman," replied Mrs. Morton, kissing her niece.

"The only uncomfortable thing was about Gretchen," Ethel went on. "I wish that man hadn't frightened her."

CHAPTER XV

THE PAGEANT

"GRANDFATHER," cried Roger as he sat down to dinner one day, "do you remember that when we were in the trolley coming here from Westfield you promised that some time you would tell us about Celoron?"

"I forgot all about it, son. Shall I tell you now?"

"You won't have to now. There's going to be a pageant of the history of Chautauqua Lake and we'll learn the whole thing from that. There'll be historical scenes, and Francis Wilson, the actor, will wind it up with a real play. He's going to bring his company with him from New York."

"Who told you about it?" asked Ethel Brown. "The lady who is to direct the whole thing came to the Girls' Club this morning and explained it to us and picked out the girls she wants to take part."

"I met the Director and he told me," replied Roger. "He's going to be La Salle himself, and the Director of the Summer Schools is to be another of those old chaps—Brule, I think his name was; and the Institution Organist is to take the part of Celoron."

"What are you going to be?" asked Mrs. Emerson.

"An Indian brave."

"I'm going to be an Indian boy," piped up Dicky. "The lady came to the Boys' Club, too, this morning."

"You'll have to put soot on your hair, kid," teased Roger, "and brown your speaking countenance."

"So shall I," said Helen. "I'm to be a squaw. A lot of girls from the Vacation Club are to be squaws. It will be awfully good fun except the browning up. They say that if you put vaseline on your face first the stuff comes off without any trouble."

"I hope it does," Ethel Brown wished. "I'm to be an Indian girl."

"I especially hope it does," continued Helen, "because I have to be a lady of the French Court later on and I'd hate to have my Indian color stay with me!"

"Everybody is accounted for except Ethel Blue. What are you going to do?" asked Mrs. Morton, smiling at her niece.

"I'm a Flower Sprite and so is Dorothy."

"You can wear your own complexion, then."

"I don't believe sprites ever have hair like mine."

"You can't prove that they don't," declared Roger, smartly. "The pageant is going to be the grandest thing of the sort that Chautauqua ever had. There are to be lots of grown people in it, and the choir and the orchestra are to provide the music and there's to be a minuet—"

"Didn't I take my first lesson to-day!" exclaimed Helen. "My knees are almost out of commission from that courtesy!"

"They wanted me to learn that, too; hand on your heart business for the men, and prance around like an ostrich in a zoo trying to look over the fence! I told them learning the Indian War Dance was all I was equal to."

"It's more in your style," commented Helen drily.

"It seems a good opportunity to learn both. You and Helen might get up a minuet when your club has some sort of party next winter," suggested Mrs. Morton.

"That's so," agreed Helen; "and Margaret and James are both going to learn it, and it will be a lot easier to drill the new ones if four of us know it already."

"All right," Roger accepted the proposal promptly. "I'll tell them after dinner that they can order one of those white monkey wigs for me, too."

"You won't look any sillier than you will as a red Indian," urged Helen.

"Roger would like to have us think that he'd rather appear as a child of nature than a child of art," smiled his grandmother.

"So I would," insisted Roger; "but the main thing is to do what will help most, like a true member of the United Service Club in good and regular standing."

Ethel Blue applauded.

"That suits you, does it, kid?" and Roger grinned cheerfully at the club's founder. "Are all of you going to rehearse this afternoon? They say that when you run up into a bunch of people anywhere on the grounds for the next week it will be a squad of pageant performers rehearsing something."

"It looks to me as if it would be a tight squeeze to get it ready in that time," observed grandfather.

"The lady who is to direct the pageant comes from Chicago and she has only this spare time in all the summer."

"Some of the parts are all prepared," said Ethel Blue.

"How do you know?"

"Dorothy told me."

Dorothy sang in the Children's Choir and kept up with the musical activities of Chautauqua more than the Mortons, who were not especially musical.

"Dorothy says that all the music has been ready for some time, so that the singers and players will need just one rehearsal to fit them in right with the other parts of the performance."

"And one of the Vacation Club girls told me," said Helen, "that the elaborate costumes for the ladies and gentlemen of the French Court were to be sent from New York and Chicago, so that only the simple things will have to be made here."

"The Flower Sprites are to wear floating slips of white cheese cloth," said Ethel Blue. "I think I can make mine myself."

"I know I can make my Indian clothes," said Ethel Brown, "because they are going to have patterns at the Girls' Club this afternoon and some one to show us how and we'll all make them together."

"The Vacation girls who are to be squaws are going down there this afternoon, too," Helen said.

"I'll walk with you if you'll wait till I find my sewing bag."

"How are the sewing lessons coming on?" asked Mrs. Emerson.

"The best ever, Grandmother. I can make a pretty good buttonhole already and by next week I'll be able to fill Mother's order for middies for the Ethels."

"Perhaps your career will prove to be the humble one of sewing," guessed grandmother slyly.

"I don't know that it is so very humble," defended Helen stoutly. "It's one of the most useful occupations there is if you just look at the domestic side of it, and it can be developed into a fine art if you want to go into embroidery. And my teacher says that dressmaking is a fine art, too, when you are designing dresses and not merely turning them out as coverings for the human frame."

Grandmother laughed.

"The factories will turn out the coverings for us, but I can see that your teacher means the adapting of a dress to the style of the wearer."

"She says that a dress ought to be suitable for the purpose for which it is intended—"

"That is, that there should be a sharp distinction between a school dress and a dancing school dress or, for a woman, between an afternoon dress and a dinner dress."

"Yes. The designer ought to study the use to which the dress is to be put and then plan it accordingly. Then she ought to make it suit the person who is to wear it."

"That point seems to be forgotten nowadays when grandmothers and mothers and daughters all wear the same ready-made dresses. The only difference in them is the size."

"They ought to be suitable for the age of the wearer and for her size and shape. If you put a tall woman's dress on a short, fat woman she looks foolish. The lines of the costume ought to bring out the good points of the wearer's figure and make you forget her bad points."

"That means that your mother ought to wear long, flowing lines because she is short and I can wear a tunic if I want to because I am so tall and thin that I can afford to have a few inches seemingly cut off me."

"Then there's coloring. I can wear almost any color because I'm rather indefinite; I just have to be particular about getting the right shade. But there are certain colors that Margaret can't wear at all on account of her auburn hair—"

"And certain color schemes that she can work out splendidly just because of her auburn hair."

"Doesn't she look pretty in that all brown suit of hers? And she's got a dress of a queer shade of yellow that is just exactly right with her hair and brown eyes. When she wears all those browns and yellows she looks like Autumn."

"We'll see you coming out as Madame Hélène and presiding over a big New York dressmaking establishment," smiled Mrs. Emerson.

"I don't believe you will; but I do think there's plenty of opportunity for a real artist in designing dresses, and I wish more girls went into it instead of into teaching."

"Teaching and sewing used to be the only occupations that were thought to be suitable for women when I was young."

"That was drudgery sewing—making men's shirts and doing a lot of finger sewing that can be done by the machine now in the wink of an eye. But the sewing that is worth while cultivating now is the kind that can't be done by the machine but by the fingers of an artist. Embroidery and specialized dressmaking like that we've been talking about—those are the kinds of sewing that make you a craftswoman and an artist and not a drudge."

"You've stowed away all that your teacher has told you, I see."

"She did tell me most of that, but some of it I thought out and then asked her about. You see, since that time when I told Mother I wanted to pay my board—"

"I'm afraid you hurt your mother's feelings then."

"Oh, Granny dear, do you really think so? I didn't mean to, but I couldn't seem to make anybody understand until I said that," Helen paused an instant disconsolately. "Any way, since that time I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do. I want to go to college, but I don't want to teach or be a nurse or a doctor. Margaret says she's going to be a newspaper woman or be on a magazine or something of that sort. But I seem to be hard to suit."

"It's a long time yet before you have to decide."

"I know it is, but if I decide pretty soon I can make all my college work help me toward what I am going to do afterwards."

"That would be an advantage."

"The trouble is that I like all the homey occupations; I'd like to be the best housekeeper in the world."

"That's a modest wish! However, housekeeping is a science in these days of organizing ideas and knowledge, and if you want to keep house on a large scale it would be perfectly possible for you to learn about sanitation and ventilation and so on at college and then find a position as housekeeper for some charitable institution."

"Or be a sort of teaching housekeeper connected with a settlement. I really should like that. If you don't mind I wish you and Mother would visit the School of Mothercraft that is in a cottage half way up the hill to the Post Office. I was passing it yesterday and I went in, and, interesting!—well, I should say it was!"

"What do they teach—domestic science?"

"Not the same kind that other schools teach. They teach just what a mother ought to know to run her house properly and to bring up her children properly. They have babies there and the girls who are studying take care of them just as if they were responsible for them. They learn how to feed them to make them grow, and they learn—Oh, it's the best kind of domestic science you ever knew anything about!"

Helen was quite breathless when she stopped.

"Your mother and I will surely go in the next time we go up the hill."

"The school is in New York in the winter, so we can go to see it there sometimes—and I think—I really think, Granny, that I've found what I want."

"I hope you have, dear. It's an interesting something that you've found, at any rate. I'm afraid the Ethels didn't wait for you. They went on when they saw us talking so earnestly."

"Never mind. I'm glad I told you. You see, I told Margaret and she didn't think much of it. Just housekeeping seemed too small for her. But I think it's natural and interesting and gives you lots of opportunities. If you don't have a family of your own to look after you can help out some other woman who has one that she doesn't know how to manage, or I—I really think I'd like to run an orphan asylum and be a mother to several hundred chicks at once."

"If you don't hurry you won't learn how to make Indian dresses for them."

"They're easy," laughed Helen. "I expect to finish mine this afternoon and make Roger's to-morrow afternoon and then help on any others that are lying about to be attended to. Margaret and I told our sewing teacher about the United Service Club and she said that she could give us a chance to help with these costumes. There won't be much self-sacrifice in it, for she's going to superintend it all so it will be almost like having another sewing lesson."

"It seems to me she is qualifying to become a member herself if she is giving her time in the afternoons to helping out with all these costumes."

"I come across people every day who are just like that, dear Gran. Chautauqua is the greatest place in the world, I believe, for co-operation and helpfulness."

"Helpfulness and kindliness and loyalty make up the 'Chautauqua spirit.' You've probably discovered that that is a very real thing."

"It's what makes everybody go about speaking to people they'd just stare at at home."

"And finding out that they're interesting after all."

Over her sewing for several afternoons to come Helen thought many times of her conversation with her grandmother and she was keenly delighted when Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton went to the School of Mothercraft and found themselves as pleased with its purposes and its way of carrying them out as Helen herself had been.

"We think we are making a new occupation for women out of her oldest occupation," smiled the head of the school. "We are organizing women's natural abilities and the duties that have been hers time out of mind in a modern way that will fit her to be a good mother and housekeeper in her own household or some other woman's, or to teach homecraft to students just as we are doing here. We've already had more applications than we have been able to fill for Mothercraft teachers to go to the West."

Meanwhile, as Roger had predicted, every part of the grounds was "infested," as he described it, with groups of people rehearsing for the pageant. In the hall of the School of Physical Education the minuet was being practiced whenever the gymnastic classes left the floor free for an hour; the reader with the Water Sprites and Flower Sprites and the bold representatives of the Wind and the Sun foregathered in the largest room of the School of Expression; Indian men and boys stamped and grunted in the Boys' Club, while the Girls' Club was the scene of the squaws' Dance of Grief. La Salle and Brule and Celoron spent an anxious life warily dodging the people who wanted to capture them for rehearsals, and only submitted to having their measurements taken on condition that they should not be asked to try on their costumes until the day of the performance. It was Helen and Margaret and their classmates who were making them but they were so absorbed in doing all these extra matters in addition to their regular club tasks and pleasures that they felt it would only add one more thrill if at this last-minute trying-on all the costumes should be proved misfits and have to be made over in one day!

Nothing of the sort happened, however, though there were dress rehearsals at seven o'clock in the morning of the appointed day, when early risers saw braves in full war paint flocking to the lake front, with a tread not as stealthy as it would be at night when boots should be exchanged for moccasins.

The scenes were staged on a large raft anchored in the lake before the hotel and girt with low bushes so that it looked like an island. The observers assembled on the lawn that sloped from the hotel to the water, and spread along the pebbly beach. Those in front brought camp chairs or sat cross-legged on the ground and those behind looked over their heads. Strong lights were thrown on the improvised island from electric lights with reflectors. Mr. and Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton were so fortunate as to secure comfortable and convenient positions.

The three scenes of the First Part represented myths of the Indians who long ago used to live about Chautauqua Lake. The Spirit of the Lake appeared in a canoe drawn by invisible power. As she landed upon the island the Flower Sprites greeted her with singing.

"Can you make out Ethel Blue?" asked Mr. Emerson, peering through his glasses.

"It seems to me she is the next to the end in the front row," replied Mrs. Morton. "That certainly is Dorothy on the end."

Very charming they looked with their flowing white robes and their garlands, and very manly were the lovers, Wind and Sun, who wooed the Lake Spirit to remain on the island. Their wooing was vain, however, for the Spirit made them understand that she was to give her love only to a new spirit yet to come, Mankind.

The next scene illustrated one of the meanings of the word "Chautauqua"—"The place of easy death." An Indian princess, stooping to drink from the lake, was drawn down into its depths.

The origin in the lake of the fish called the muscallonge whose size and spirit make its capture a triumph for fishermen was the subject of the third scene, in which Indian braves fishing near the island were the central figures.

The presentation of actual historical facts began with the Second Part.

"I rather suspect," said Mr. Emerson amusedly, "that our young people are going to learn more history from this performance than I should have been able to tell them."

"Helen has been reading about the explorers in the library in the College. I imagine she has her eye on another history prize next winter."

"Here is what the program says is going to happen. Let me read it to you before the scene begins and then we won't have to bother our heads about the story and we can try to pick out our children."

"PART II.—1610-1615. SCENES OF
EARLY ERIE OCCUPATION

"Three Erie scouts are seen exploring the country with a view of settlement. After satisfying themselves that the Island is safe and advantageous they depart, soon returning with their whole tribe. Then follows an historical reproduction of an Indian village. Tents are set up, fires lighted, fishing and swimming indulged in. The children weave baskets and play games. All is peaceful, until an Iroquois scouting party, passing near, shoots the chief of the Eries. Instant confusion reigns. The braves seize their tomahawks and pursue the enemy in canoes. The medicine man attends the wounded chief, the squaws moan in grief, and upon the return of the successful Eries with their dead and prisoners, the young braves of the tribe indulge in a war dance. As the tribe work themselves up into a frenzy and bloodshed and torture seem imminent, the outburst is quelled and the attention of the Indians is diverted by the coming of Étienne Brule.

"Brule was a young Frenchman who, in 1615, carried a message of peace from Samuel Champlain, in Canada, to the Andastes Indians in Pennsylvania."

All the young Mortons except Ethel Blue took part in this scene. Roger was one of the three scouts, and so was conspicuous enough to be easily picked out by his relatives on shore. It was not so easy to discover Helen and Margaret Hancock in the group of sorrowing squaws.

"They would be apt to be together; I believe they're both at the right," guessed Mrs. Emerson.

There were so many Indian children rolling around on the ground and playing with the flowers and the dogs that Dicky was indistinguishable until the war dance with its shuffle and stamp and muffled shout excited him. James and Roger were especially ferocious in appearance and in behavior and Dicky found himself so entranced with his brother's spirited acting that he himself added a touch that caused a roar of laughter from the spectators on the shore.

"Do look at that darling child!" cried one after another, and the mother of the darling child tried, to look unconscious while she was as amused as any one.

"Do you see?" exclaimed a voice directly behind Mr. Emerson. "He's following one of the braves about. He's imitating every motion he makes. Did you ever see such miniature ferocity!"

"He's a pocket edition."

"He's the most delightful creature I've seen in many moons," said another, and Dicky, as unconscious as a little animal, stamped and shuffled and shouted and enjoyed himself to the utmost. It was evident that to him the coming of Étienne Brule was a sore disappointment.

Brule's approach was heralded by the arrival of a single canoe paddled by Indians who told that a white man was on his way. Then came three canoes bearing Brule and his Huron companions. The young man's calm air soothed the Indians on the island and they invited him to land and to smoke the pipe of peace. He told his errand, gave them presents, ate with them, and went on his way.

A period of 55 years was supposed to pass between this scene and the next.

"That will be long enough for Helen and Margaret to change their dresses," smiled Mrs. Emerson.

Again the island represented an Erie camp, and again the coming of a white man was reported, but unlike his predecessor La Salle arrived in state. He was in a large canoe which bore the banner of France and he was escorted by six canoes filled with ladies and gentlemen of France. Landing on the island the "Little Father" claimed the land "with all the countries, lake and streams adjacent thereto" in the name of the "Most High, Mighty and Redoubtable Monarch, Louis the Fifteenth, most Christian King of France and Navarre."

After an exchange of gifts the French ladies and gentlemen entertained the Indians by dancing the minuet. This innovation in the wilderness was received with approval by the red men.

The Hancocks and Helen and Roger were easily distinguishable in the dance, and Ethel Blue, who had found her way to her aunt's side, together with Dorothy, who was not able to find her mother in the crowd, were delighted over their elegance and grace.

"Ethel and I have almost learned it watching them practice," she whispered, "so if we really did do it in the Club next winter we'd only have to train two boys."

Even longer than between scenes one and two was the lapse of time between scenes two and three. It was 79 years after La Salle's expedition that Bienville de Celoron, escorted by Roger and James, who had changed again into Indian costume, and a large retinue of other Indians and of Frenchmen arrived at the island.

"They were six days, history says, in making the portage from Lake Erie which we make on the trolley in a little over an hour," explained Mr. Emerson.

"They had to cut the forest as they travelled, I suppose," said his wife.

"And carry 23 canoes and food and travelling equipment for 270 people."

"It's no wonder they are languid," laughed Mrs. Morton as a disembarking youth moved so slowly as nearly to overset his craft.

"Celoron has the French banner like La Salle," cried Ethel Blue.

"He, too, is taking possession of the country for the king. See, the priest is taking the latitude and longitude of the new land."

"What are they doing now? Roger is digging a hole."

"Celoron buried lead plates in various places along his route. The purpose of his expedition was inscribed on them. Probably Roger is preparing to bury one of them here."

This proved to be the case. When the hole was ready the plate was placed in it with due ceremony and then Celoron made a formal announcement of the claim of the King of France, and this section of the pageant was ended.

"Oh, I'd like to see it all again," sighed Ethel Blue, looking about for Ethel Brown as the party moved with the crowd up the hill to the Amphitheatre.

Helen sat and looked and laughed and wept a tear or two as the story of "The Little Father of the Wilderness" came to its pathetic, triumphant end. Yet through it all her heart was light because the days of the pageant with all their hurry and labor had brought her a glimpse of the future, a glimpse of a work that might be hers when she was free to choose—a glimpse of a work that would help others as well as herself and that would mean a career and yet the life of home.

CHAPTER XVI

THINK HELP!

ETHEL BROWN'S head had been turned by the praise she received after the fire. So many people complimented her on her coolness and daring that she began to think that she had done something extraordinary. Her feeling was increased by Ethel Blue's attitude of humiliation over her own terror on that occasion. She told her cousin frankly that she thought she had been perfectly wonderful and Ethel Brown could see that Ethel Blue had never forgotten that she herself made but a poor showing in the emergency. She did not stop to think that Ethel Blue was a far more nervous girl than she, and that it was entirely natural for her to do without thinking what required a distinct effort on the part of Ethel Blue.

As a result of holding this extremely good opinion of herself, Ethel Brown's manner had become so condescending that Mrs. Morton was obliged to call her attention to it. It was a painful enlightenment for Ethel Brown. She loved Ethel Blue as if she were a sister, and she never consciously would have been unkind to her; yet not only had she been behaving in a way that would not help the more delicate girl to better her failing but she was becoming not an agreeable young person to have about.

"Oh, Mother," she sobbed, "I must be just awful! What can I do? Tell me what to do!"

"The very first thing to do is to houseclean your mind."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You must first rid your mind of the idea that you are a remarkable young woman. You did your duty well, but there is nothing so astonishing in doing one's duty that a person need dwell on it forever after. Do your duty as a matter of course and then forget that you have done it and go on to the next duty."

"But it's exciting to think that you've done something very well."

"If you keep up excitement a long time you get very tired of it. If you follow my suggestion you have a comfortable feeling all the time. My process is just like housecleaning a room; before you clean the walls and floor you remove the furniture. When the bare room is fresh once more you move in the articles that you want there for use or adornment."

"Clean out bad thoughts and put in—"

"Only such thoughts as you are going to find valuable. For instance, after you have cleaned out of your mind the idea that you are very superior to Ethel Blue you ought to fill your mind with thoughts of helpfulness for her. You must think of all the good points she has; think how gentle she is and truthful and how brave she is about taking blame when she deserves it. You never find Ethel Blue failing to admit her responsibility for accidents or mistakes even when it takes a good deal of moral courage to do it."

Ethel Brown flushed. She remembered times when, according to her, accidents had happened without any human assistance.

"You must give Ethel Blue a feeling that you believe in her physical courage as well as her moral courage. You must always think of her as brave and when you talk with her on any such subjects you must take it for granted that she is brave. It is natural for a person to try to live up to the opinion that other people hold of him."

"That is true, I believe," said Ethel thoughtfully. "Is that why you said 'Dicky is quite old enough to do that errand for me' yesterday after I had said, 'Dicky, you're such a baby, you'll never remember that'?"

"It was. If you treat Dicky as a baby he'll stay a baby long after he ought to. He's not a baby now just because Roger has always treated him as a companion and Helen has let him help her when he could. Don't you remember that Roger went to the Boys' Club with Dicky for three or four days after he entered? That was to see how Dicky behaved. He didn't say to Dicky, 'You're just a baby so I'm going to see whether you act like a baby.' If he had said that Dicky probably would have behaved like the baby he was told he was. But Roger told Dicky that no babies were allowed in the Boys' Club, and the result was that Dicky stood on his own feet and met the other youngsters as boy to boy and not as if they were real boys and he was just a baby there on sufferance."

"I never thought before that we had any influence on other people like that."

"Once I knew a girl who was rather slow in speech. It gave people an impression that she was not very bright, and they began to treat her as if she were stupid."

"Wasn't she really?"

"She had a good mind. But after a while people outside of her family took up the family's attitude of constantly under-rating everything she said and did. The result was that she lost all confidence in herself. She believed that if older people in whom she had faith thought she was stupid she must be stupid; and she was really becoming stupid."

"What happened?"

"Some one suggested that she go to a certain boarding school. There no one knew of this family attitude toward her and she was treated just like all the other girls. It gave her self-confidence and as she made one success after another in school she developed in every way like a flower in the sunshine."

"I'm going to try to help Ethel Blue if I can; and I guess you're right about being more comfortable with a house-cleaned mind; I feel better already, somehow."

"You'll feel better all the time. Now this coming week I want you to see if you can't be of special help to your grandmother. It's Recognition Week and your grandfather and I will be busy with the graduating class every day so we can't go about with Grandmother as much as we usually do. She will miss it if she doesn't have a companion."

"I'll remember. I'll go whenever she wants me."

"You may have to go with her sometimes when you'd rather go somewhere with the girls."

"I'll do it. When we got up the Service Club we were all telling why it would be good for us and I said then that I liked to do things for people just for selfish reasons."

"You'll be a Service Club member of the right sort when you do kindnesses that you don't like to do."

"So far all the services that the Club has performed have been things that were fun. We haven't been tried out yet."

"Here's your chance, then. There are teas for the Dickens Class on Friday and Saturday afternoons so you must be on call then while Grandfather and I are away. On Saturday evening there is a large reception at the hotel for all the C. L. S. C. people and Helen is to help serve the lemonade, so you and Ethel Blue will have to stay at home with Dicky."

"What happens on Sunday?"

"Grandmother will march with her own class, the 1908's, and sit with them in the Amphitheatre to listen to the Baccalaureate sermon. In the afternoon at the C. L. S. C. Vesper Service Bishop Vincent is to give a special address to the graduates. There will be room for others so Grandmother will be there and will not need you, but you'd better go home with her after the Song Service in the evening, for Grandfather and I will go from the Amphitheatre to the Hall of Philosophy where the Vigil of the Class of '14 is to be held."

"The graduates are busy just about every minute, aren't they?"

"Not on Monday; that day is quite an ordinary Chautauqua day; but on Tuesday the class holds its annual breakfast. At that hour Grandmother won't want you especially. In the evening she will be receiving with her own class in their room in Alumni Hall so you will be free to take a table in the Hall of Philosophy and help serve the ice cream."

"Margaret is trying to arrange it so that all the Service Club girls can have tables near each other, and the boys are going to hang around and be ready to carry the heaviest trays."

"Wednesday is Recognition Day and Grandmother will be occupied all day, so you need not be disturbed about her."

"I'll look in the C. L. S. C. column in the Daily every morning, just as Miss Kimball said that Grandmother ought to do, and then I'll ask her what her plans are."

CHAPTER XVII

RECOGNITION WEEK

ALTHOUGH the young people had but a small part in the proceedings of Recognition week, they took a vivid interest in all the festivities in which Mr. Emerson and Mrs. Morton took part, and they never failed to notice the rose-bedecked men and women whose numbers increased every day.

"Everybody who has ever read the Chautauqua Course seems to be wearing some sort of C. L. S. C. badge," said Ethel Blue at the table on Saturday evening.

"Only those who have graduated," explained Mrs. Emerson, "wear garnet badges like mine. The 1914's are wearing their class flower, the English rose, and the new class just forming has an olive green bow."

"Wouldn't it be fun if all the 1914 class members from all over the world could be here to graduate!"

"What a flock there would be!"

"How many will be here?"

"About a hundred and fifty or two hundred. That's a small fraction of the class but they come from so many different places that they are fairly representative of the whole class."

"The rooms were crowded at the reception yesterday afternoon and this afternoon and every trolley is bringing more."

In honor of the 1914 class Helen wore a rose-covered dress at the C. L. S. C. reception at the hotel in the evening. She carried dozens of trays of lemonade and was a tired girl when the chimes, belated for the occasion, at last rang out their warning. With the rest of the family she was ready in plenty of time, however, for an early start to see the C. L. S. C. procession march into the Amphitheatre for the Baccalaureate sermon. The Hancocks and Dorothy and her mother took their places in the auditorium to see the classes march in, but Roger and Helen and the Ethels drifted along beside the troop of Readers, discovering Mrs. Emerson in the class of 1908 and Mrs. Morton and her father and Dr. Hancock with the Dickensians.

In the afternoon the young people followed again, this time to the Hall of Philosophy where they stood on the edge and heard the Chancellor address words of inspiration and comfort to the graduates. Once more they stood at a distance when night brought the hour for the Vigil of the Class of '14. Athenian Lights flared about the Hall and flung tree shadows and the bending shapes of men and women against the black earth. Under the classic roof of the temple gathered the classmates met here at Chautauqua after four years of work done separately. Here they united in thoughts of the good the Past had brought and the Happiness that the future had in store.

"Why do they call it a Vigil?" asked Ethel Blue.

Ethel Brown had gone home with her grandmother but her cousin could not resist the call of a name that sounded mysterious to her, and she had come with Helen and Roger.

"Didn't you ever read about the young squires watching over their armor on the night before they received the honor of knighthood?" inquired Helen, who was the "family authority on history and antiquities," according to Roger. "They were left alone in the chapel of the palace where the ceremony was to take place, and there they prayed that they might live worthy lives and do no wrong and always help the poor and the distressed and always honor women."

"We think we are serious nowadays but I don't believe there are many fellows who think as seriously as that about their life work," observed Roger.

The young people had no part in the joys of the 1914 Class breakfast and "frivol" beyond laughing uproariously at the account of it which they received later from the elders who were there. In the evening of Tuesday, however, the Club came out in force. At that time the whole interest of the grounds was centred around Alumni Hall. The building itself was ablaze with light, every class receiving in its own room except the Dickens Class, which had so many representatives that it made use of the large room at the top of the house.

Outside, the grounds between Alumni Hall and the Hall of Philosophy were bright with colored lanterns. In the Hall the band played the jolliest of music in one corner and the remainder of the space was occupied by small tables crowded with people.

It was here that the United Service Club proved its usefulness. As long as there was any one to wait on its members ran to and fro carrying trays and making change, and when there were no more guests they themselves fell to and consumed all that was left.

"I never object to eating ice cream for a Veranda Fund or any other reason," confessed James solemnly and Roger nodded a grave assent.

Before they went on duty at the Hall, the Club proceeded in a body to pay their respects to the graduating class. There were so many 1914's that they extended all around the large room and before them an unending line of people passed, shaking hands and offering congratulations.

Mrs. Morton stood between her father and Dr. Hancock before a bust of Bishop Vincent that gazed benevolently at the procession as it wound past the corner. The children claimed her as a "sweet girl graduate" and Roger greeted his grandfather as if he were only an older student in his own school.

"You youngsters needn't be feeling so humorous," ejaculated Dr. Hancock. "The C. L. S. C. will catch you at some time in your life if it has to wait until you are seventy, so you might as well read the Course as soon as you are out of school, and get it out of the way."

Behind the Mortons and Hancocks came Dorothy, her thin little face beaming with delight at the meeting that was coming.

"This is my mother, Mrs. Morton. Mother, this is Ethel Brown's mother and Ethel Blue's aunt."

The hands of the two women met in a long clasp, and they gazed into each other's eyes with instant liking.

"You have been kindness itself to my little girl," murmured Mrs. Smith.

"We can never forget her efficiency and helpfulness when Father was ill," returned Mrs. Morton; "and, if you'll allow me to say so, my mother, Mrs. Emerson, is a great admirer of yours."

"Have I met your mother?"

"You've been teaching her to make wonderful embroideries."

"Is that Mrs. Emerson your mother? I've grown very fond of her in her visits to the Arcade veranda."

"We must know each other better, if you will," smiled Mrs. Morton as the mother and daughter passed on to greet others.

"Dorothy looks so much like the Ethels that it startles me sometimes," remarked Mr. Emerson, looking after them before some one else claimed his hand.

"Girls of that age all wear their hair in the same fashion so they look like those paper dolls that we used to make in strings out of one piece of paper and put over the electric lights in the nursery."

"Perhaps it is the hair, but their features certainly are alike."

"Poor little Dorothy has a wistful expression that our children don't have, I am glad to say. I'm afraid she and her mother have had a hard time."

"I'm sure we must have shaken hands with at least a hundred thousand Chautauquans," groaned Dr. Hancock; "don't you think we might go over to the Hall of Philosophy and get the United Service Club to minister to our inner men?"

"I believe we've done our duty now; the crowd seems to be lessening; let's escape," and the two gentlemen escorted Mrs. Morton under the lanterns to the fire-lit temple where the members of the United Service Club hailed them, installed them at tables, and did their best to refresh them.

"Will you put my arm in a splint, Doctor?" asked Mr. Emerson, rubbing his shoulder ruefully.

"If you'll do mine. We'll go about like wounded twins!"

At six o'clock the next morning Dicky was stirring.

"Helen, get out my white thuit, pleathe, pleathe, pleathe," he pleaded impatiently.

"Your white suit? What for?" asked Helen drowsily. "This isn't Sunday."

"It's Recognition Day. Don't you remember? Grandfather and Mother are going to graduate. I'm in the Boyth Guard of Honor. Pleathe hurry."

The Ethels were not much later than Dicky in their preparations, for they were to help the young ladies who arranged the baskets and made the wreaths for the Flower Girls. The Mortons were too tall to join the ranks themselves, and they were envious of Dorothy, whose lesser height admitted her to the band, although this would be her last year.

It was a busy scene when the girls reached the top of the hill beside the Post Office. Huge hampers of flowers lay beneath a table of planks stretched on trestles. Around it were grouped a dozen of the girls of the Vacation Club weaving wreaths for the heads of the little girls who soon began to arrive, and filling small baskets for them to carry. Some of the children were so small that their nurses had to come with them. They were put first in the long line of twos, while Dorothy and Della Watkins, who were the tallest of all, were the very last. Every girl had a white dress and they made a charming picture which drew a crowd of grown-ups to watch them.

Near by was the Boys' Guard of Honor, Dicky among them. Their uniform was a white suit and black stockings, and Helen and one or two other daughters of members of the 1914 Class were pinning on with a rose their shoulder sashes of Eton blue, the class color. Each boy carried a white pennant lettered in blue, DICKENS. They were a fine, manly looking lot of youngsters and they, too, drew compliments from the onlookers. Roger was marshaling them.

These groups were far from being the only people on the square. Banner boys were bringing the standards from Alumni Hall and setting them up as a rallying point for the C. L. S. C. classes. James Hancock carried the flag of a class whose representatives all happened to be women and not strong enough to lift the standard with its heavy pole. Tom Watkins carried the banner of Grandmother Morton's class, the 1908's, because his mother belonged to it. Mrs. Emerson did not march with the 1908's because she was to pass through the Golden Gate after the graduating class.

Back and forth went the Institution band, escorting one division and another of the mustering throng. All the undergraduates wore oak leaves to distinguish them from the graduates. The hoot of an owl rose from a group of 1913's, who, because they were the Athene Class, had taken the sacred bird of the goddess of wisdom for their emblem. Other classes were choosing cheer leaders and practicing their yells with greater or less success.

"The year numbers on these banners don't give you much idea of the ages of the people under it!" laughed Tom Watkins to Helen as she passed him.

"There's a 20-year old graduate in 1914 and a 78-year old," smiled Helen. "Where are the 1914's?" she asked, looking about her.

"They don't march with the rest; they gather at the Golden Gate at the lower end of St. Paul's Grove," explained Tom. "The best thing for you to do if you want to see all the different parts of the procession is to watch the start-off here and then rush down the hill to the Chancellor's cottage and see him fall into the line with the Marshal of the Day as his escort. Then go to the Grove and see the class pass through the Gate and up the steps of the Hall of Philosophy, and then hang around the outskirts until they come out and march to the Amphitheatre for the address."

Helen followed Tom's advice, waving her hand to Dorothy and Della among the Flower Girls, kodaking Dicky in the Guard of Honor, and standing with the Hancocks while her mother and grandmother and Dr. Hancock, followed in a later group by Mrs. Emerson, passed through the Gate. The class walked between the Flower Girls strewing blossoms under their feet, beneath the arches symbolizing History, Literature, Science and Faith, between the lines of the choir singing a "Hail" of welcome, and up the steps at whose top waited the Chancellor.

Once in the Hall the service of Recognition followed; the tale of the historic C. L. S. C. banner was related; five mosaic tablets laid in the flooring were dedicated, and then the lines re-formed and started to the Amphitheatre. The Boys' Guard of Honor preceded the 1914's and repeated their yell.

"Chautauqua! Chautauqua!
Chau-tau-qua!
Nineteen-fourteen!
Rah! Rah! Rah!"

came the shout in the unaccustomed voices of the Dickens Class.

"Show 'em how to do it!" Mrs. Morton heard Roger urging his flock in an undertone.

"Chautauqua! Chautauqua!
Chau-tau-qua!
Nineteen-fourteen!
Rah! Rah! Rah!"

rang out the yell heartily from three score unabashed juvenile throats.

"Great!" commended Roger in a half whisper.

"Fine! Thank you!" responded the Dickensians gratefully.

Along the lake front the long line twisted, banners shining, handkerchiefs waving. The moving picture man ground his crank painstakingly; kodakers snapped along the pathway; relatives called out, "There's Mary," or, in shriller tones, "Hullo, Marmer."

The marshal of the division preceded the gleaming white Dickens banner, bearing the class name and year; just behind it followed the class officers and then the smiling ranks wound once more between greeting graduates and the boys and Flower Girls into the Amphitheatre.

With the procession seated in the auditorium the young people's work was ended. The girls and boys went off to be refreshed with ice cream cones and the older boys rested under shady trees until such time as they would have to take back the banners to the class rooms in Alumni Hall.

"It's a great show," commented Tom Watkins, passing his handkerchief over his perspiring forehead.

"A feller doesn't get tired of it if he has seen it all his life," agreed James, falling on to his back with his knees crossed high in air.

"We'll have to read the Course ourselves so as to take part in every section of the performance," said Roger who had disposed of his charges and was not sorry to sit down after his unaccustomed duties.

Again the young people fringed the Hall of Philosophy in the afternoon when the Chancellor gave out the diplomas and pronounced the members of the class of 1914 full fledged members of the Alumni Society of the Hall in the Grove.

"What hath Mother done to make her graduate?" asked Dicky in a far-reaching whisper as Mrs. Morton received her diploma and was applauded for the Bishop's announcement that she had earned ten seals.

"She has read certain books and magazines faithfully for four years," explained Helen, "She didn't read a little bit and then say she was sick of that book, the way I do sometimes; she stuck right to them and read them very carefully, so the Chancellor has given her a diploma, telling what she has done."

"When I grow up," declared Dicky, "I'm going to be a Chanthellor and give people diplomaths and make 'em laugh and clap."

"Mother," said Ethel Brown in the afternoon when Mrs. Morton and Mr. Emerson and their admiring family had returned to the cottage, "would you object if we had a party this evening while you and Grandfather and Grandmother are at the C. L. S. C. banquet?"

"What sort of party, dear?"

"Oh, I'd like to ask the Hancocks and the Watkinses to supper to celebrate—to celebrate—I don't know just what!" Ethel ended tamely.

"I think in your own mind you'd like a celebration of having finished an unselfish week. Isn't that it? You can make it a celebration for the Watkinses if you initiate them into the United Service Club this evening. Will that do?"

CHAPTER XVIII

IN CAMP

BY the time that the Ethels had learned how to swim well enough to induce Mrs. Morton to let them go across the lake to the Girls' Club camp the season was so far advanced that they had trouble in getting their names on the list at all. Dorothy and Della waited to take their turn at the same time, and when the Institution motor-boat at last carried them over it was the last trip of the season.

They found the camping ground on the other side in perfect order for their coming.

"Every squad of campers finds all that it needs to pitch camp with immediately, even down to the wood to make the camp fire," explained Miss Roberts.

"See," cried Ethel Blue, "there it is, stacked up for us. Who does it?"

"The last campers. There was a detachment from the Boys' Club here last night."

"They were fine cleaners—for boys," commented Della.

"Boys are good cleaners," asserted Ethel Brown.

"Oh, Roger has Army and Navy ideas about neatness, but ordinary boys aren't so careful."

"On an earlier trip you girls would leave the camp in just the order in which you found it, wood and all. This is the last one, however, so you won't have to chop wood, but everything else must be so arranged that the men who come over to dismantle the camp will find everything in its place."

It was an evening of delight, to all the girls but especially to Ethel Blue, who had heard her father tell of his camping experiences so often that she felt as if she were repeating one of them through the kind influence of some good fairy who had touched her with her wand without her knowledge.

Pitching the tents was not easy but the girls managed it under the direction of one of Miss Roberts's assistants. Their united strength was needed for that, but when it was done they divided the remainder of the tasks. Dorothy was one of the squad that made the fire. Ethel Brown went with the girls who took the camp pails to the nearest farmhouse to draw drinking water from the well. Della and three others went up the road a little farther to a dairy to get the evening's supply of milk. Ethel Blue helped unpack the food supplies that had come over in the launch.

When everything was out of the boat and it was chug-chugging away from the shore the campers felt that now they were really cut off from home even if they were not on a desert island.

Not one of the girls ever had eaten a supper that tasted so good as that prepared in the open air and eaten with appetites sharpened by the exercise of preparation. Dorothy and three of her companions of the cooking class volunteered to prepare the main dishes, while Ethel Blue, who had become expert in the water, assisted the swimming teacher to give a lesson to a few girls who had arrived only a week before. At a suitable time after the lesson was over every girl was directed to cut a forked stick from a near-by hedge. Then they gathered about the fire and each one cooked her own bacon on the end of the fork. Sometimes the flames leaped up and caught the savory bit, and then there was a scream at the tragedy. A huge broiler propped against a stick driven into the ground held a chicken whose skin turned a delicate brown in response to the warmth of the blaze. Potatoes in their jackets and ears of corn in their husks were buried in the ashes with heated stones piled over them so that they should be roasted through evenly. The elders made coffee by the primitive method of boiling it in a saucepan and clearing it with a dash of cold water, and they maintained that no coffee with a percolator experience ever tasted better. None of the girls drank coffee at night, but they all praised the delicious milk that they had brought from the dairy, and started a rivalry of enthusiasm.

When everything was made tidy after supper the fire was heightened to a roaring blaze and the girls sat around it cross-legged and told stories. "Br'er Rabbit" and the "Tar Baby" seemed just in the shadows beyond the flames and if you listened hard you could hear the hiss of the water as an Indian canoe slipped down the lake in pursuit of Brule or La Salle. A folk dance in the firelight ended the evening's amusement.

Bedtime brought an orderly arrangement of the sleeping equipment and a quick going to sleep, for the girls were tired enough to have fatigue overcome the strangeness of their surroundings.

The Ethels, Dorothy, and Della were together. It was at that end of the night when darkness is just giving way to the dim light that comes before the rosiness of the dawn, that Dorothy was roused by heavy breathing outside the tent. A chill of fear stiffened her. In the space of an eyeflash her mind went back many years to a faraway land where she had been roused in just this way by heavy breathing outside her window. Then there had been a low call and her father had come into her room and exchanging a word or two over her bed with the man beneath the window, had gone out doors. Almost before she realized that he had gone there was the snap of a revolver and a sharp cry of agony and her mother had shrieked and rushed out, leaving her alone. She was wide awake then and she lay in her narrow bed shivering and wondering.

Her mother came back weeping, and little yellow men had brought in her father's limp body and he had lain on the bed for two days, not opening his eyes, not stirring, until men came once more and carried him away, and she never saw him again.

She had almost outgrown the nightmare that attacked her every once in a while after her father's death, but the memory of the whole happening came back to her now with the sound of the heavy breathing. The suspense was more than she could endure. She reached over and touched Ethel Blue's hand.

Ethel Blue roused and was about to ask what was the matter when Dorothy, scarcely visible in the dim light, made a sign for silence. Both girls sat up in their cots and listened. Nearer and nearer came the sound. It seemed too heavy for a man's breathing,—yet—they had been talking about Indians before they went to bed—perhaps Indians breathed more heavily than white men. No man would come at such an hour with a good purpose—perhaps bad men breathed more heavily than good men. Ethel Blue clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Dorothy crawled down into the bed and drew the cover over her head.

At that instant a roar boomed through the tent. Every girl sat up in her bed with a sharp, "What's that?" There were stirrings in the other tents; but the roar came again right there beside Ethel Blue's cot, and so near that it seemed in her very face.

"It's something awful!" she thought, chilled with fright; and then, "I won't let my imagination run away with me. It may not be as bad as it sounds. If it does hurt me I can bear it!"

Slowly she pushed back her blanket and looked down whence the clamor had come. The roar was followed by a tearing sound and a noise of struggle.

"Oh, girls," cried Ethel Blue, "it's a cow! It's nothing but a cow! Poor old thing, she's caught her horns under the edge of the tent and she can't get loose."

Dorothy's head came out from its covering.

"A cow!" she breathed with relief and sank back, weak but thankful.

"She's going to pull the tent down!" screamed Della.

"Can't you shoo her out, Ethel Blue?" asked Ethel Brown. "You're nearest."

Ethel Blue was well aware that she was nearest. She was startlingly near. But the cow seemed to want to withdraw quite as much as the girls wanted her to, and that encouraged Ethel Blue to help her. Leaning out of her cot she lifted the edge of the tent as far as she could with one hand and with her slipper in the other slapped the cow on her forehead as a hint that backwards was her next best move.

With a gasp of disgust the invader departed and the girls heard Miss Roberts, who had been aroused from her tent, driving her away. In fact, everybody was wide awake by this time.

"Let's get up," suggested Della. "I've never seen the sun rise and this is a good chance."

Evidently the girls in the other tents were holding a caucus to the same effect and there shortly appeared a shivering group of campers. Ethel Brown was the only one who seemed not to think the happening good fun, but she was ashamed to seem cross when everybody else was in good humor, and when Miss Roberts set her to work on the breakfast preparations she soon forgot that she had not made a brave showing before the marauder. Dorothy was pale but gave no other sign of having been especially disturbed. After breakfast came the packing up and setting of the camp in order and then two of the girls who had been studying signalling, wig-wagged across the lake for the launch to come for them.

"Since we've made such an early start we might as well go back early," decided Miss Roberts, "because to-night is the exhibition of the School of Physical Education, you remember, and those of you who are in it will be glad of the extra time for rehearsing."

The girls left with the feeling that they had had almost as memorable a time as if the camp had been attacked by Indians. Now that it was over they were glad the cow had happened in. Ethel Blue had a real glow when she recalled that although she had been badly scared she had pulled herself together and really driven the cow away, and Dorothy felt that since her nightmare had once had so laughable an ending perhaps it would not come again.

Because of their early rising all the girls took a nap in the afternoon.

"You want to put spirit into your folk dances to-night," Mrs. Morton replied to the Ethels' remonstrances against this hardship. "I want my girls to move with life and not as if they were half asleep."

"Sleep now and you won't sleep then," added Helen, who was taking the last stitches on a pierrot dress which Ethel Blue was to wear.

The seats in the pit of the Amphitheatre were all removed so that the audience was crowded into the benches on the sloping sides. The parents of the boys and girls who were to take part were present in force and the members of the Boys' Club and Girls' Club who were not to take part sat together in solid blocks at the front.

A grand procession of all the participants opened the program.

"There's Roger," cried his grandmother.

"Tom Watkins is with him and James is just behind," Grandfather Emerson informed his wife after looking through his glass.

"Some one of those funny pierrots is Ethel Blue, but you can't distinguish her."

"She is to march with Dorothy, and Ethel Brown and Della are to be together in the butterfly dance."

"And Helen?"

"She is in one of the folk dances. She must be in this division wearing gymnasium suits."

"Or in the next one; that first detachment looked to me as if it was made up of teachers of gymnastics who are taking a normal course here."

The program continued with a set of exercises by the smallest members of the Boys' Club who executed a flag drill with precision and general success, although Dicky wandered from the fold when Cupid Watkins trotted his bowlegged way on to the stage looking for some member of his human family. Nevertheless, Dicky won the applause of the audience by seizing Cupid in his arms and planting a kiss on the cross-piece of his muzzle before leading him off on his search.

The butterfly dance was charming, the little girls waving in exact time to the music the filmy wings that hung from shoulder and wrist. Mrs. Morton never succeeded in making out Ethel Brown and Della but the whole effect was delicately graceful. Ethel Blue and Dorothy were equally indistinguishable among the pierrots who stamped and whirled and stretched arms and legs with funny rapid motions.

Ethel Brown had a part in a dance in which rubber balls were bounced in time with a difficult series of steps. Helen and Margaret and Tom Watkins were in one of the folk dances, and Roger and James, with some other large boys and young men, illustrated various wrestling holds in a fashion both graceful and exact. On the whole, the audience seemed to think the program was well worth their commendation.

Into this busy week was crowded yet one more event of especial interest to the Morton household and its friends—the annual circus of the Athletic Club. Roger had been playing baseball on the second team all summer and this team was asked to take part in a burlesque game which was to be one of the numbers on the program. There had been much practicing in private and Roger had come home one day with a black eye which seemed to promise that when he made his slide for base in the show it would be a spectacular performance.

The baseball teams, absurdly dressed, and taking Dicky and Cupid with them for mascots, had a float to themselves in the procession that wound about the grounds in the early part of the afternoon. The Superintendent of Grounds and Buildings led the way in his buggy and behind him came a detachment of Chautauqua police, one man strong. The special features were led by another buggy, this one drawn by a mule wearing a pair of overalls on his front legs.

A pretty pink and white float was filled with small children from the Elementary School; another was laden with a host of Girls' Club members in the pierrot costume of the Exhibition dance. Ethel Blue and Ethel Brown were among them, Ethel Brown wearing Della's dress because Della preferred to ride with Dorothy on the float with the Model Cooking Class.

James Hancock was in the baseball team with Roger but Tom Watkins provided the legs for one of the herd of three ostriches which walked with dignity behind the floats. The line ended with a flock of bicycles all aflutter with ribbons and pennants.

The performance was on the baseball field and it began as soon as the parade arrived and the trousered mule was securely tied. Small boys laden with popcorn and ice cream cones went through the grandstand with their wares, a policeman wearing a badge of giant size kept order, and a solemn-faced announcer presented the numbers of the program. There were several comic dances, some funny songs, a contortionist who twisted himself into such knots that the announcer expressed doubts as to whether he would ever straighten out enough to leave Chautauqua when the season was ended, a snappy banjo quartet, excellent horizontal bar work, and Roger's baseball team.

The baseball team took the prize awarded by the Men's Club for the best exhibit. The Daily of the next morning described their playing as "distinctly original," and mentioned especially the superb slide to base made by Roger Morton, who, as short-stop, picked balls out of the sky with no apparent difficulty.

It was when the Mortons reached home, aching with laughter at the jokes which the clown pretended to get off and didn't, that they were surprised to find awaiting them a telegram from Captain Morton, Ethel Blue's father.

"Leaving Vera Cruz to-day," it read. "Reach Chautauqua next Thursday. Love."

CHAPTER XIX

"MY BRAVE LITTLE GIRL!"

THE Mortons had been talking all summer about having a family picnic, but there had been so many things to do every day for every one of the household that there never had seemed to be any opportunity. Now, however, all the chief events of the season were out of the way and once more their thoughts turned to a day out of the grounds.

"Let's go to Barcelona," suggested Roger a day or two after the circus.

"What's Barcelona?" questioned Ethel Brown.

"Don't you remember Grandmother told us about the fishing village on Lake Erie when we were coming over on the trolley?"

"Helen remembers that because there is some history about it," laughed Ethel. "I know she'll vote for Barcelona."

"I would—I'm crazy to see it—only it seems as if we ought to wait for Uncle Richard to come so that he can go with us."

Ethel Blue's eyes beamed affectionately at her cousin.

"He would like it, wouldn't he?" she said, smiling back.

"Let's go to Panama Rocks, instead," suggested Ethel Brown.

"What are Panama Rocks?" inquired Mrs. Morton.

"The strangest collection of rocks you ever saw, all jumbled together and cleft into miniature canyons. They're about ten miles from here."

"Oh, Daddy would love to see those," cried Ethel Blue so anxiously that no one could help laughing.

"Don't be worried, my dear. We'll save all the very nicest picnics for your father," decided Mr. Emerson. "We'll just go across the lake. There's a place over there where we can make a fire without getting into trouble, and we can have a hot luncheon and take a swim and have a good time even if we aren't out of sight of the Miller Bell Tower."

Ethel Blue's face brightened.

"How do we get there?" she asked.

"By motor boat."

"Then can't we trail a rowboat so Roger can give me a lesson in rowing? I shall be ashamed to tell Daddy that I haven't learned all summer."

"Good work," cried Roger. "I'll hitch a light one on behind and I'll guarantee that before you come back you'll know all you need to to pull it. You won't need anything afterwards except practice."

"And perhaps a little cold cream," commented Helen drily.

It was the following Wednesday before a time could be found that would interfere with no one's plans. On that morning the entire Morton-Emerson family, including Mary, boarded the launch, engineered by Jo Sampson, whose employers, the Springers, had been called home before the season ended. It did not take long to speed across to the other side of the lake and the party was soon near enough to the shore to recognize objects at which they had been looking all summer from a distance.

"Those trees aren't near the farmhouse at all! I thought they were right side of it!"

"The trees in the orchard are full grown. They seem like mere babies from the other shore!"

"And the barn is a long way from the house! Well, well!"

It was a glorious day with a breeze that made it no burden to carry the baskets up the slope to the shelter where the materials for making a fire were awaiting them. Jo and Roger arranged everything in places convenient for the cooks and then Jo went to the farmhouse to see if he could find fresh butter and sweet apples. Grandfather and Grandmother strolled off on a botanizing trip; Mary, who was to have a holiday from any kitchen duties, wandered into the woods with Helen and Dicky.

"Here's a good opportunity for you to give the Ethels their rowing lesson, Roger," suggested Mrs. Morton. "Teach them the main points before luncheon and perhaps they can do a little practicing in the afternoon."

"But you'll be all alone here," objected Roger.

"I shall be glad to be quiet here for a while. It won't be for long; some one is sure to come back in a few minutes."

So Roger and the girls went to the water's edge and the girls stood on the narrow beach while Roger untied the rowboat from the stern of the motor-boat and ran it up on the shore.

"You must learn to get in without being helped," he insisted, "because you'll have to do it lots of times when there isn't any one around to give you a hand. The unbreakable rule is, Step in the middle of the boat. If you step on the side you're going to tip it and then you'll have a picnic sure enough and perhaps two drowned pic-a-ninnies."

"Pic-a-nothing!" retorted Ethel Brown. "We don't care if we do upset. We can swim."

"Clothes and shoes and all? I wouldn't risk it just yet if I were you. Now, then, right in the middle. That's it. Ethel Brown on the seat nearest the stern and Ethel Blue on the other."

Roger pushed off with a mighty shove and crept carefully down the boat, steadying himself by a hand on each girl's shoulder as he passed. He seated himself in the stern.

"Which way are you going, goose?" he inquired fraternally of Ethel Brown. "Sit facing me. It's a funny thing a sailor's daughter doesn't know that."

"Now, Roger, if you're going to tease I'll get some one else to teach me."

"I won't tease you. Don't stand up to turn around; when you make a mistake like that, squirm around on your seat. Always keep as nearly as possible in the center of the boat. What you want to remember is never to give the boat a chance to tip."

"There are only two oars here."

"One oar apiece is enough to begin with. Put yours out on the left side of the boat, looking forward, Ethel Brown. That's the port side. Look out!" for Ethel Brown thrust out her oar with a circular sweep that would have given Roger a smart blow on the ear if he had not ducked with great agility.

"Put yours out on the starboard side, Ethel Blue," he went on when he recovered himself. "That's the right hand side as you face the direction you are going. Secretary Daniels has changed 'port' and 'starboard' in the navy to 'left' and 'right,' but you might as well learn the old terms."

"Starboard, right; port, left; starboard, right; port, left," repeated the Ethels in chorus, as Ethel Blue brought her oar into place by raising it straight in the air, a movement which brought a "Good" from Roger.

"Ethel Brown is stroke."

"Why is she?" demanded Ethel Blue.

"Because she happens to sit nearest the stern where all the other oarsmen—meaning you—can see her. The stroke oar sets the stroke for the other rowers."

"When I go fast you must go fast, Ethel Blue."

"You can't go too fast for me," returned Ethel Blue smartly. "Have I got a name?"

"You're the bow oar. Now, then, ladies, pay attention to me. Do you see that piece of wood fitting in notches nailed across the floor of the boat? That is called a stretcher and you brace your feet against it."

"Perhaps you can, but I can hardly reach it with my toes."

"Move it up to the closest notch, then. That's the idea. Now put one hand on the handle of your oar and the other hand a few inches away from it on the thick part."

"So?"

"So. You're ready now to begin to row. Push your arms forward as far as they will go and let your body go forward, too. That gives you a longer reach and a purchase on the pull back, you see. Bear down a little on the oar, enough to raise it just above the water. When you get the hang of this you can learn how to turn the blade flat so as not to catch the wind or choppy waves. That's called 'feathering'; but we won't try that now."

"When I push the handle of my oar forward the blade goes backward," said Ethel Blue.

"Correct! Observant young woman! When you've pushed it as far as you can, let it go into the water just enough to cover it—no, don't plunge it way in, Ethel Blue! Don't you see you can't pull it if you have such a mass of water resisting you? Get your oar under water, Ethel Brown. If you don't catch the water at all you 'catch a crab'—just so," he chuckled as Ethel Brown gave her oar a vigorous pull through empty air and fell backward off the seat. "Hurt yourself, old girl? Here, grab root," and he extended a helping hand.

"Get these few motions right and you have the whole groundwork of rowing," went on Roger. "Forward, dip, pull, lift; forward, dip, pull, lift; forward, dip, pull, lift. Keep that up and you have the thing done. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four."

The new crew pulled vigorously for some distance until Roger commanded a rest.

"Pull your oar in way across the boat and push it down until the handle catches in the ribs of the opposite side," he directed, "or turn the blade toward the bow and run the handle under the seat before you. Then it won't slip out of the rowlock and sail off, leaving you to wait until somebody happens along to pick you up. You might have to wait some time."

"How are we going to turn round?" Ethel Brown asked when they were rested.

"Pull one oar and the boat will turn away from the side of that oar. You pull, Ethel Blue. See it turn?"

"It's mighty slow work," puffed Ethel Blue.

"And a huge big circle you're making," laughed Roger. "Ethel Brown can help you by backing water."

"How do I do that?"

"It's the exact opposite of regular pulling. That is, dip your oar into the water first and then push your arms and body forward. Do you see? That makes the boat go stern first instead of bow first. Here's your count; dip, push, lift, pull; dip, push, lift, pull."

The two girls tried it together and the boat soon was going backward as fast as they had previously made it go forward.

"Now we'll try this turning around business again," directed Roger. "Ethel Blue will row the regular way; that will turn the boat in a wide circle as we saw. Ethel Brown will back water at the same time. That will make the boat turn a much smaller circle, and in a minute we'll lay our course for the shore. Ready? One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. Now stop backing water, Ethel Brown, and row ahead. One, two, three, four," counted Roger patiently until the bow grated on the pebbles.

"That's enough for to-day," he decided. "You mustn't get so tired out that you won't want to have another go at it to-morrow. Remember, step in the middle of the boat and way out over the side. There you are," and he walked away toward the grove of trees where he had left his mother, whistling loudly and followed by the Ethels' cheerful "Thank you."

"It makes you hungry," commented Ethel Brown. "I believe I'll go and see if there are any signs of luncheon."

"I'll be there in a little while. I think I'll rest under that tree over there for a few minutes."

Ethel Blue was more tired than she realized, and, when she had made herself comfortable, curled up under an oak that was separated from the landing by a narrow point of land and some tall sedges, she fell sound asleep.

It was perhaps half an hour later that she roused sharply at some sound that pierced her dreams. As she came to herself another scream brought her to her feet.

"Dicky!" she gasped. "Where?"

She ran toward the landing, but there was no sign of him. The sound had seemed nearer to her tree she thought as she dashed back to her napping spot, but she had been so sleepy that she could not tell whether it came from the bushes behind her or from the beach.

The beach? The water? Was Dicky in the water? She flew to the water's edge and strained out over the tiny waves that lapped gently in from a steamer that had gone down the lake five minutes before.

There it was again—that scream. And there was Dicky's yellow head bobbing up for an instant and there was his hand thrown into the air.

In a second Ethel had slipped off her skirt and her shoes and was running into the water in her bloomers. It could not be very deep where Dicky was, just beyond the tip of the point. The sedge grass must have thrown him down when he started to wade. How it happened flashed into Ethel's mind as clearly as if she had seen it and all the time she was wading out as fast as she could go. Even now it was only a trifle above her knees; if Dicky could only get his footing he would be all right—and as she thought it, her own feet slipped from under her and she fell down a steep under-water bank sloping sharply away from the point.

This was the reason then. But though startled she was cool and fell at once into an easy swimming stroke. Her middy blouse hampered her but not seriously. It needed only a few strokes to reach the eddy made by Dicky's struggle. She could see him clearly and she seized him by the back of his rompers. He made no resistance, poor little man. All the struggle had gone out of him when she lifted him to the surface.

The point was nearer than the beach and a few strokes brought her to it with her limp burden. The child was a slender little chap but he was a heavy armful for a girl of thirteen and Ethel tugged herself out of breath before she brought him high up on dry land.

"What was the first thing Roger said?" she asked herself, and instantly remembered that she must turn Dicky on to his face to let the water run out of his throat. She bent his limp arm under his forehead and then left him for a second while she ran for her skirt to roll up under his chest. As she ran she tried to scream, but only a faint squeak came from her lips.

As she flew back she rolled the skirt into a bundle. The child still showed no signs of breathing and she copied Roger's next move on that long ago day when she had been his subject. Thrusting the roll under Dicky's chest to raise his body from the ground and then kneeling beside him she pulled him on to his side and then let him fall forward again on to his face, counting "one, two, three, four," slowly for each motion.

Her arms ached cruelly as she tugged and tugged again at Dicky's little rolling body. Wouldn't anybody ever come? Over and over she tried to scream, but she had only breath enough to keep on pulling. She was counting "One, two, three, four," silently now.

At last, at last, came a flicker of Dicky's eyelid and a whimper from his mouth. Ethel worked on harder and harder. Dicky grew heavier and heavier, but she saw dimly through her own half-shut eyes that he was opening his and that his face was puckering for one of the yells that only Dicky Morton could give.

"You let me alone, Ethel Blue," he whispered savagely, and then she lost sight of the water and the sedge grass and her weary arms fell at her sides.

When she opened her eyes again she found a heavy coat thrown around her and a face that she had not seen for a very long time, smiling down into hers—a face that she never forgot, the face that flashed before her every night when she said her prayers.

"My little girl!" Captain Morton was saying soothingly as he rocked her in his arms; "my brave little girl!"

His brave little girl!

"Dicky?" Ethel murmured, looking up at her father.

"He's all right, dear. Aunt Marion has taken him to the fire."

Then Ethel leaned her face against her father's shoulder and lay without stirring, utterly content.

CHAPTER XX

FOLLOWING A CLUE

WHEN Jo Sampson came running with a glass of hot milk and her Aunt Marion's instructions that Ethel Blue was to drink it at once, he said that he was preparing the launch for an immediate return across the lake. It was after they were packed into the boat and Ethel Brown had squeezed the water out of Ethel Blue's bloomers, that she shrugged herself comfortably into her father's coat and propped herself against his shoulder and asked if anybody knew how it happened.

Nobody did, it seemed. Dicky had gone to walk with Helen and Mary and when they came back and began to busy themselves about the luncheon he had slipped away. It was not until Captain Morton, who had reached Chautauqua a day earlier than he expected, and had followed them across in another launch, suddenly arrived and asked for Ethel Blue that they noticed that both Ethel Blue and Dicky were missing. The first point of search was the neighborhood of the rowboat where Ethel Brown had left her, and they must have come upon her only an instant after she had collapsed, for Dicky complained tearfully that "The hurted me and then the tumbled down."

Ethel Blue was the heroine of the day and not even her father was prouder of her than Ethel Brown, who patted her and praised her without stint.

So great was the disturbance created at home by Dicky's experience which necessitated the calling of a doctor to make sure that he and Ethel Blue were getting on safely, and so frequent were the runnings up and down stairs with hot water and hot cloths and hot drinks and dry clothes that it was nightfall before Mrs. Morton had a chance to ask her brother-in-law how it happened that he had a furlough just at that time. Ethel Blue had begged not to be sent to bed and she was lying in the hammock, wrapped in a blanket and holding her father's hand as if she were trying to keep him always beside her. The rest of the family had gone to bed or to the Amphitheatre.

"Is my namesake asleep?" inquired Captain Morton. "Then sit down and let me tell you why I am here. I asked for leave because something had happened that made me think that we might perhaps be able to find Sister Louise again."

"Oh, Richard! After all these years! Have you really a clue?"

"It seems to me a very good one. I was doing some inspection work at the time General Funston cleaned up Vera Cruz. It necessitated my going into a great many of the Mexican houses. In one of them—a rather small house in a shabby street—I saw on the wall looking down on me a picture of my sister."

"Of Louise! How could it have come there?"

"I was amazed. I stared at the thing with my mouth open. But I could not be mistaken; it was a photograph of her that I was familiar with, taken before she was married."

"Could you make the proprietor of the house understand that you knew her?"

"Oh, yes; I've picked up enough Spanish to get on pretty well now. The man said that the original of the picture, Doña Louisa, had boarded with them several years ago. It took a lot of calculation to remember how long ago, but he finally concluded that it was the year before his third son broke his leg, and that was in 1907, as far as I could make out."

"Eight years ago that she was there. How extraordinary! What became of her?"

"The story is a tragedy. Louise's husband—Don Leonardo, the Mexican called him—was a musician, as you know. That was the chief reason for Father's disliking him. It seems that he had wandered to Vera Cruz with the orchestra of a theatrical company that stranded there. He was in sore straits pretty often. 'The little girl used to cry from hunger,' my man said."

"Poor little thing!"

"It was the first I knew of there being a child. The father finally got work in the orchestra of a small theatre and managed to make a few pesos a week. That seems to have relieved the situation somewhat, but it also brought on Leonard the anger of some of the other musicians in town who had wanted the 'job' that he had secured."

"He probably needed it more than they."

"But he was a 'gringo' and they hated him. And"—with a glance toward Ethel Blue, swinging gently in the darkness, "and he died suddenly."

"Oh, poor Louise!" exclaimed Mrs. Morton, and "Poor little girl!" exclaimed Ethel.

"Somehow or other Louise managed to scrape together money enough to take the child back to the States, but there was business to be attended to and she left a permanent address with the Señor who had looked after some legal matters for her in Vera Cruz."

"Did you find him? Did he tell you the address?"

"I found him, and when he understood why I wanted to know he gave me the name of the Chicago lawyer whom she would always keep informed of her whereabouts."

"So you got a furlough and you're on your way to Chicago now?"

"I've been to Chicago."

"And the man knew? Did he tell you?"

"He knew. He told me. Where do you suppose she is?"

"I haven't the remotest idea, Richard."

"At Chautauqua."

"At Chautauqua!" repeated Mrs. Morton in a stupefied tone.

"Here!" cried Ethel Blue, amazed.

"Her address is here until September first. I hustled right on here, as you may imagine, to catch her before she left. Now the question is, how do you find out where people are on these grounds?"

"There is a registration office where everybody is supposed to register. Of course not every one does, but that is the first place to apply. We'll go there early in the morning."

"Of course you come upon hundreds of Smiths everywhere, but in a place of this size they may be present in scores instead of hundreds. Have you met any?"

"Two or three. There is a Mrs. Smith in my C. L. S. C. class, and there is one who has a cottage near the Hall of Philosophy, and there's Mother's embroidery teacher at the art store—she's a Mrs. Smith."

"Do you know the first names of any of them?"

"I don't. Do you know Dorothy's mother's name, Ethel?"

"I don't know, Aunt Marion. I'll ask her to-morrow."

"We'll hunt every Smith to his lair," said the Captain seriously; "and your lair is where you ought to be at this minute, young woman. Kiss me 'Good night.'"

The next morning immediately after breakfast, Mrs. Morton and her brother-in-law started off on their quest of the Chautauqua Smiths. Both Ethels were eager to go too, but the elders thought that the fewer people there were about when the meeting took place the less embarrassing it would be for their Aunt Louise.

"If you really do find her here," exclaimed Helen, "Roger will have to acknowledge that there is some romance left in the world."

Mrs. Smith had not reached the art store when Captain and Mrs. Morton stopped there on their way up the hill, so they went on to the registration office and looked through the cards in the catalogue.

"Here are Smiths from every State in the Union, I should say. Warren, Ohio; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Galena, Illinois; Wichita, Kansas; Bartow, Florida—"

"You can't tell anything from those home addresses, for to tell you the truth, I was so excited at getting this Chautauqua address from the Chicago man that I forgot to ask him where she had been before."

"Let's try the first names, then. We want L's, whether we're looking for 'Louise' or 'Leonard.'"

"Here's 'Lucy,' 'Laura,' 'Lester,' and one, two, three with just 'L.'"

"Those will be the ones for us to try first I'll copy their Chautauqua addresses," and Captain Morton drew out a notebook with a hand that trembled.

In spite of the number being so reduced, the search was disappointing. One Mrs. L. Smith lived near the College and proved to be a young woman with a black-eyed baby who demanded her attention imperatively when her callers asked about her acquaintances among the other Smiths of the place.

A second Mrs. L. Smith lived near the fence back of Alumni Hall and was as much too old as the first Mrs. Smith was too young. The third Mrs. L. Smith was just enough a matter of doubt to Captain Morton for him to begin his interview diplomatically.

"Have you ever been in Mexico?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered promptly, though evidently surprised.

"About how long ago?" ventured the Captain.

"It's nearly twenty years now. I was about twenty at the time."

The Mortons excused themselves and continued on their rounds.

"It's a rather doubtful experiment hunting up a person of middle age whom you haven't seen since she was a young woman. With all respect to the lady we just interviewed I'm glad she proves to be not my sister. But I can depend on your affection, Marion, to meet Louise with love no matter what sort of person she proves to be."

"You may, indeed. And I know she'll call out all my love. In the first place she's the sister of the best possible husband and the finest sort of brother-in-law, and in the next place she deserves love for the sake of the hardships she has been through."

"I saw Brother Roger for an hour just before I left Vera Cruz and he said that I could depend on you to be just as true to his as you were to him."

As they passed along the streets they stopped at two or three houses where Mrs. Morton remembered that she had met Smiths or where she could make inquiries about Smiths, but every call was fruitless.

"I believe we shall have to start a house to house search after dinner. Helen and Roger can help."

"We might stop here at the art store again as we pass," suggested Mrs. Morton.

Just at that moment Dorothy's mother came down the steps of the Arcade. She nodded pleasantly to Mrs. Morton, and then glanced at her companion.

"Richard!" she gasped. "Oh, Richard!"

"Louise! Is it Louise? Your hair! It's white!"

Mrs. Morton slipped an arm around Mrs. Smith's waist and drew her across the lawn to the shelter of the cottage.

"I'm so thankful it's you!" she exclaimed with a smile that relieved the tension of the meeting. "I like you so much better than any of the other Mrs. Smiths we have met this morning!"

"I guessed, of course, from your boys' names, that you were my brother's wife," said the newly found sister, sinking into a chair; "but the children said there was no chance of their father or their uncle coming North this summer, and you never had seen me, so I took the risk of staying on until the first of September when my engagement at the art store ends."

"Why didn't you tell me, Louise? It would have been such a happiness to me—to the children—to know. We've been defrauded of nearly two months' joy."

"I shall be going in a week or ten days more," stammered Mrs. Smith, looking at her brother.

"You can tell me your plans later," he answered, "but don't look at me as if I were driving you. Why, I came up here from Vera Cruz to find you and for no other purpose."

"You found a clue there?"

The slender woman seemed to shrink into her chair, her high-piled white hair shining against its red back and her eyes gleaming with tears.

He told her how he had come upon her picture.

"Did the Mexican tell you that my husband was shot there? My little Dorothy wakes even now in the night and thinks she hears voices whispering in the patio under her window, voices of the men that called her father out to his death."

"We can all help make her happy enough to forget the hard days—and you, too, dear Louise."

Mrs. Morton threw her arms around her sister as the Ethels and Dorothy came rushing into the room from their morning on the bathing beach.

"Children, there's good news. Dorothy is your very own cousin."

"Our cousin?"

"Really our cousin?"

"Grandfather Emerson always said our noses were alike."

"Nothing so good ever happened to us," and the Ethels seized Dorothy and the three went through the steps of the butterfly dance with joyous smiles that reassured Dorothy's mother as to her child's welcome into the family.

"I'm so glad it's you who are the Aunt Louise we've wanted to know all our lives," cried Helen softly, kissing her aunt.

Roger shook hands with her gravely, feeling himself the representative of his father on an occasion of such family importance.

The Ethels rushed on to the porch when they heard Dicky coming up the steps.

"Dicky, Dicky, we've got a new aunt! Come in and see her."

Dicky went slowly into the room for purposes of inspection.

"That ain't a new aunt," he exclaimed; "that'th jutht my fire lady," and he curled up like a kitten in his Aunt Louise's lap.

CHAPTER XXI

"WHO ARE WE?"

MRS. SMITH and Dorothy stayed to dinner with the Mortons and after dinner the younger members of the family party went to the beach in front of the cottage while the elders were talking in the house. Roger rolled up to the group cartwheel fashion as they gathered about the stone on which their new cousin was sitting.

"It's the most wonderful event that ever happened to the Mortons," he ejaculated breathlessly. "I suppose Aunt Louise is telling them in the house everything that has happened to her since before all of us were born, so perhaps you'll tell us all the happy happenings that have happened to you."

Dorothy flushed and Helen, who guessed that the happenings of her aunt's and cousin's lives had not been very happy, hastened to interpose.

"What we want to know even more," she said tactfully, "is what Aunt Louise and you are going to do now. Wouldn't it be just grand if you could live in Rosemont!"

Dorothy's face kindled.

"It would be for me," she agreed. "I've never been where there was any one belonging to me, and—well, that would be a 'happy ending'!"

"Where was Aunt Louise planning to go for the winter?"

"I don't know that she had any plans. She hadn't the last time we talked about it, but that was a long time ago—way back at the time of the fire."

"Why can't you both go home with us? We're going in a day or two, you know."

"Mother's engagement at the art store doesn't end until the first of September. She wouldn't leave them in the lurch."

"No, it wouldn't be right," murmured Helen; "but I want her to rest just as soon as she can."

"She is tired," assented Dorothy, thinking as she answered how much more tired her mother was than any of the Morton cousins could understand. The wear of constant anxiety about bread and butter and shelter is something beyond the understanding of those who have not experienced it. It had made Dorothy older than her years and had turned her mother's hair snow-white at forty-two.

"If only you live in Rosemont," said Ethel Brown, "we can go to school together. Ethel Blue and I have been almost like twins. If you are with us all the time we'll be triplets."

"Oh!" cried Dorothy, clasping her hands.

"Do you suppose they'll tell us what they've decided?" asked Ethel Blue anxiously. "Father will suggest something perfectly fine—he always does—and it will be like the end of a fairy story. You're sure you'd like to live with us?" she questioned anxiously.

Helen gave Ethel Blue a touch to attract her attention, for Dorothy was almost crying. Ethel Blue threw her arm around her and gave her a hug. At that minute Captain Morton's voice was heard calling Dorothy from the house. She jumped up and ran in. When she came back a few minutes later she was radiant.

"It's all arranged," she cried excitedly. "Some money has turned up from somewhere—a lot of it—that belongs to Mother, so we can live wherever we want to, and of course we'd rather live near you people than anywhere else in the world."

"All I've got to say," said Ethel Brown, "is that this is the finest sort of ending to the finest sort of summer. Just think of all the new things we've seen and done since we came up here, but I think the best of all has been starting the Club, because that's going to last."

"I believe we're going to have more fun out of that than out of anything we ever tried," said Helen.

"I know it; I feel it in my bones," cried Ethel Blue, "and now that Dorothy is going to help us with it all winter we'll just make things hum in Rosemont."

Throwing their arms across each other's shoulders, the whole group of them marched along the beach—one, two, three, back; one, two, three, back—chanting in unison

"Who are we?
Who are we?
We are members of the U. S. C."

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Sometimes C.S.L.C. was printed with spaces between the letters and sometimes not. This was retained.

The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will appear.

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Table of Contents

- ETHEL MORTON AT CHAUTAUQUA
- CONTENTS
- ETHEL MORTON AT CHAUTAUQUA
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- CHAPTER XVIII
- CHAPTER XIX
- CHAPTER XX

- CHAPTER XXI

- Transcriber's Notes:

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE