ETHEL MORTON
AND THE
CHRISTMAS SHIP

BY
MABELL S. C. SMITH
M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK

Made in U. S. A.

CONTENTS

ETHEL MORTON
AND THE CHRISTMAS SHIP

CHAPTER I

THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB AT HOME

"IT'S up to Roger Morton to admit that there's real, true romance in the world after all," decided Margaret Hancock as she sat on the Mortons' porch one afternoon a few days after school had opened in the September following the summer when the Mortons and Hancocks had met for the first time at Chautauqua. James and Margaret had trolleyed over to see Roger and Helen from Glen Point, about three quarters of an hour's ride from Rosemont where the Mortons lived.

"Roger's ready to admit it," confessed that young man. "When you have an aunt drop right down on your door mat, so to speak, after your family has been hunting her for twenty years, and when you find that you've been knowing her daughter, your own cousin, pretty well for two months it does make the regular go-to-school life that you and I used to lead look quite prosy."

"How did she happen to lose touch so completely with her family?"

"I told you how Grandfather Morton, her father, opposed her marrying Uncle Leonard Smith because he was a musician. Well, she did marry him, and when they got into straits she was too proud to tell her father about it."

"I suppose Grandfather would have said, 'I told you so,'" suggested Helen.

"And I believe it takes more courage than it's worth to face a person who's given to saying that," concluded James.

"Aunt Louise evidently thought it wasn't worth while or else she didn't have the courage and so she drifted away. Her mother was dead and she had no sisters and Father and Uncle Richard probably didn't write very often."

"She thought nobody at home loved her, I suppose," said Helen. "Father and Uncle Richard did love her tremendously, but they were just young fellows at the time and they didn't realize what their not writing meant to her."

"Once in a while they heard of Uncle Leonard through the music papers," went on Roger, "but after his health failed, Aunt Louise told us the other day, he couldn't make concert appearances and of course a man merely playing in an orchestra isn't big enough to command public attention."

"By the time that Grandfather Morton died about twelve years ago she was completely lost to the family," Helen continued, "and she says she didn't know of his death until five years after, when she came accidentally upon some mention of it in a local paper that she picked up somewhere."

"That was after Uncle Leonard's death, but it seemed to her that she could not make herself known to her people without being disloyal to his memory," Roger carried on the story.

"She probably thought that your father and uncle were just as much opposed to him as her father had been," guessed Margaret.

"As a matter of fact, they have been hunting hard for her through every clue that promised any result ever since Grandfather died because they wanted to give her her share of his property."

"He didn't cut her off with a shilling, then?"

"Grandfather seems to have had a change of heart, for he left her more than he did his sons. He said she needed it more."

"And it has been accumulating all this time."

"Seven years. That means a very pleasant increase for her and Dorothy."

"She must think rather sadly of the days when they suffered real privation for the lack of it," said Helen.

"Anyway, here they are now, with money in their pockets and an affectionate family all ready made for them and they are going to live here in Rosemont near us, and Dorothy is going to school with the Ethels, and I'm willing to admit that it comes nearer to being a romance than anything I ever heard of in real life," and Roger nodded his head gleefully.

"I'm glad she's going to live here so we can see her once in a while," said Margaret. "Mother and Sister and I all loved her at Chautauqua, she was so patient and gentle with the people she taught. And of course we all think Dorothy is a darling."

"The Ethels are crazy over her. They treat her as if she were some new belonging and they can hardly bear to have her out of their sight."

"It was Grandfather Emerson who said all summer that she looked like the Ethels," remarked Roger. "Her hair is fuzzy and her nose is puggy, but I didn't see much other likeness."

"When she grows as fat as the Ethels I think she'll look astonishingly like them. She's thin and pale, now, poor little dud."

"I wish she could grow as plump as Della Watkins."

"I saw Tom Watkins yesterday," said James.

"What was a haughty New Yorker doing on the Jersey side of the Hudson?"

"It seems he boards Cupid and his family at the Rosemont Kennels—you know they're half way between here and Glen Point. He was going to call on them."

"Dear Cupid!" laughed Margaret, recalling the bulldog's alarming face which ill agreed with his mild name and general behavior. "Let's go over to the Kennels and see him some day."

"His wife is named Psyche," went on James, "and they have two pups named Amor and Amorette."

"I should think Cupid's puppy would be the funniest little animal on earth," roared Roger. "Never, never shall I forget the day old Cupe ran away with his market wagon," and he kicked his legs with enthusiasm.

"Did Tom say anything about coming to see us?" asked Margaret.

"He said he and Della were coming over on Saturday afternoon and he inquired how far it was from Glen Point to Rosemont and whether they could make two calls in one afternoon."

"Not if he stays at either place as long as we'd like to have him," said Roger.

"Why don't we have a meeting of the United Service Club on Saturday afternoon?" suggested Helen, "and then the Watkinses can come here and you two can come and we can all see each other and at the same time decide on what we are going to do this winter."

"Great head!" approved Roger. "Can you people be here?"

"We can," assented Margaret.

"And we will." James completed the sentence for her.

"Here are the children. They've been asking when we were to have the first meeting, so I know they'll be glad to give Saturday afternoon to it."

"The children" of Helen's patronizing expression came rushing into the yard at the moment. Ethel Brown Morton, tall and rosy, her cheeks flushed with running, led the way; her cousin, Ethel Blue Morton, not quite so tall or quite so rosy, made a fair second, and their newly-found cousin, Dorothy Smith, brought up the rear, panting a trifle harder than the rest, but already looking plumper and sturdier than she had during the summer at Chautauqua.

They greeted Margaret and James gladly, and sat down on the steps of the porch to engage in the conversation.

"Hullo," a voice came through the screen door. "I'm coming out."

"That must be my friend Dicky," declared James. "Come on, old man," and he arranged his knees in position to serve as a seat for the six-year-old who calmly sat himself down upon them.

"How are you?" questioned James gravely. "All right?"

"Firtht rate," replied Dicky briefly. "Have a thuck?" and he offered James the moist end of an all-day-sucker, withdrawing it from his own mouth for the purpose.

"Thank you, I'm not eating candy to-day, sir," responded James seriously. "Much obliged to you, all the same."

Dicky nodded his recognition of James's thanks and resumed his occupation.

"It keeps us still though we're not pretty to look at as we do it," commented Ethel Brown.

"You're talking about me," asserted Dicky suddenly, once more removing his sucker from his increasingly sticky lips and fixing an accusing eye upon his sister.

"She was, Dicky, that's true," interposed Helen quickly, "but she loves you just as much as if she were talking about Roger."

Dicky regarded this as a compliment and subsided against James's chest.

"We're going to try and get the Watkinses to come out next Saturday afternoon and the Hancocks will come over and we'll have a meeting of the United Service," explained Roger to the new arrivals.

"Good enough!" approved Ethel Brown.

"What are you going to do, Madam President?" inquired Ethel Blue, who felt a lively interest in any future plans because the Club was her idea.

"We'll all think of things between now and Saturday, and suggest them then."

"Tell the Watkinses when you write to them, Helen."

"I'm just boiling over with ideas for the Club to put into execution some time or other," announced Roger.

"Big ones or little?" asked Dorothy.

"Some of them are pretty big, but I have a feeling in my bones that they'll go through."

"Good for old Roger's bones!" commended James. "May we venture to ask what some of them are?"

"'Nothing venture, nothing have,'" quoted Roger. "I'm merely saying now, however, that the biggest scheme is one that I told Grandfather Emerson about the other day and he said he'd help by giving us the house for it."

"What should we do that would need a house?"

"What do you mean—house?"

Roger grinned delightedly at the commotion he had caused.

"This plan I have is so big that we'll have to get the grown-ups to help us, but we'll do most of the carrying out ourselves in spite of that."

"I should think we would have to have their help if your plan calls for a house."

"You needn't be sarcastic, young woman. This is a perfectly good scheme—Grandfather said so. He said it was so good that he was willing to back it and to help us by supplying the house we should need."

"Poor old Roger—gone clean crazy," sighed James.

"I almost think so," agreed Helen.

"Let me tell you something, you scoffers——"

"Tell on; that's what we're waiting for."

"Well, on the whole, I guess I won't tell you a thing about it."

"If you aren't the very meanest boy I ever knew in my life," decided Margaret whole-heartedly. "To work our curiosity all up this way and then not to tell us a thing."

"I didn't get the encouragement that the plan deserved."

"Like all great inventors," commented James.

"They all come out on top at the end, I notice," retorted Roger. "You just watch me about next April when the buds begin to swell."

"Heads begin to swell at any time of year, apparently."

"Especially bad cases begin in the autumn—about September."

"Oh, you wait, just wait," threatened Roger. "When you haven't an idea what to do to make the Club really useful for another minute then you'll recall that I promised you a really big plan. Then—"

"If you aren't going to tell us now I think we'd better talk about something that has some connection with what we're going to do in September instead of this April Fool thing of yours," said Helen somewhat sharply.

"Let's not talk about it until Saturday," begged Ethel Blue. "Then we can all put our minds on it."

"I rise to remark, Madam President," continued James, "that I believe this Club has a great future before it if it does not get involved in wildcat schemes—"

"Now listen to that!" exclaimed Roger. "There speaks the canny Scot that was James's great-grandfather. Cautious old Hancock! Now you really have got me riled. I vow to you, fellow-clubmen and -women that I won't be the first to propose this scheme again. You'll have to come to me. And I'll prophesy that you will come to me about the first of next April."

"Why April?"

"Nothing to do with April Fool, I assure you. But about that time we shall have worked off all the ideas that we've cooked up to carry us through the winter and we'll be glad to undertake a service that is a service—the real thing."

"We're going to do the real thing all the time." Ethel Blue defended her idea. "But I dare say we'll want to do your thing, too."

"Grandfather's recommendation doesn't seem to count with you young know-it-alls."

"Grandfather's recommendation is the only reason why our remarks weren't more severe," retorted Ethel Brown.

"Each of us must bring in a list next Saturday," said Helen, as they all walked to the corner to see that the Hancocks took the car safely.

"And I believe that every one will be a perfectly good plan," said Roger magnanimously.

"There won't be one that will require a house to hold it anyway," retorted Margaret.

CHAPTER II

DOROTHY'S COTTAGE

ROSEMONT and Glen Point were two New Jersey towns near enough to New York to permit business men to commute every day and far enough away from the big city to furnish plenty of air and space for the growing generation. It was the latter qualification that endeared them to the Morton and Hancock families, for there were no commuters in their households. Lieutenant Morton, father of Roger and Helen and Ethel Brown and Dicky, was on his ship in the harbor of Vera Cruz. Captain Morton, his brother, father of Ethel Blue, had returned to Gen. Funston's army after finding their sister, Mrs. Smith, at Chautauqua and convoying her with all the Mortons and Mrs. Morton's father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, back to Rosemont. His short furlough did not allow him to remain long enough to see his sister established in a house of her own, but it was understood that she was to hire a furnished house as near as possible to the Mortons' and live in it until she made up her mind where she wanted to build.

"Dorothy and I have wandered about the United States so long," she said plaintively, "that we are thankful to settle down in a town and a house that we can call our own, and we shall be even happier when we have a bungalow actually belonging to us."

At present they were still staying with the Mortons, but the Morton family was so large that two visitors crowded them uncomfortably and Mrs. Smith felt that she must not trespass upon her sister-in-law's hospitality longer than was absolutely necessary.

"I think the white cottage just around the corner will be the one that we will take," she said to Dorothy. "Come with me there again this afternoon for one more look at it, and then we'll make up our minds."

So they went to the white cottage and carefully studied its merits.

"The principal good thing about it is that it is near Aunt Marion's," declared Dorothy.

"I think so, too. And it is near school and church and the butcher's and baker's and candlestick-maker's. We shan't have very far to walk for anything."

"Oh, Mother, it doesn't seem possible that this can be us really living and not just perching around, and having enough money and enough to eat and nothing to worry about."

Mrs. Smith threw her arm about Dorothy's shoulder.

"The thing for you to do to show your gratitude is to grow well and strong just as fast as you can. I want to see you as rosy as the Ethels."

"They run me around so much that I think they'll do it for me before very long."

"They have a start, though, so you'll have to do all the vigorous things that they do and others too."

"You mean exercises at home?"

"Every morning when you get up you should do what a cat does when he wakes from a nap."

"I know—he stretches himself way out to the tips of his claws."

"And shakes himself all over. What do you suppose he's doing it for?"

"To stretch his muscles, I should think."

"And to loosen his skin and make himself generally flexible. Have you ever seen a sick cat? His coat looks dull and dry and woolly instead of silky, and when you feel of him his skin doesn't slip over his bones easily. It wouldn't be very complimentary to ourselves to say that you and I are sick cats just now, but it wouldn't be far from the truth."

"I don't much like the sound of it," laughed Dorothy. "What can we invalid pussies do to get well?"

"A few simple exercises we ought to take every morning when we first get out of bed. We ought to stand first on one foot and then on the other, and swing vigorously the foot that is off the floor."

"That's easy."

"Then if we stretch our arms upward as high as we can, first one and then the other and then both, and then put our hands on the ribs of each side and stretch and lift them we shall have limbered up the lower and the upper parts of ourselves pretty thoroughly."

"I learned a good exercise for the waist muscles at the Girls' Club last summer. You sit down and roll the body at the waist line in all directions. You can do it standing, too; that brings in some different muscles."

"We'll do that. These few exercises will wake up every part of the body."

"We ought to do them with the windows open."

"When you first wake up after having the windows wide open all night you don't realize the cold in your room. It isn't until you have been to a warmer room that you notice the cold in your bedroom. So the best time to take these exercises is just the minute you hop out of bed. Stand in front of the open window and take deep breaths of air way down into the very lower tips of your lungs so that every tiny cell will be puffed out with good, fresh oxygen."

"It will take a lot of time to do all those exercises."

"Five minutes every morning will be enough if we do them vigorously. And you mustn't forget that your aim is to catch up with the Ethels."

"And then to beat them. I'll do it."

They went slowly through the cottage and planned the purpose to which they would put each room. It was simply furnished, but all the necessities were there.

"It's more fun this way than if there were a lot of furniture," said Dorothy, "because we can get what is lacking to suit ourselves."

"All the time that we are here we can be making plans for building our own little house."

"I can hardly wait to have it."

They hugged each other in their happiness and the tears were not far from the eyelids of both of them, for Mrs. Smith had not known anything but the actual necessities of living for many years and Dorothy had never known many comforts that had been every day matters and not luxuries to her mother's youth.

So Mrs. Smith hired the white cottage and she and Dorothy moved in at once. A cousin of Mary, Mrs. Morton's old servant, who had been Dicky's nurse, came to work for them, and by the time of the first meeting of the United Service Club Dorothy felt so settled in her new home that she wanted to have the meeting in the living-room or the big attic just to see how it felt to be entertaining people in her own house.

"I think I wouldn't suggest it this time," Mrs. Smith warned her. "Helen is the president, you see, and it seems more suitable for the first meeting to be held at her house. Ask if you mayn't have the next one here. How often are you going to meet?"

"I hope it will be once a week, and so does Ethel Blue. She thinks there's plenty of occupation to keep a service club busy all the time."

At noon the sun disappeared and the Rosemont members of the U. S. C. began to have doubts as to whether the Hancocks and Watkinses would appear.

"Even if it rains hard I think James and Margaret will come," said Helen. "The trolley brings them almost from their door to ours; but I don't feel so sure about the Watkinses."

"It doesn't take but ten minutes longer for them to come out from New York than for the Hancocks to come over from Glen Point."

"But they have to cross the ferry and take the train and it seems more of an undertaking than just to hop into a street car."

"It's getting so dark and gloomy—what do you say if you Ethels make some candy to enliven the afternoon?"

"Is there time before they come?"

"Just about. Try Vinegar Candy this time. If you leave half of it unstirred and stir the other half it will be as good as two kinds, you know."

So the Ethels went off into a pantry back of the kitchen, where Mrs. Morton had had a small gas stove installed so that the children might cook to their hearts' content without interfering with the occupants of the kitchen.

"There's nothing that upsets people who are trying to make a house run smoothly and to do its work promptly and well as to have children come into the kitchen and use the stove when it is needed for other purposes, and get in the way and leave their cooking apparatus around and their pots and pans uncleaned," declared Mrs. Morton.

So the Ethels and Helen, and Roger, too, for he was a capital cook and was in great demand whenever the boys went on camping trips, all contributed from their allowances to buy a simple equipment for this tiny kitchen which they called their own. Mrs. Morton paid for the stove, but the saucepans and baking tins, the flour and sugar and eggs, the flavoring extracts and the seasonings were all supplied by the children, and it was understood that when a cooking fit seized them they must think out beforehand what they were going to want and provide themselves with it and not call on the cook or Mary to help them out of an emergency caused by their own thoughtlessness. Mrs. Morton was sure that her reputation as a sensible mother who did not let the children over-run the kitchen at times when they were decidedly in the way was one of the chief reasons why her servants stayed with her so long.

So now Ethel Brown said to Ethel Blue, "Have we got all the materials we need for Vinegar Candy?" and Ethel Blue seized the cook book and read the receipt.

"Mix together three cupfuls of sugar, half a cupful of vinegar, half a cupful of water. When it comes to a boil stir in one teaspoonful of soda."

"We've got sugar and soda and water," announced Ethel Brown after investigating the shelves of the tiny storeroom, "but there isn't any vinegar. I do hate to go out in this rain," for the dark sky was making good its threat.

"I'll get it for you. Give me your jug," said Roger, swinging into his raincoat. "I'll be back in half a jiff," and he dashed off into the downpour, shaking his head like a Newfoundland dog, and spattering the drops as he ran.

He was back before the Ethels had their pans buttered and the water and sugar measured, so briskly had he galloped. It was only a few minutes more before the candy stiffened when a little was dropped into a cup of cold water.

"Now we'll pour half of it into one of the pans," directed Ethel Brown, "and then we'll get Roger to beat the other half so it will be creamy."

Roger was entirely willing to lend his muscles to so good a cause and soon had the mass grained and white.

"Good work; one boiling for two batches!" he declared. "That pleases my notions of scientific management."

When the door-bell rang for the first arrivals the whole thing was almost cold, and Mary, who was always willing to help in an emergency, hastened the chilling process by popping the tins into the ice box.

"They're not warm enough any longer to melt the ice," she decided, "so I'll just hurry 'em up a bit."

After all the discussion about the city dwellers' dislike of going into the suburbs it was the Watkinses who came first.

"We're ahead of the hour," apologized Della. "We couldn't time ourselves exactly for so long a distance."

"The Hancocks will come just on the dot, I've no doubt," laughed Tom. "Old James is just that accurate person!"

As the clock's hand was on the appointed minute a whir at the bell announced Margaret and James, both dripping from their run from the corner.

"Mrs. Morton's compliments and she thought they had better drink this so they won't get cold."

"Our compliments and thanks to Mrs. Morton," returned Tom, his hand dramatically placed over a portion of his person which is said to be the gateway to a boy's heart.

When the cups had been emptied and the wafers consumed and the Ethels had taken away the tray with the remains of the feast and had brought back the two kinds of candy, carefully cut into squares and heaped in two of the pretty Japanese bowls which made a part of their private kitchen equipment, they all settled down in big chairs and on couches except Roger, who sat near the fire to stir it, and Helen, who established herself at one end of the table where she could see them all conveniently.

CHAPTER III

THE CHRISTMAS SHIP

"THE meeting will come to order," commanded Helen, her face bubbling with the conflict between her dignity and her desire to laugh at her dignity.

"We haven't any secretary, so there can't be any minutes of the last meeting."

Helen glanced sidewise at James, for she was talking about something she never had had occasion to mention in all her life before and she wondered if he were being properly impressed with the ease with which she spoke of the non-existent minutes.

James responded to her look with an expression of surprise so comical that Helen almost burst into laughter most unsuitable for the presiding officer of so distinguished a gathering.

"Oughtn't we to have a secretary?" asked Tom. "If we're going to have a really shipshape club this winter it seems to me we ought to have some record of what we do."

"And there may be letters to write," urged Roger, "and who'd do them?"

"Not old Roger, I'll bet!" cried James in humorous scorn.

"I don't notice that anybody is addressing the chair," remarked Helen sternly, and James flushed, for he had been the president's instructor in parliamentary law at the meeting when the Club was organized, and he did not relish being caught in a mistake.

"Excuse me, Madam President," he apologized.

"I don't see any especial need for a secretary, Miss President," said Margaret, "but can't we tell better when we're a little farther along and know what we're going to do?"

"Perhaps so," agreed Helen. "There isn't any treasurer's report for the same reason that there isn't any secretary's," she continued.

"Just to cut off another discussion I'd like to repeat my remark," said Margaret.

"If we become multi-millionaires later on we can appoint a treasurer then," said Della, her round face unusually grave.

"Instead of a secretary's report it seems to me it would be interesting to remember what the Club did last summer to live up to its name," suggested Tom. "You know Della and I weren't elected until after you'd been going some time, and I'm not sure that I know everything that happened."

The Mortons and Dorothy and the Hancocks looked around at each other rather vaguely, and no one seemed in a hurry to begin.

"It looks to me as if a secretary is almost a necessity," grinned Tom, "if nobody remembers anything you did!"

"There were lots of little things that don't seem to count when you look back on them," began Ethel Blue.

"We did some things as a Club," said Roger, "and we can tell Watkins about those without embarrassing anybody."

"Our first effort was on Old First Night," said Margaret thoughtfully. "Don't you remember we went outside the gate and picked flowers and decorated the stage?"

"In the evening James and Roger passed the baskets to collect the offering in the Amphitheatre," Ethel Blue said. "And then we all did things that helped along in the Pageant and on Recognition Day."

"I don't think those really counted for much as service," said Helen, "because they were all of them mighty good fun."

"I think we ought to do whatever will help somebody, whether we like it or not," declared Ethel Blue, "but I don't see why we shouldn't hunt up pleasant things to do."

"What are we going to do, anyway?" asked Della. "Has anybody any ideas? Oh, please excuse me, Helen—Miss President—perhaps it wasn't time to ask that question."

"I was just about to ask for suggestions," said Helen with dignity. "Has any one come across anything that we can do here in Rosemont or in Glen Point or in New York? Anything that will be an appropriate beginning for the United Service Club? We want to do something that would be suitable for the children of our father and uncle who are serving in the Army and Navy trying to keep peace in Mexico, and of a man like Doctor Hancock, who is serving his fellowmen in the slums every day, and of a clergyman who is helping people to do right all the time."

Helen flushed over this long speech.

"Rosemont, Glen Point, and New York—a wide field," said Tom dryly. "It seems as if we might find something without much trouble."

"I thought of the orphanage in Glen Point," said Margaret.

"What is there for us to do for the kids there that the grown people don't do?" asked Roger.

"The grown people contribute clothes and food and all the necessaries, but sometimes when I've been there it seemed as if the children didn't have much of any of the little nothings that boys and girls in their own homes have. It seemed to me that perhaps we could make a lot of things that weren't especially useful but were just pretty; things that we'd like to have ourselves."

"I know just how they feel, I believe," said Margaret. "One of my aunts thinks that perfectly plain clothes are all that are necessary and she won't let my cousins have any ruffles or bows. It makes them just miserable. They're crazy for something that 'isn't useful.'"

"How would it do to get together a lot of things for Christmas for the orphans? We might offer to trim a tree for them. Or to give each one of them a foolish present or a pretty one to offset the solid things the grown-ups will give."

"When I was a kid," observed James, "I used to consider it a mean fraud if I had clothing worked off on me as Christmas presents. My parents had to clothe me anyway; why should they put those necessities among my Christmas gifts which were supposed to be extras!"

"There you are again; what people want in this world of pain and woe, ye-ho, he-ho," chanted Roger, "is the things they can go without."

"Has any one thought of anybody else we can benefit?" questioned Helen. "We might as well have all the recommendations we can."

"There's an old couple down by the bridge on South Street," said Roger. "I've often noticed them. They're all bent up and about a thousand years old. We might keep an eye on them."

"I know about them," contributed Ethel Brown. "I asked about them. They have a son who takes care of them. He gives them money every week, so they aren't suffering, but they both have the rheumatism frightfully so they can't go out much and I shouldn't wonder if they'd like a party some time, right in their own house. If we could go there and sing them some songs and Dicky could speak his piece about the cat and we could do some shadow pantomimes on a sheet and then have a spread, I believe they'd have as good a time as if they'd been to the movies."

"We'll do it." Tom slapped his leg. "I'll sing 'em a solo myself."

Groans rose from James and Roger.

"Poor old things! What have you got against them?"

"Oh, well, if you're jealous of my voice—of course I wouldn't for the world arouse any hard feelings, Madam President. I withdraw my offer. But mark ye, callow youths," he went on dramatically, "the day will come when I'm a Caruso and you'll be sorry to have to remember that you did your best to discourage a genius that would not be discouraged!"

"The meeting will come to order." Helen rapped for quiet, for the entire room was rocking to and fro over Tom's praise of one of the hoarsest voices ever given to boy or man.

"We'll give the old people a good show, even if Tom does back out," cried Roger. "I wish we had a secretary to put down these suggestions. I'm afraid we'll forget them."

"So am I," agreed Helen. "Let's vote for a secretary. Roger, pass around some paper and pencils and let's ballot."

Roger did as he was bid, and Ethel Brown and Della collected the ballots and acted as tellers.

"The tellers will declare the vote," announced Helen, who had been conferring with James while the balloting was going on, and had learned the proper parliamentary move. Margaret had coached Ethel Brown so that she made her report in proper style.

"Total number of votes cast, eight; necessary to a choice, five. Margaret has one, Dorothy has one, Roger has two, Ethel Brown has one, Ethel Blue has three. Nobody has enough."

"Have we got to vote over again?" Helen asked of James.

"I move you, Madam President, that we consider the person receiving the highest number of votes as the person elected and that we make the election unanimous."

"Is the motion seconded?"

Cries of "Yes," "I second it," "So do I," came from all over the room and included a call from Ethel Blue. Roger pealed with laughter.

"Ethel Blue means to get there," he shouted.

"I do? What have I done?" demanded Ethel Blue, so embarrassed at this attack that the tears stood in her eyes.

"Why, you're the person who's receiving a unanimous election," returned Roger, between gasps. "You've made it unanimous, yourself, all right."

Poor Ethel Blue leaned back in her chair without saying a word.

"Roger, you're too mean," cried Helen. "Don't you mind a word he says, Ethel Blue. It's very hard to follow votes and it isn't at all surprising that you didn't understand."

"What does it mean?"

"It means that you're elected secretary."

"But there weren't enough votes."

"You had three and Roger had two, and nobody else had more than one. When one candidate has more than the rest he may be considered as elected, even if he didn't get the right number of votes—that is, if everybody agrees to it."

"And you agreed to it," chuckled Roger.

"Stop, Roger. You're our new secretary, Ethel Blue, and it's very suitable that you should be, for the club was your idea and you ought to be an officer. Roger, give Ethel Blue your pencil and the rest of that paper you had for the ballots. Come and sit next to me, Ethel."

Ethel Blue felt that honors were being thrust upon her much against her will, but she was afraid that she would make some other mistake if she objected, so she meekly took the pencil and paper from Roger and began to note down the proceedings.

"We've had a suggestion from Glen Point and one from Rosemont—let's hear from New York," said the president. "Della—anything to say?"

"Papa can suggest lots of people that we can help if we ask him," said Della. "I didn't ask him because I thought that perhaps you'd have some pet charities out here where there aren't so many helping hands as there are in New York."

"How about you, Tom?"

"To tell you the truth," responded Tom gravely, "I didn't think up anything to suggest this afternoon because my mind has been so full of the war that I can't seem able to think about anything else."

Everybody grew serious at once. The war seemed very close to the Mortons, although it was a war across the sea, because they knew what it would mean to their father and uncle if ever our country should be involved in war. The thought of their own mental suffering and their anxiety if Captain and Lieutenant Morton should ever be sent to the front had given them a keen interest in what had been going on in Europe for six weeks.

"I read the newspapers all the time," went on Tom, "and I dare say I don't gain much real information from them, but at least I'm having ground into my soul every day the hideous suffering that all this fighting is bringing upon the women and children. The men may die, but at least they can fight for their lives. The women and children have to sit down and wait for death or destruction to come their way."

"It's too big a situation for us way off here to grasp," said Roger slowly, "but there are people on the spot who are trying to give assistance, and if Americans could only get in touch with them it seems as if help might be handed along the way we handed the water buckets last summer when the cottage was on fire."

"The Red Cross is working in all the countries that are at war," said Helen. "There's an American Red Cross and people are sending clothing and food to the New York branch and they are sending them on to Europe. That's Roger's bucket brigade idea."

"Why don't we work for the Red Cross?" asked Della.

"I saw in the paper a plan that seems better still for us youngsters," said Ethel Blue. "Some people are going to send over a Christmas ship with thousands and thousands of presents for the orphans and the other children all over Europe. Why don't we work for that? For the Santa Claus Ship?"

"'Charity begins at home,'" demurred Margaret.

"We needn't forget the Glen Point orphans. The Christmas Ship is going to sail early in November and we'll have plenty of time after she gets off to carry out those other schemes that we've spoken of."

"I'd like to move," said Ethel Brown, getting on to her feet to make her action more impressive, "that the United Service Club devote itself first to preparing a bundle to send off on the Christmas Ship. After that's done we can see what comes next."

"Does any one second the motion, that we work first for the Christmas Ship?" asked Helen.

Every voice in the room cried "I do."

"All in favor?" There was a chorus of "Ayes."

"Contrary minded?" Not a sound arose.

"It's a unanimous vote that we start right in on the bundle for the Santa Claus Ship."

CHAPTER IV

FINANCIAL PLANS

"This parliamentary business fusses me," exclaimed Helen. "Let's just talk, now that we've decided what we are going to do."

"Take a more comfortable chair," suggested Tom, pulling over a Morris chair nearer the fire.

Roger stirred up the flames and tossed on some pine cones.

"These cones remind me that our old people down by the bridge might like some. They have a funny open stove that they could use them in."

"What are they good for? Kindling?" asked Della.

"Ha! There speaks the city lady used only to steam! Certainly they are good for kindling on account of the pitch that's in them, but they're also great in an open fire to brighten it up when it is sinking somewhat and one or two at a time tossed on to a clear fire make a pretty sight."

"And a pretty snapping sound," added Dorothy, remembering the cones from the long leaf pines.

"Our old couple gets a bushel on Monday afternoon if it ever stops raining," promised Roger. "Dicky loves to pick them up, so he'll help."

"The honorary member of the United Service Club does his share of service work right nobly," declared James, who was a great friend of Dicky's.

"The thing for us to do first is to decide how we are to begin," said Helen.

"We might talk over the kinds of presents that the war orphans would like and then see which of them any of us can make," suggested Margaret wisely.

"Any sort of clothing would come in mighty handy, I should think," guessed James, "and I don't believe the orphans would have my early prejudices against receiving it for Christmas gifts."

"Poor little creatures, I rather suspect Santa Claus will be doing his heaviest work with clothing this year."

"As far as clothing is concerned," said Margaret, "we needn't put a limit on the amount we send or the sizes or the kinds. The distributors will be able to use everything they can lay their hands on when the Christmas Ship comes in and for many months later."

"Then let's inquire of our mothers what there is stowed away that we can have and let's look over our own things and weed out all we can that would be at all suitable and that our mothers will let us give away, and report here at the next meeting."

"While we're talking about the next meeting," broke in Dorothy while the others were nodding their assent to Helen's proposition, "won't you please come to my house next time?"

"We certainly will," agreed Della and Margaret.

"You bet," came from the boys.

"And Mother told me to offer the Club the use of our attic to store our stuff in. It's a big place with almost nothing in it."

"I'm sure Aunt Marion will be glad not to have anything else go into her attic," said Ethel Blue, and all the Mortons laughed as they thought of the condition of the Morton attic, whose walls were almost bulging with its contents.

"If that's settled we must remember to address all our bundles to 'Mrs. Leonard Smith, Church Street, Rosemont,'" James reminded them.

"It seems to me," Ethel Brown said slowly, thinking as she spoke, "that we might collect more clothing than we shall be able to find in our own families."

"There are a good many of us," suggested Della.

"There are two Watkinses and two Hancocks and five Mortons and one Smith—that's ten, but if the rest of you are like the Morton family—we wear our clothes pretty nearly down to the bone."

All the Mortons pealed at this and the rest could not help joining in.

"One thing we must not do," declared Helen. "We must not send a single old thing that isn't in perfect order. It's a poor present that you have to sit down and mend."

"We certainly won't," agreed Margaret. "I wear my clothes almost down to the skeleton, too, but I know I have some duds that I can make over into dresses for small children. I'm gladder every day that we took that sewing course last summer, Helen."

"Me, too. My dresses—or what's left of them—usually adorn Ethel Brown's graceful frame, but perhaps Mother will let us have for the orphans the clothes that would ordinarily go to Ethel Brown."

Ethel Brown looked worried.

"Ethel Brown doesn't know whether that will mean that she'll have to go without or whether she'll have new clothes instead of the hand-me-downs," laughed Roger.

"I don't care," cried Ethel Brown. "I'd just as lief go without new clothes if Mother will let the Club have the money they'd cost."

"I've been thinking," said Tom, "that we're going to need money to work this undertaking through successfully. How are we going to get it?"

"But shall we need any to speak of?" inquired Margaret. "Fixing up our old clothes won't cost more than we can meet ourselves out of our allowances. I'm going to ask my Aunt Susy to let me have some of the girls' old things. The girls will be delighted; they're the ones who have the plain clothes."

"We'll fix them up with ruffles and bows before we send them away," smiled Helen.

"Why can't we ask everybody we come across for old clothes?" Ethel Blue wondered.

"Grandmother Emerson would be sure to have something in her attic and I shouldn't wonder if she'd be willing to ask the ladies at the Guild if they'd contribute," said Helen.

"Do we want to take things from outside of the Club?" objected Ethel Brown.

"I don't see why not," answered Margaret. "The idea is to get together for the orphans as many presents as possible, no matter where they come from. We're serving the orphans if we work as collectors just as much as if we made the clothes ourselves."

"Right-o," agreed Roger. "Let's tackle everybody we can on the old clo' question. We can ask the societies in our churches—"

"Why not in all the churches in town?" dared Ethel Blue.

The idea brought a pause, for the place was small enough for the churches to meet each other with an occasional rub.

"I believe that's a good idea," declared Tom, and as a clergyman's son they listened to his views with respect. "All the churches ought to be willing to come together on the neutral ground of this club and if we are willing to take the responsibility of doing the gathering and the packing and the expressing to the Christmas Ship I believe they'll be glad to do just the rummaging in their attics and the mending up."

"We needn't limit their offerings to clothes, either," said Della. "We'll take care of anything they'll send in."

"Let's put it up to them, I say," cried Roger. "There's at least one member of the Morton family in every society in our church and we ought to get the subject before every one of those groups of people by the end of next week and start things booming."

"We'll do the same at Glen Point," agreed Margaret.

"I can't promise quite as much for New York, because I don't know what Father's plans are for war relief work in his church, but I do feel pretty sure he'll suggest some way of helping us," said Della.

"That's decided, then—we'll lay our paws on everything we can get from every source," Tom summed up the discussion. "Now I come back to what I said a few minutes ago—I think we're going to need more money to run this association than we're going to be able to rake up out of our own allowances, unless Margaret's is a good deal bigger than mine," and he nodded toward Margaret, who had objected to the more-money idea when he had offered it before.

"Just tell me how we'll need more," insisted Margaret.

"I figure it out that the part we boys will have to do in this transaction will be to district this town and Glen Point and make a house to house appeal for clothes and any sort of thing that would do for a Christmas present, all to be sent to Mrs. Smith's."

"That won't cost anything but a few carfares, and you can stand those," insisted Margaret.

"Carfares are all right and even a few express charges for some people who for some reason aren't able to deliver their parcels at Mrs. Smith's house. But if you girls are going to make over some of these clothes and perhaps make new garments you'll need some cash to buy materials with."

"Perhaps some of the dry goods people will contribute the materials."

"Maybe they will. But you mark my words—the cost of a little here and a little there mounts up amazingly in work of this sort and I know we're going to need cash."

"Tom's right," confirmed Della. "He's helped Father enough to know."

The idea of needing money, which they did not have, was depressing to the club members who sat around the fire staring into it gloomily.

"The question is, how to get it," went on Tom.

"People might give us money just as well as cloth, I suppose," suggested Margaret.

"I think it would be a thousand times more fun to make the money ourselves," said Ethel Blue.

"The infant's right," cried Tom. "It will be more fun and what's more important still, nobody can boss us because he's given us a five dollar bill."

"I suppose somebody might try," murmured Helen.

"They would," cried Tom and Della in concert.

"We aren't a clergyman's children for nothing," Tom went on humorously. "The importance a five dollar bill can have in the eyes of the giver and the way it swells in size as it leaves his hands is something that few people realize who haven't seen it happen."

"Let's be independent," cried Dorothy decidedly, and her wish was evidently to the mind of all the rest, for murmurs of approval went around the room.

"But if we're so high and mighty as not to take money contributions and if we nevertheless need money, what in the mischief are we going to do about it?" inquired Roger.

"We must earn it," said Helen. "I'll contribute the money Mother is going to pay me for making a dozen middy blouses for the Ethels. She ordered them from me last summer when I began to take the sewing course and I haven't quite finished them yet, but I'll have the last one done this week if I can get home from school promptly for a day or two."

"I can make some baskets for the Woman's Exchange," said Dorothy.

"I learned how to make Lady Baltimore cake the other day," said Margaret, "and I'll go to some ladies in Glen Point who are going to have teas soon and ask them for orders."

"I can make cookies," murmured Ethel Brown, "but I don't know who'd buy them."

"You tell the kids at school that you've gone into the cooky business and you'll have all the work you can do for a while," prophesied Roger. "I know your cookies; they're bully."

"I don't notice that we boys are mentioning any means of making money," remarked James dryly. "I confess I'm stumped."

"I know what you can do," suggested Margaret. "Father said this morning that he was going to get a chauffeur next week if he could find one that wouldn't rob him of all the money he made. You can run the car—why don't you offer to work half time—afternoons after school, for half pay? That would help Father and he'd rather have you than a strange man."

"He'd rather have half time, too. He likes to run the car himself, only he gets tired running it all day on heavy days. Great head, Sis," and James made a gesture of stroking his sister's locks, to which she responded by making a face.

"I know what I can do," said Roger. "You know those bachelor girls about seventy-five apiece, over on Church Street near Aunt Louise's—the Miss Clarks? Well, they had an awful time last year getting their furnace attended to regularly. They had one man who proved to be a—er," Roger hesitated.

"Not a total abstainer?" inquired James elegantly.

"Thank you, Brother Hancock, for the use of your vocabulary. The next one stole the washing off the line, and the next one—Oh, I don't know what he did, but the Miss Clarks were in a state of mind over the furnace and the furnace man all winter. Now, suppose I offer to take care of their furnace for them this winter? I believe they'd have me."

"I think they'd be mighty glad to get you," confirmed Helen. "Could you do that and take care of ours, too?"

"Sure thing, if I put my mind on it and don't chase off with the fellows every time I feel in the mood."

"Mother would like to have you take care of ours if you could manage three," said Dorothy.

"I'll do it," and Roger thumped his knee with decision.

"I wouldn't undertake too much," warned Helen. "It will mean a visit three times a day at each house, you know, and the last one pretty late in the evening."

"I'm game," insisted Roger. "You know I can be as steady as an old horse when I put my alleged mind on it. Mother never had any kick coming over my work in the furnace department last winter."

"She said you did it splendidly, but this means three times as much."

"I'll do it," and Roger nodded his head solemnly.

"It seems to be up to Della and me to tell what we can do," said Tom meditatively. "Father's secretary is away on a three months' holiday and I'm doing his typewriting for him and some other office stunts—as much as I can manage out of school hours. I'll turn over my pay to the Club treasury."

This was greeted with applause.

"I don't seem to have any accomplishments," sighed Della, her round head on one side. "The only thing I can think of is that I heard the ladies who have charge of the re-furnishing of the Rest Room in the Parish House say that they were going to find some one to stencil the window curtains. I might see if they'd let me do it and pay me. I didn't take that class at the Girls' Club last summer, but Dorothy and Ethel Brown could teach me."

"Of course."

"Or you could get the order from them, I'd fill it, and you could make the baskets for the Woman's Exchange," offered Dorothy.

Della brightened. That was a better arrangement.

"Try it," nodded Tom. "If you turn out one order well you'll get more; see if you don't."

"Our honorary member, Mr. Dicky Morton, might sell newspapers since he got broken in to that business last summer," laughed Ethel Brown. "Mother wouldn't let him do it here, I know, but he can weave awfully pretty things that he learned at the kindergarten and if there are any bazars this fall he could sell some of them on commission."

"Dicky really understands about the Club. I think he'd like to do something for the orphans," Helen agreed.

"Ladies and gentlemen," announced Ethel Blue, rising in her excitement; "I have a perfectly grand, galoptious idea. Why do we wait for somebody else to get up a bazar to sell Dicky's weaving? Let's have a bazar of our own. Why can't we have a fair with some tables, and ice cream and cake for sale and an entertainment of some kind in the evening? We all know all sorts of stunts; we can do the whole thing ourselves. If we announce that we are doing it for the Christmas Ship I believe everybody in town would come—"

"—And in Glen Point and New York," Roger mocked her enthusiasm.

"You know we could fill the School Hall as easy as fiddle, Roger. You see everybody would know what we were at work on because we are going to begin collecting the clothes right off, so everybody will be interested."

Tom nodded approval.

"Perhaps we can do the advertising act when we do the collecting."

"If I drive Father, I see myself ringing up all the neighboring houses while he's in on his case," said James, "and it's just as easy to talk bazar part of the time as it is to chat old clo' the whole time."

"Can you get the School Hall free?" asked Tom.

"We'd have to pay for the lighting and the janitor, but that wouldn't be much," said Roger. "It would be better than the Parish House of any of the churches because if we had it in a church there'd surely be some people who wouldn't go because it was in a building belonging to a denomination they didn't approve of, but no one can make any kick about the schoolhouse."

"It's the natural neighborhood centre."

"We'll have the whole town there."

"If we let in some of the school kids we'll get all their families on the string," recommended Roger.

"I'm working up a feat that I've never seen any one do," said Tom. "I'll turn it loose for the first time at our show."

"Remember, you're all coming to me next Saturday afternoon," Dorothy reminded them as the Hancocks and Watkinses put on their overgarments and sought out their umbrellas preparatory to going home.

"And we'll bring a list of what we can contribute ourselves and what we've collected so far and what we think we can collect and we'll turn in anything we've made."

"If there's anything we can work on while the Club is going on we'd better bring it," suggested Helen.

"Mother says we may have the sewing machine in the attic," said Dorothy.

"I believe I'll take my jig-saw over," suggested Roger. "Aunt Louise wouldn't mind, would she?"

"She'd be delighted. Bring everything," and Dorothy glowed with the hospitality that had been bottled up in her for years and until now had had but small opportunity to escape.

CHAPTER V

ROGER GOES FORAGING

ALTHOUGH Helen never had been president of any club before, yet she had seen enough of a number of associations in the high school and the church to understand the advantage of striking while the iron of enthusiasm was hot. For that reason she and Roger worked out the districting of Rosemont before they went to bed that night, and the next afternoon Roger went over to Glen Point on his bicycle, and, with James's help, did the same for that town. It was understood that Tom would not be able to come out again until Saturday, but he had agreed to be on hand early in the morning to do a good half day of canvassing. The girls were to speak to every one to whom they could bring up the subject conveniently, wherever they met them.

Roger began his work on Monday afternoon after school. He wheeled over to a part of the town where he did not know many people, his idea being that since that would be the most disagreeable place to tackle he would do it first and get it over with. He was a merry boy, with a pleasant way of speaking that won him friends at once, and he was not bothered with shyness, but he did hesitate for an instant at his first house. It was large and he thought that the owner ought to be prosperous enough to have plenty of old clothes lying about crying to be sent to the war orphans.

It was a maid whose grasp on the English language was a trifle uncertain who opened the door. Roger stated his desire.

"Old clothes?" she repeated after him. "I've no old clothes to give you," and she shut the door hastily.

Roger stood still with astonishment as if he were fastened to the upper step. Then his feelings stirred.

"The idiot!" he gasped. "She thought I wanted them for myself," and he looked down at his suit with a sudden realization that his long ride over one dusty road and a spill on another that had recently been oiled had not improved the appearance of his attire. However, he rang the bell again vigorously. The woman seemed somewhat disconcerted when she saw him still before her.

"I don't want the clothes—" began Roger.

"What did you say you did for?" inquired the maid sharply, and again she slammed the door.

By this time Roger's persistency was roused. He made up his mind that he was going to make himself understood even if he did not secure a contribution. Once more he rang the bell.

"You here!" almost screamed the girl as she saw once more his familiar face. "Why don't you go? I've nothing to give you."

"Look here," insisted Roger, his toe in the way of the door's shutting completely when she should try to slam it again; "look here, you don't understand what I want. Is your mistress at home?"

The girl was afraid to say that she was not, so she nodded.

"Tell her I want to see her."

"What's your name?"

"I'm Roger Morton, son of Lieutenant Morton. I live on Cedar Street. Can you remember that?"

She could not, but her ear had caught the military title and upstairs she conveyed the impression that at least a general was waiting at the door. When the mistress of the house appeared Roger pulled off his cap politely, and he was such a frank-faced boy that she knew at once that her maid's fears had been unnecessary, though she did not see where the military title came in. Roger explained who he was and what he wanted at sufficient length, and he was rewarded for his persistency by the promise of a bundle.

"I know your grandmother, Mrs. Emerson," said the lady, who had mentioned that she was Mrs. Warburton, "and your aunt, Mrs. Smith, has hired one of my houses, so I am glad on their account to help your enterprise, though of course its own appeal is enough."

Roger thanked her and took the precaution to inquire the names of her neighbors, before he presented himself at another door. He also reached such a pitch of friendliness that he borrowed a whisk broom from Mrs. Warburton and redeemed his clothes from the condition which had brought him into such disfavor with the maid-servant.

There was no one at home in the next house, but the next after that yielded a parcel which the old lady whom he interviewed said that he might have if he would take it away immediately.

"I might change my mind if you don't," she said. "I've been studying for ten days whether to make over that dress with black silk or dark blue velvet. If I give the dress away I shan't be worried about it any longer."

"Very well," cried Roger, and he rolled the frock up as small as he could and fastened it to his handle bars.

There was no one at home at the next house, but the woman who came to the door at the next after that listened to his story with moist eyes.

"Come in," she said. "I can give you a great many garments. In fact there are so many that perhaps I'd better send them."

"Very well," returned Roger. "Please send them to my aunt's," and he gave the address.

"You see," hesitated Roger's hostess, now frankly wiping her eyes, "I had a little daughter about ten years old, and—and I never have been willing to part with her little dresses and coats, but how could I place them better than now?"

Roger swallowed hard.

"I guess she'd like to have 'em go over there," he stammered, and he was very glad when he escaped from the house, though he told his mother, "she seemed kind of glad to talk about the kid, so I didn't mind much."

"Count listening as one of the Club services," replied Mrs. Morton.

Back in his own part of town Roger felt that his trip had been profitable. A very fair number of garments and bundles had been promised, and he had told everybody he could to watch the local paper for the announcement of the entertainment to be given by the U. S. C.

"Everybody seemed interested," he reported at home. "I don't believe we'll have a mite of trouble in getting an audience."

It was at a cottage not far from the high school that Roger came upon his nearest approach to an adventure. When he touched the buzzer the door was opened by an elderly woman who spoke with a marked German accent. Roger explained his errand. To his horror the woman burst into tears. When he made a gesture of withdrawal she stopped him.

"My son—my son is mit de army," she exclaimed brokenly. "My son und de betrothed of my daughter. We cannot go to the Fatherland. The German ships go no more. If we go on an English or French ship we are kept in England. Here must we stay—here."

"You're safe here, at any rate," responded Roger, at a loss what reply to make that would be soothing in the face of such depressing facts.

"Safe!" retorted the woman scornfully. "Who cares to be safe? A woman's place is mit her men when they are in danger. My daughter and I—we should be in Germany and we cannot get there!"

"It's surely a shame if you want to go as much as that," returned Roger gently, and just then to his surprise there came through an inner door a young woman whom he recognized as his German teacher in the high school, Fräulein Hindenburg. Her face was disfigured with weeping and he knew now why she had seemed so ill and listless in her classes.

"You must not mind Mother," she said, looking surprised as she saw one of her pupils before her. "It is true that we would go if we could but we cannot, so we must stay here and wait."

Roger explained his errand.

"To work for the war orphans of all countries?" cried both women excitedly. "Gladly! Gladly!"

"We are knitting every day—scarfs, socks, wristlets," said the older woman. "Also will we so gladly make clothing for the children and toys and playthings—what we can."

Fräulein smiled a sad assent and Roger wheeled off, realizing that the pain caused by the war no longer existed for him only in his imagination; he had seen its tears.

So freely had people responded to Roger's appeal that he began to wonder how the Club was going to take care of all the garments that would soon be coming in. After that thought came into his mind he made a point of asking the givers if they would send their offerings as far as possible in condition to be shipped.

"Margaret and Helen can make over some of the clothes and the Ethels and Dorothy can help with the simple things, I suppose, but if there are many grown-up dresses like this one on my handle bar they won't have time to do anything else but dressmake," meditated Roger as he pedalled along.

Nowhere did he meet with a rebuff. Every one was pleased to be asked. Many offered to make new garments. One old woman who lived in a wheel-chair but who could use her hands, agreed to sew if the material should be sent her. Many mothers seemed to consider it a Heaven-sent opportunity to make a clearance of the nursery toys though Roger stoutly insisted that they must all be in working order before they were turned in.

"It's been perfectly splendid," breathed Roger joyfully as he finished his third afternoon and came into the house to report to his mother and Helen. "It's a delight to ask when you feel sure that you won't have to coax as you usually do when you're getting up anything. Everybody seems to jump at the chance."

Toward the end of the week Ethel Blue came in beaming.

"I've got some entirely new people interested," she cried.

"Who? Who?"

"The last people you'd ever think of—the women in the Old Ladies' Home."

"Why should you think them the very last to be interested?" asked Mrs. Emerson who happened to be at the Mortons' and whose fingers were carrying the flying yarn that her needles were manufacturing into a sock. "Most of them are mothers and it doesn't take a mother to be interested in such a cause as this. Every human being who has any imagination must feel for the sufferings of the poor children."

"It seemed queer to me because I've never seen them do anything but just sit there with their hands in their laps."

"Poor souls, nobody ever provides them with anything to do."

"Now all of them say that they'll be delighted to sew or knit or do anything they can if the materials are provided for them."

"Here's where we can begin to spend the money Mother has offered to advance us," cried Ethel Brown. "Can't we go right after school to-morrow and buy the yarn for them, Mother?"

"Indeed you may. Has Della sent you the knitting rules from the Red Cross yet?"

"We're expecting them in every mail. If they don't come before we take the wool to the Home we can start the ladies on scarfs. They're just straight pieces."

"Mrs. Hindenburg and Fräulein are knitting wristlets for the German soldiers. They could give the rule for them, I should think," suggested Roger, "and our old lady friends can just cut it in halves for the kids."

It was the next day that Helen came in from school all excitement.

"I've made a discovery as thrilling as Roger's about Fräulein!" she cried.

"What? Who is it about? Tell us."

"It's about Mademoiselle Millerand."

"Your French teacher?" asked Mrs. Emerson.

"She was new at school last year and you've heard us say she's the most fascinating little black-eyed creature."

"Perhaps she can't talk fast!" added Roger.

"What's the story about her?" demanded Ethel Brown.

"It's not a romantic story like Fräulein's; that is, there's no betrothed on the other side that she's crazy to get to; but she's going over to join the French Red Cross."

"That little thing!" cried Roger. "Why she doesn't look as if she had strength enough to last out a week!"

"She says she's had a year's training in nursing and that a nurse is taught to conserve her strength. She hopes she'll be sent to the front."

"The plucky little creature! When is she going?"

"As soon as she can put in a substitute at the school; she doesn't want to leave us in the lurch after she made a contract for the year."

"It may take some time after that to arrange for a sailing, I suppose."

"Perhaps so. Any way I think it would be nice if we gave her a send-off—"

"Just as we will Fräulein if her chance comes."

"We can make some travelling comforts."

"She won't be able to carry much," warned Mrs. Morton.

"Everything will have to be as small as possible, but we can hunt up the smallest size of everything. I think it will be fun!"

"She'll probably be very much pleased."

"I wish there was something rather special we could do for Fräulein too, so we could be perfectly impartial."

"Watch for the chance to do something extra nice for her. She's having the harder time of the two; it's always harder to stay and wait than it is to go into action, even when the action is dangerous."

While the Mortons were canvassing Rosemont, James and Margaret were doing the same work in Glen Point. Dr. Hancock had accepted his son's offer and James was now regularly engaged as his father's chauffeur, working after school hours every school day and on Saturday mornings. The Doctor insisted that he should have Saturday afternoons free so that he might go to the Club. He was also quite willing that James should follow the plan he had sketched at the last Club meeting and visit the neighbors of his father's patients while Doctor Hancock was making his professional calls. The plan worked to a charm and James found Glen Point quite as ready as Rosemont to respond to the "bitter cry of the children."

"So many people are getting interested I almost feel as if it weren't our affair any longer," James complained to his father as they were driving home in the dusk one afternoon.

"Look out for that corner. That's a bad habit you have of shaving the curbstone. You needn't feel that way as long as your club is doing all the organizing and administration. That's the part that seems to make most people hesitate about doing good works. It isn't actual work they balk at; it's leadership."

"If handling the stuff and disposing of it is leadership then we're a 'going concern' all right," declared James. "Roger telephoned over this morning that the bundles were coming in to Mrs. Smith's at a great rate, and that a lot of people were making new garments and things that will turn up later."

"When is Tom coming out?"

"Saturday morning. I've saved one district for him to do then and that will finish up Glen Point as Roger and I sketched it out."

"It hasn't been so hard a job as you thought."

"Chasing round in the car has saved time. This is a bully job of yours, Dad."

"You won't hold it long if you cut corners like that, I warn you again."

"I'll try to cut 'em out," laughed James as he carefully turned into the Hancocks' avenue.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE SMITH ATTIC

"GRANDFATHER EMERSON wants to give the Club a present," cried Ethel Brown as the last arrivals, the Hancocks, came up the stairs and entered the attic of Dorothy's house on Saturday afternoon.

The large room was half the width of the whole cottage and, with its low windows and sloping roof had a quaint appearance that was increased by its furnishing of tables and seats made from boxes covered with gay bits of chintz. Dorothy had not neglected her work for the orphans but she had found time to fit up the meeting place of the U. S. C. so that its members might not have to gather in bare surroundings. The afternoon sun shone brightly in through simple curtains of white cheesecloth, the sewing machine awaited Helen beside a window with a clear north light, and Roger's jig-saw was in a favorable position in a corner. Each one who came up the stairs gave an "Oh" of pleasure as the door opened upon this comfortable, cheerful room where there was nothing too good to be used and nothing too bad to have entrance to the society of beauty-loving folk. "What did your grandfather give us?" asked Margaret.

"Grandfather has been awfully interested in the Club from the very beginning, you know. The other day he asked if we wouldn't like to have him give us club pins with our emblem on them."

"How perfectly dear of him!" ejaculated Delia.

"Don't let your hopes rise too high. I said it would be simply fine to have little forget-me-not pins like those we talked about at our very first meeting in the ravine at Chautauqua—do you remember?"

"Blue enamel," murmured Dorothy.

"He said he wanted us to have them, and that it was a lovely symbol and so on, and he'd seen some ducks of pins in New York that were just what we'd like, and some single flower ones for the boys—"

"Um. This suspense is wearing on me," remarked Roger.

"We talked it over and the way it came out was that Grandfather said that perhaps he'd better give us now the money the pins would cost and keep his present for later."

No one could resist a groan.

"He won't forget it. Grandfather never forgets to do what he promises. We'll get them some time or other. But I had a feeling that we'd like them later better even than now because we'd feel then that we'd really earned them after the Club had done something worth while, you know."

"I suppose we will," sighed Della, "but they do sound good to me."

"He was bound that we should have the forget-me-not in some form or other," went on Ethel Brown, "and he's sent us a rubber stamp with 'U. S. C.' on it and a forget-me-not at each end of the initials. There's an indelible pad that goes with it and we are to stamp everything we send out on some part where it won't be too conspicuous."

"It will be like signing a letter to the child the present goes to," said Dorothy.

"Isn't he a darling!" exclaimed Ethel Blue. "I love him as much as if he were my own grandfather."

"He turned the money right over into my hand," continued Ethel Brown—"the money he didn't spend for the pins, I mean. It's fifteen dollars. What shall I do with it?"

"Pay for the yarn you bought for the women in the Old Ladies' Home to knit with," said Helen promptly.

"'"The time has come," the walrus said,'" quoted Tom, "when we must have a treasurer. It was all very well talking about not needing one when we didn't have a cent of money, but now we are on the way toward being multis and we can't get on any longer without some one to look after it."

"Let's make Tom treasurer and then he can fuss over the old accounts himself," suggested Roger.

Roger's loathing for keeping accounts was so well known that every one laughed.

"Not I," objected Tom. "I'm not at all the right one. It ought to be one of you people who live out here where we're going to do our work. You'll have hurry calls for cash very often and it would be a nuisance to have to wait a day to write or phone me. No, sir, Roger's the feller for that job."

"No, Roger isn't," persisted that young man disgustedly. "I buck, I kick, I remonstrate, I protest, I refuse."

"Here, here," called Ethel Blue. "Who said you could have James's vocabulary?"

"Well, James, then," said Tom. "It doesn't make much difference who it is as long as he lives in these precincts and not as far away as I do. Madam President, I nominate Mr. Hancock for treasurer of the United Service Club."

"You hear the nomination," responded Helen. "Is it seconded?"

"I second it with both hands and an equal number of feet," replied Roger enthusiastically.

"Now is the opportunity for a discussion of the merits of the candidate," observed Helen drily.

"There are many things that might be said," rejoined Dorothy, "but because it would probably embarrass him—"

"Oh, say!" came from James. "Are they as bad as that?"

"As I was remarking when I was interrupted," continued Dorothy severely, "because it might make the candidate feel queer if he were to hear all the compliments we should pay him, I think we won't say anything."

"I'll trust old Roger not to pay compliments," responded James.

"Old Roger is in such a good humor because this job is being worked off on to your shoulders instead of his that he might utter some blandishments that would surprise you."

"I wouldn't risk it!"

"Are you ready to vote?" asked Helen.

"We are," came ringing back, and the resulting ballot placed James in the treasurership, the only dissenting vote being his own. His first official act after the money was put into his hands was to give it back to Ethel Brown in part repayment of the sum which her mother had advanced for the yarn for the Old Ladies' Home.

"Here's another bundle," announced Mrs. Smith, appearing with a large parcel as the Club members were looking over the collection that had come in. All the contributions were piled in a corner, and already they made a considerable mound.

"Roger will have to apply some of his scientific management ideas to that mass of stuff," laughed Mrs. Smith.

"I wish we could spread them out so that we could get an idea of what is which."

"Couldn't we boys make some sort of rack divided into cubes or even knock together a set of plain shelves? That would lift them off the floor."

"I wish you would," said Helen. "Then we ought to put a tag on each bundle telling who sent it and what is in it."

"And what we think can be done with it, if it isn't in condition to send off just as it is," added Ethel Brown.

"I believe I saw some planks in the cellar that would make sufficiently good shelves for what you need," said Mrs. Smith. "Suppose you boys go down stairs with me and take a look at them while the girls are making out the tags."

So the boys trooped after their hostess while Ethel Brown unscrewed the cap of her fountain pen and wrote on the tags that Dorothy cut out of cardboard, and Ethel Blue fitted them with strings, so that they might be tied on to the parcels.

"These dresses and coats came from Mrs. Ames," said Helen. "They belonged to her daughter who died, and they're all right for a child of ten, so we'll just mark the bundle, 'From Mrs. Ames,' and 'O.K.,' and put it away."

"There's an empty packing box over in that corner," said Dorothy. "Wouldn't it be a good scheme to put the bundles we shan't have to alter at all, right into it?"

"Great. Then we shan't have to touch them again until the time comes to tie them up in fancy paper to make them look Christmassy."

"Here's the dress Mrs. Lancaster couldn't decide whether to have made over with black silk or blue velvet."

"Mrs. Lancaster," murmured Ethel Brown, making out her card.

"That certainly can't go as it is," pronounced Della.

"There's material enough in it for two children's dresses," decided Margaret. "Mark it, 'Will make two dresses.'"

"Here's Maud Delano's jacket. She told Roger she'd send this over when she got her new one."

"It came this morning. It's all right except for tightening a button or two," and Ethel Brown inscribed, "Coat; tighten buttons" on the slip which Della tied on to one of the incompetent fasteners.

"Good for Mrs. Warburton!" cried Helen.

"What's she done?"

"Here's a great roll of pink flannelette—and blue, too—among her things. We can make dresses and wrappers and sacques and petticoats out of that."

"It always seems just as warm as woolen stuff to me," said Dorothy. "Of course it can't be."

"Cotton is never so warm as wool, but if it's warm enough why ask for anything different. What's in your mind?" inquired Margaret.

"I was wondering if we couldn't do something to forward the cotton crusade at the same time that we're helping the war orphans."

"You mean by making things out of cotton materials?"

"Yes. The orphans will want the warmest sort of clothing for winter, I suppose, but spring is coming after winter and summer after that, and I don't believe anything we send is going to be wasted."

"They might wear two cotton garments one over the other," suggested Della.

"I don't say that we'd better make all our clothes out of cotton material, but where it doesn't make any especial difference I don't see why we shouldn't choose cotton stuff. After all, it's the war that has spoiled the cotton trade so we're still working for war sufferers only they'll be on this side of the Atlantic. You know they say the southern cotton planters are having a serious time of it because they aren't selling any cotton to speak of in Europe."

"Let's do it!" cried Ethel Blue and she told their decision to James who had come up to measure the attic doorway for some reason connected with the planks they had found.

"It's a great idea. Bully for Dorothy," he cried working away with a footrule. "This will go all right," he decided, and ran down again to give a lift to the other carpenters.

There were eight planks each about six feet long that Mrs. Smith had discovered in the cellar. A telephone to Mrs. Warburton had gained her consent to their use and the boys set about fitting them together as soon as they were on the top floor. Fortunately they were already planed and of so good a length for the purpose they were to be used for that nothing was needed but hammer and nails to produce a set of shelves quite adequate for the purpose. Two of the boards made the sides, and between them the remaining six were nailed at intervals.

"We can set it against the wall over here," decided Tom, "and it won't need a back."

"Which is lucky," James declared, "cos there ain't no planks to make a back of."

"Let's nail a block of wood or a triangle of wood under the bottom shelf in the corners," advised Roger, "so the animal won't wobble."

"If we had enough wood and a saw we could make nice cubby-holes, one for each bundle," remarked Tom, his head on one side.

"Tom's getting enthusiastic over carpentering. We haven't either any more wood or a saw, old man, so there won't be any cubby-holes this time," decreed Roger.

"It will do perfectly well this way," said Helen. "Now if you'll help us up with these bundles—"

It was a presentable beginning for their collection. Two parcels in addition to Mrs. Ames's had gone into the packing case in the corner, but three shelves of the new set were filled with tight rolls, each with its tag forward so that no time would be lost in examining the contents, again.

"That's what I call a good beginning," announced Helen after the boys had swept up their shavings and had taken them and their hammers and the remaining nails down stairs.

"What next, Madam President?" inquired James when they returned. The girls were already spreading out the pink and blue flannelette on a plank table that had been left in the attic by the carpenters who had built the house.

"We are going to cut some little wrappers out of this material. I think you boys had better fix up some sort of table over on that side of the room and get your pasting equipment ready, for we'll need oodles of boxes of all sizes and you might as well begin right off to make them."

"Right-o," agreed Roger. "Methinks I saw an aged table top minus legs leaning against the wall in the cellar. Couldn't we anchor it on to this wall with a couple of hinges and then its two legs will be a good enough prop?"

"If they're both on the same side."

"It seems to me they are."

"Any superfluous hinges around the house, Dorothy?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Never mind, I'll get a pair when I go after the pasteboard and the flour for the paste and a bowl for a pastepot, and a—no, three brushes for us three boys to smear the paste with and some coarse cotton cloth for binders."

"Don't forget the oil of cloves to keep your paste from turning sour," Dorothy cried after them.

"And mind you boil it thoroughly," said Margaret.

The boys started again towards the cellar when Roger's eye happened to fall on the cutting operations of the girls.

"Pshaw!" he cried in scorn. "You are time-wasters! Why don't you cut out several garments at once and not have to go through all that spreading out and pinning down process every time? I saw a tailor the other day cutting a pile of trousers two feet high."

"What with, I should like to know?" inquired Della mystified.

"He did have a knife run by electricity," admitted Roger, "but there's no reason why you can't cut four or five of those things just as easily as one."

"We'll go on down and get the table top," said James, and he and Tom departed.

"Now, then, watch your Uncle Roger. Is this tissue paper affair your pattern? All you need to do is to fasten your cloth tightly down on to your table four thicknesses instead of one. Thumb tacks, Dorothy? Good child! Now lay your pattern on it—yes, thumb-tack it down if you want to—and go ahead. You've got new, sharp shears. Don't be in a hurry. There you are—and you've saved yourself the fuss of doing that three times more."

Pattern for Wrapper

"Roger really has a lot of sense at times," admitted Ethel Brown, after her brother had leaped down the attic stairs in pursuit of the boys.

"He is good about helping," added Della.

"What is this garment—a wrapper?" asked Margaret as Helen held up the soft flannelette.

Wrapper Completed

"Yes, it's the simplest ever, and we can adapt one pattern to children of all sizes or to grown people," explained Helen.

"I never heard of anything so convenient!"

"First, you measure the child from the floor to his neck—I measured this on Dicky. Then you cut a piece of material twice that length. That is, if the kiddy is thirty inches from the floor to the chin you cut your flannelette sixty inches long."

"Exactly. Then cut a lengthwise slit thirty inches long. Then fold the whole thing in halves across the width of the cloth and sew up the sides to within four and a half inches of the top and you have a wrapper all but the sleeves."

"How do you make those?"

"It takes half a yard for a grown person—a quarter of a yard for a youngster. Cut the width in halves and double it and sew it straight into the holes you've left at the tops."

"Will that be the right length?"

"You can shorten it if you like or lengthen it by a band. You finish the slit up the front by putting on a band of some different color. It looks pretty on the ends of the sleeves, too. We can use blue on this pink and pink on the blue."

"It's easy enough, isn't it? I think I'll make myself one when we get through with the Ship."

"All you need to know is the length from the person's chin to the floor and you can make it do for anybody. And all you need to do to make a short sacque is to know the length from the person's chin to his waist. I have a notion we'll have some wee bits left that we can make into cunning little jackets for babies."

"I don't see why this pattern wouldn't do for an outdoor coat if you made it of thicker cloth—eider-down, for instance."

"It would. Gather the ends of the sleeves about an inch down so as to make a ruffle, and put frogs or buttons and loops on the front and there you have it!"

"Did you bring a petticoat pattern, Margaret?" asked Ethel Blue.

"Haven't you seen the pictures of European peasant women and little girls with awfully full skirts? I believe they'd like them if we just cut two widths of the same length, hemmed them at the bottom, and ran a draw-string in the top. We can feather-stitch the top of the hem if we want to make it look pretty, or we can cut it a little longer and run one or two tucks."

"Or we might buttonhole a scallop around the edge instead of hemming it," suggested Ethel Brown.

"You know I believe in doing one thing well," said Dorothy. "How would it do if we Club girls made just coats and wrappers and sacques from that pattern of Helen's, and petticoats? We can make them of all sorts of colors and a variety of materials and we can trim them differently. We'd be making some mighty pretty ones before we got through."

"I don't see why not," agreed Margaret thoughtfully. "Let's do it."

"I brought the Red Cross knitting directions," said Delia. "I didn't get them till this morning."

"Grandmother will be delighted with those. She's going to take them to the Old Ladies' Home and start them all to work there."

"Are you sure they'll knit for the children?"

"She's going to ask them to knit for the children now, with bright-colored yarns. Afterwards they can knit for the soldiers, and then they must use dark blue or grey or khaki color—not even a stripe that will make any poor fellow conspicuous."

As they finished reading the instructions they heard the boys tramping upstairs with their paraphernalia.

"It looks to me, Dorothy," said Tom, "as if you had us on your hands for most of these club meetings, to do our work here. Are you sure Mrs. Smith doesn't mind?"

"Mother is delighted," Dorothy reassured him. "And she wants you all to come down and have some chocolate."

CHAPTER VII

FOR A TRAVELLER'S KIT

ONCE the Club was started on its work it seemed as if the days were far too short for them to accomplish half of what they wanted to do. Mrs. Morton insisted that her children should have at least two hours out of doors every day, and that cut down the afternoons into an absurdly brief working time. Mrs. Smith had electric lights installed in her attic and it became the habit of the Mortons and often of the Hancocks to meet there and cut and sew and jig-saw and paste for an hour or two every evening. The Watkinses were active in New York evidently, for Della sent frequent postcards asking for directions on one point or another and Tom exchanged jig-saw news with Roger almost daily.

Meanwhile the war was in every one's mind. The whole country realized the desirability of trying to obey President Wilson's request for neutrality in word, thought, and deed. The subject was forbidden at school where the teachers never referred to the colossal struggle that was rending Europe and the children of varied ancestries played together harmoniously in the school yard. If at the high school Fräulein and Mademoiselle were looked at with a new interest by their scholars no word suggestive of a possible lack of harmony was uttered to them, and their friendship for each other seemed to increase with every day's prolongation of the war.

In the Morton family war discussion was not forbidden and the events of the last twenty-four hours as the newspapers reported them were talked over at dinner every evening. Mrs. Morton thought that the children should not be ignorant of the most upheaving event that had stirred the world in centuries, but she did not permit any violent expressions of partisanship.

"You children are especially bound to be neutral," she insisted, "because your father and Ethel Blue's father are in the service of our country, and a neutrality as complete as possible is more desirable from them and their families than from civilians."

A new idea was blossoming in the young people's minds, however. They had grown up with the belief that armament was necessary to preserve peace. Great men and good had said so. "If we are prepared for war," they declared, "other nations will be afraid to fight us." Captain and Lieutenant Morton had agreed with them, as was natural for men of their profession. They did not believe in aggression but in being ready for defense should they be attacked.

Now it seemed to Roger and Helen as they read of the sufferings of invaded France and the distress of trampled Belgium that no country had the right to benefit by results obtained through such cruel means.

"Just suppose a shell should drop down here just as we were walking along," imagined Roger as he and Helen were on their way to school. "Suppose Patrick Shea's cornfield there was marched over before the corn was harvested and all these houses and churches and schools were blown up or burned down and all the people of this town were lying around in the streets dead or wounded!"

"When you bring it home to Rosemont it doesn't sound the way it does when you read in the histories about a 'movement' here and a 'turning of the right flank' there, and 'the end of the line crumpling up.' When the line crumples up it means fathers and brothers are killed and women and children starve—"

"Think what it would be to have nothing to eat and to have to grub around in the fields and devour roots like the peasants in the famine time in Louis XIV's reign."

"And think about the destruction of all the little homes that have been built up with so much care and happiness. Mary told me her sister bought a chair one month and a table at another time when she and her husband came across bargains," said practical Ethel Brown who had caught up with them. "They've furnished their whole house the way we children have added to our kitchen tins and plates; and then everything would be broken to smash by just one of those shells."

"The people who've been spreading the gospel of peace for years and years needn't be discouraged now, it seems to me," observed Roger thoughtfully, "even if it does look as if all their talk had been for nothing. These horrors make a bigger appeal than any amount of talk."

"Grandfather Emerson says that perhaps universal peace is going to be the result of the war. It seems far off enough now."

"It will be dearly bought peace."

"Hush, there goes Mademoiselle. I wonder when she's going to sail."

"Why don't you ask her to-day? The Club must give her some kind of send-off, you know."

"I wonder if she'd mind if we went to New York to see her start?"

"It won't be hard to find out. We can tell her that we won't be offended if she says 'No.'"

"If she's willing we might take that opportunity to go over the ship. I've always wanted to go over an ocean steamer."

"Perhaps they won't let anybody do it now on account of the war. It will be great if we can, though."

The Service Club learned more geography in the course of its studies of the war news than its members ever had learned before voluntarily. The approach of the German army upon Paris was watched every day and its advance was marked upon a large map that Roger had installed in the sitting-room. When the Germans withdrew the change of their line and its daily relation to the battle front of the Allies was noted by the watchful pencil of one or another of the newspaper readers.

Thanks to the simplicity of the pattern which the Club had adopted for its own they were enabled to make a large number of gay garments in a wonderfully short time. From several further donations of material they made wrappers for children of fourteen, twelve, ten, down to the babies, adding to each a belt of the same color as the band so that the garments might serve as dresses at a pinch. They found that with the smaller sizes they could cut off a narrow band from the width of the cloth at each side, and that served as trimming for another garment of contrasting color.

When they had constructed a goodly pile of long wrappers they fell upon the short sacques, and before many days passed a mound of pink-banded blue and blue-banded pink, and red-banded white and white-banded red rose beside their machines. Della wrote that she was using her mother's machine and was learning how better and better every day. Thanks to their lessons at Chautauqua Margaret and Helen sewed well on the machine already. Ethel Brown and Ethel Blue and Dorothy basted on the bands and the belts and added the fastenings. It was their fingers, too, that feather-stitched and cat-stitched the petticoats that came into being with another donation of flannelette. Dorothy was glad when any new material was cotton as every yard that they used helped the South to rid itself of its unsold crop.

"Ladies are going to wear cotton dresses all winter, they say," she told the Club at one of its meetings. "Mother is going to let me have all my new dresses made of cotton stuff and she's going to have some herself."

"We wear cotton middies all winter," protested the Ethels who felt as if Dorothy felt that they were not doing their share to help on the cause she was interested in.

"When Aunt Marion gets your new dancing school dresses couldn't you ask her to get cotton ones?"

"I suppose we could. Do you think they'd be pretty enough?"

"Some cotton dresses that are going to be worn on the opening night of the opera at the Metropolitan are to be on exhibition in New York in a week or two."

"If cotton is good enough for that purpose I guess it's good enough for your dancing class," laughed Helen.

"Mother says they make perfectly beautiful cottons now of exquisite colors and lovely designs. Don't you think it would be great if we set the fashion of the dancing class?"

"Let's do it. Mother says silk isn't appropriate for girls of our age, anyway."

"If you can be dressed appropriately and beautifully at the same time I don't see that you have anything to complain of," smiled Helen.

With the short time that the girls had at their command every day it did not seem as if they would be able to do much with the garments that came in to be made over. There were not many of these because the boys had been instructed after the first day to ask that alterations and mending be done at home, but there were a few dresses like Mrs. Lancaster's that were on their hands. Mrs. Smith came to their help when this work bade fair to be too much for them.

"I'll ask Aunt Marion and Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Hancock and Mrs. Watkins to lunch with me some day," she promised Dorothy, "and after luncheon we'll have an old-fashioned bee and rip up these dresses and then we can see what material they give us and we can plan what to do with them."

The scheme worked out to a charm. The elders enjoyed themselves mightily and the resulting pile of materials, smoothly ironed and carefully sorted gave Margaret and Helen a chance to exercise their ingenuity. Mrs. Watkins took back to town with her enough stuff for two, promising to help Della with them, and the suburban girls, with the assistance of the grown-ups, made six charming frocks that looked as good as new.

It was early in October that Helen rushed home from school one day with the news that Mademoiselle was going to sail at the end of the week.

"We must begin to-day to make up a good-bye parcel for her," she cried.

"Red Cross nurses are allowed a very small kit," warned Mrs. Morton.

"We can try to make things so tiny that she won't have to leave them behind her when she goes on duty, but even if she does she can give them to somebody who can make them useful."

"I'll make steamer slippers to begin with," said Ethel Brown.

"How?" asked Ethel Blue.

Top of Slipper
Sew a and b together

"You get a pair of fleecy inner soles—they have them at all the shoe stores—and then you cut a top piece of bright colored chintz just the shape of the top part of a slipper and you sew it together at the back and bind the edges all around."

"How do you put the top and the sole together?"

"The edge of the sole is soft enough to sew through. You turn the top inside out over the sole and sew the binding of the chintz on to the edge of the sole over and over and when you turn it right side out there you are with gay shoes."

"They'll fill up a bag, though," commented Ethel Blue. "I should think you might make a pair just like that only make the sole of something that would double up. Then they'd go into a case and be more compact."

"That's a good idea, too," agreed Ethel Brown. "What could you use for a sole?"

"Soft leather would be best. I imagine you could get a piece from the cobbler down town. Or you could get the very thin leather that they used at Chautauqua for cardcases and pocket books—the kind Roger uses—and stitch two pieces together."

"Why wouldn't a heavy duck sole do?" suggested Mrs. Emerson.

"If you stepped on a pin it wouldn't keep it out as well as leather," objected her daughter.

"I believe I'll try a pair with a flowery chintz top and a duck sole covered with chintz like a lining to the shoe," said Ethel Blue slowly as she thought it out. "Then I'll make the case of two pieces of chintz bound together."

"One piece ought to be longer than the other so that it would be a flap to come over like an envelope."

This was Ethel Brown's contribution to the slipper building.

"You could fasten it with a glove snapper. I got some the other day for my leather work," said Roger. "I'll put them on for you."

"Why don't you Ethels make both kinds?" suggested Dorothy. "She'll find a use for them."

"If you girls will make it I'll contribute the silk for a bath wrap that she can throw over her warm one, just for looks, on the boat," said Mrs. Emerson. "I have one I use on sleeping cars and it rolls up into the smallest space you can imagine."

Slipper Case
Place section a on section b and sew edges together, leaving c d open
e = Snap fastening

"Good for Grandmother!" cried a chorus of voices.

"Can we use our famous wrapper pattern?" asked Helen.

"I don't see why not. Mine has a hood but that isn't a difficult addition if you merely shape the neck of your kimono a little and then cut a square of the material, sew it across one end and round the lower end a trifle to fit into the neck hole you've made."

"How about longer sleeves, Mother?" asked Mrs. Morton.

"I think I would make them longer. And I'd also make an envelope bag of the same silk to carry it in on the return trip from the bath. You'll be surprised to find into how small an envelope it will go."

"Put a cord from one corner of the envelope to the other so that Mademoiselle may have her hands free for her soap and towel and other needfuls," advised Mrs. Smith, who had been listening to the suggestions.

"Wouldn't another envelope arrangement of chintz lined with rubber cloth make a good washrag bag or sponge bag?" asked Ethel Brown.

"Nothing better unless you put a rubber-lined pocket in a Pullman apron."

This hint from Grandmother Emerson aroused the curiosity of the young people.

"What is a Pullman apron? Tell us about it," they cried.

"Mine is made of linen crash," said Mrs. Emerson. "Dorothy will insist on your making yours of cotton chintz and it will be just as good and even prettier. Get a yard. Cut off a piece thirty inches long and make it fourteen wide. Bind the lower edge with tape. Turn up six inches across the bottom and stitch the one big pocket it makes into smaller ones of different sizes by rows of up and down stitching. Make a bag of rubber cloth just the right size to fit one of the larger pockets. Take the six inches that you cut off from your yard of material and bind it on both edges with tape. Stitch that across your apron about four inches above the top of the lower row of pockets. Divide the strip into as many pockets as you want to for hairpins and pins and neck arrangements, and so on."

"Your apron has two raw edges now," said Helen.

"Bind it on each side with tape. That will finish it and it will also fasten the edges of the pockets securely to the apron. Sew across the top a tape long enough to serve as strings."

Pullman Apron

"The idea is to roll all your toilet belongings up together in your bag, eh?"

"Yes, and when you go to the ladies' room on the train you tie the apron around your waist and then you have your brush and comb and hairpins and tooth brush and washrag all where you can lay your fingers on them in a second of time."

"I got my best tortoise-shell hairpin mixed up with another woman's once, and I never recovered it," said Mrs. Morton meditatively.

"It wouldn't have happened if you'd been supplied with a bag like this," said her mother.

"Mademoiselle's silk wrap must be grey to match her other Red Cross equipment," said Mrs. Emerson, "but I don't see why the chintz things shouldn't be as gay as you like."

"Pink roses would be most becoming to her style of beauty," murmured Roger who had come in.

"I don't know but pink roses would be becoming enough for slippers," agreed Ethel Blue so seriously that every one laughed.

"Let's get pink flowered chintz," said Ethel Brown. "You make the soft kind and I'll make the stiff kind and Dorothy'll make the apron and Helen will make the kimono. Who's got any more ideas?"

"I have," contributed Roger. "I'll make a case for her manicure set. I haven't got time this week unfortunately to tool the leather but I'll make a plain one that will be useful if it isn't as pretty as I can do."

"What shape will it be?"

"I got part of my idea from Grandfather Emerson's spectacle case that I was examining the other day. Ethel Blue's case for the soft slippers is going to be something like it."

"Two pieces of leather rounded at the lower corners and stitched together at the sides and with a flap to shut in the contents?" guessed Dorothy.

"Correct. I shall make the case about four inches long when it's closed."

"That means that you'd have one strip four inches long and the other, the one with the flap, six inches long."

"Once more correct, most noble child. It will be a liberal two inches wide, a bit more in this instance because I'm not much of a sewer and I want to be sure that I'm far enough from the edge to make it secure."

"You don't try to turn it inside out, do you?"

"No, ma'am. Not that mite of an object. You fit a tiny pasteboard slide into the case. Cover it with velvet or leather or a scrap of Ethel Blue's chintz—"

"'Rah for cotton," cheered Dorothy.

"—and on one side of this division you slip in the scissors and the file and the tweezers or the orange stick and on the other a little buffer with a strap handle that doesn't take up any room."

"How in the world do you happen to be so up in manicure articles?" queried Helen, amazed at his knowledge.

"Nothing strange about that," returned Roger. "Aunt Louise showed me hers the other day when I was talking to her about making one for just this occasion. Aha!"

"You could make the same sort of case without the pasteboard partition, for a tiny sewing kit," offered Ethel Blue, "and one of the envelope shape will hold soap leaves."

"I'd like to suggest a couple of shirtwaist cases," said Mrs. Smith. "They are made of dotted Swiss muslin that takes up next to no room and washes like a handkerchief. You'd better make Mademoiselle's of colored muslin or of colored batiste for she won't want to be bothered with thinking about laundry any oftener than she has to."

"What shape are the bags?"

Shirtwaist Case

"Find out whether she will take an American suitcase or a bag. In either case measure the size of the bottom. Take a piece of muslin twice the size and lay it flat. Fold over the edges till they meet in the centre. Then stitch the tops across, on the inside, of course, and hem the slit, and turn them right side out and that's all there is to it. They keep waists or neckwear apart from the other clothing in one's bag and fresher for the separation."

"Since I have my hand in with knitting," said Grandmother, "I believe I'll contribute a pair of bed-shoes. They're so simple that any one who can knit a plain strip can do them."

"Let's have the receipt."

"Cast on stitches enough to run the length of the person's foot. Fifty will be plenty for any woman and more than enough for Mademoiselle's tiny foot. It's well to have the shoe large, though. Knit ahead until you have a strip six inches high. Then cast off from one end stitches enough to make four inches and go ahead with the remainder for four inches more."

"That sounds funny to me," observed Ethel Brown. "Not exactly the shape of my dainty pedestal."

"You'll have made a square with a square out of one corner like this piece of paper. Now fold it along the diagonal line from the tip of the small square to the farthest edge of the big square and sew up all the edges except those of the small square. That leaves a hole where you put your foot in. Crochet an edge there to run a ribbon in—and you're done."

"I'm going to run the risk of Mademoiselle's laughing at me and give her a folding umbrella," said Mrs. Morton. "It will fit into her bag and at least she can use it until she goes to the front."

"All this sounds to me like a good outfit for any woman who is going to travel," observed Helen. "I'm almost moved to sail myself!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE RED CROSS NURSE SETS SAIL

THE girls' cheeks were rosy and their hair was tangled by the wind as Helen and the rest of the U. S. C. left the car at West Street and made their way to the French Line Pier. Roger was heading the flock of Mortons, Mrs. Smith was with Dorothy, the Hancocks had come from Glen Point, more for the fun of seeing a sailing than to say "Good-bye" to Mademoiselle, whom they hardly; knew. The Watkinses were accompanied by their elder brother, Edward, a young doctor.

There was a mighty chattering as the party hastened down the pier. A mightier greeted them when they reached the gang plank.

"Every Frenchman left in New York must be here saying 'Good-bye' to somebody!" laughed Tom as his eye fell on the throng pressing on to the boat over a narrow plank across which passengers who had already said their farewells were leaving, and stewards were carrying cabin trunks.

"Only one passerelle for all that!" exclaimed a plump Frenchman whose age might be guessed by the fashion of his moustache and goatee which declared him to be a follower of Napoleon III. He was carrying a bouquet in one hand and kissing the other vehemently to the lady on the deck who was to be made the recipient of the flowers as soon as her admirer could manage to squeeze himself down the over-crowded gang plank.

Taxis driving up behind the U. S. C. young people discharged their occupants upon the agitated scene. All sorts of messages were being sent across to friends on the other side, many of them shouted from pier to deck with a volubility that was startling to inexperienced French students.

It was quite twenty minutes before the Club succeeded in filing Indian fashion across the passerelle. They were met almost at once by Mademoiselle, for she had been watching their experiences from the vessel.

"Before you say 'Good-bye' to me," she said hurriedly, "I want you to go over the ship. I have special permission from the Captain. You must go quickly. There are not many minutes, you were so long in coming on."

She gave them over to the kind offices of a "mousse" or general utility boy, who in turn introduced them to a junior officer who examined their permit as "friends of Mademoiselle Millerand" and then conveyed them to strange corners whose existence they never had guessed.

First they peeked into a cabin which was one of the handsomest on the ship but whose small size brought from Ethel Brown the comment that it was a "stingy" little room. The reading and writing rooms she approved, however, as being cheerful enough to make you forget you were seasick. A lingering odor of the food of yester-year seemed to cling about the saloon and to mingle with a whiff of oil from the engine room that had assailed them just before they entered. People were saying farewells here with extraordinary impetuosity, men embracing each other with a fervor that made the less demonstrative Americans smile. One group was looking over a pile of letters on the table to see if absent friends had sent some message to catch them before they steamed.

Below were other staterooms, rows upon rows of them, and yet others below those. By comparison with the fragrances here that in the saloon seemed a breeze from Araby the Blest.

From above the party had looked down on the engines whose huge steel arms slid almost imperceptibly over each other as if they were slowly, slowly preparing to spring at an unseen foe; as if they knew that great waves would try to still them, the mighty workers of the great ship. A gentle breathing now seemed to stir them, but far, far down below the waterline the stokers were feeding the animal with the fuel that was to give him energy to contend with storms and winds and come out victor. Half naked men, their backs gleaming in the light from the furnaces, threw coal into the yawning mouth. The heat was intense, and the Ethels turned so pale that young Doctor Watkins hurried them into the open air. Helen was not sorry to breathe the coolness of the Hudson again and even the boys drew a long breath of relief, though they did not admit that they had been uncomfortable.

"Mademoiselle Millerand awaits you in the tea room," explained the young officer, and he conducted them to a portion of the deck where passengers could sit in the open, or, on cold or windy days, behind glass and watch the sea and the passengers pacing by.

Mademoiselle greeted them with shining eyes. During their absence there had been some farewells that had been difficult.

"You have seen everything?" she inquired pleasantly. "Then you must have some lemonade with me before you go," and she gave an order that soon brought a trayful of glasses that tinkled cheerfully.

"We are not going to be sentimental," she insisted. "This is just 'Good-bye,' and thank you many times for being so good to me at school, and many, many times more for the bundle that is in my room to surprise me. I shall open it when the Statue of Liberty is out of sight, when I can no more see my adopted land. Then shall I think of all of you and of your Club for Service."

"Where do you expect to be sent, Mademoiselle?" inquired Doctor Watkins as the party walked toward the passerelle over which they must somehow contrive to make their way before they could touch foot upon the pier.

"To Belgium, I think. My brother is a surgeon and I have a distant relative in the ministry—"

"What—the Millerand?"

Mademoiselle smiled and nodded.

"So probably I shall be sent wherever I wish—and my heart goes but to Belgium. It is natural."

"Yes, it is natural. May you have luck," he cried holding out his hand.

"Mademoiselle is going to Belgium," he told the young people who were awaiting their turn at the gang-plank.

They gazed at her with a sort of awe. Tales of war's horrors were common in the ears of all of them, and it was difficult to believe that the slight figure standing there so quietly beside them would see with her own eyes the uptorn fields and downfallen cottages, the dying men and the miserable women and children they had seen only in imagination.

"Oh," gasped Ethel Blue; "oh! Belgium! Oh, Mademoiselle, won't you send us back a Belgian baby? The Club would love to take care of it! Wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?" she cried turning from one to another with glittering eyes.

"We would, Mademoiselle, we would," cried every one of them; and as the big ship was warped out of the pier they waved their handkerchiefs and their hands and cried over and over, "Send us a Belgian baby!"

"Un bébé belge! Ces chers enfants!" ejaculated a motherly Frenchwoman who was weeping near them. "A Belgian baby! These dear children."

And then, to James's horror, she kissed him, first on one cheek and then on the other.

CHAPTER IX

PLANNING THE U. S. C. "SHOW"

IT was becoming more and more evident every day to the president of the United Service Club that it must have more money than was at its disposal at the moment or it would not be able to carry out its plans. Already it owed to Mrs. Morton a sum that Helen knew was larger than her mother could lend them conveniently. All of Grandfather Emerson's donation had gone to provide knitting needles and yarn for the occupants of the Old Ladies' Home, and the Club's decision to lay itself under no financial obligation to people outside of the immediate families of the members had obliged her to refuse a few small gifts that had been offered.

All the members of the Club were working hard to earn money beyond their allowances and every cent was going into the Club's exchequer. Roger was faithful in his attention to the three furnaces he had undertaken to care for, though he was not above a feeling of relief that the weather was continuing so mild that he had not yet had to keep up fires continuously in any of them. James still drove his father, though the doctor threatened him with discharge almost every day because of his habit of cutting corners. The girls were carrying out their plans for money-making, and Della had secured another order for stenciled curtains which Dorothy and Ethel Brown filled.

What with school and working for the orphans and working for the Club treasury these were busy days, and Helen felt that something must be done at once to provide a comparatively large sum so that their indebtedness might be paid off and the pressure upon each one of them would not be so heavy.

Helen and James were going over the Club accounts one Saturday before the regular meeting. A frown showed Helen's anxiety and James's square face looked squarer and more serious than ever as he saw the deficit piled against them.

"It's high time we gave that entertainment we talked about so much when we began this thing," he growled. "People will have forgotten all about it and we'll have to advertise it all over again."

"That'll be easy enough if we make use of some of the small children in some way. All their relatives near and far will know all about it promptly and they'll all come to see how the kiddies perform," said Helen wisely, though her look of perplexity continued.

"Let's bring it up at the meeting right now. I don't believe we can do anything better this afternoon than plan out our show and decide who and what and where."

"'Where' is answered easily enough—the hall of the schoolhouse. 'Who' and 'what' require more thought."

It turned out, however, that every one had been thinking of stunts to do himself or for some one else to do, so that the program did not take as much time as if the subject had not been lying in their minds for several weeks.

"At the beginning," said Ethel Blue, "I think some one ought to get up and tell what the Club is trying to do—all about the war orphans and the Santa Claus Ship."

"Wouldn't Grandfather Emerson be a good one to do that?"

"I don't think we want to have any grown people in our show," was Helen's opinion. "If we bring them in then the outside people will expect more from us because they'll think that we've been helped and it won't be fair to us or to our grown-ups."

"That's so," agreed Tom from the depths of a lifetime of experience of the ways of people in church entertainments. "Let's do every single thing ourselves if we can, and I believe the audience will like it better even if it isn't all as O. K. as it would be if we had a grown-up or two to help pull the oars."

"The first question before us, then, is who will do this explanation act that Ethel Blue suggests?"

There was a dead silence. No one wanted to offer. There seemed no one person on whom the task fell naturally unless—"The Club was Ethel Blue's idea," went on Helen. "Isn't she the right one to explain it?" and "The president of the Club ought to tell about it," said Ethel Blue. Both girls spoke at once.

There was unanimous laughter.

"'Ayther is correct,'" quoted Roger. "I think Helen is the proper victim."

"Yes, indeed," Ethel Blue supported him so earnestly that every one laughed again.

"You see, no one knows about its being Ethel Blue's idea and that would take a lot more explaining or else it would seem that there was no good reason for the president's not acting as showman and introducing her freaks to the audience."

"'Speak for yourself, John!' I'm no freak!" declared James. "I think Helen's the right one to make the introduction, though."

Helen shivered.

"I must say I hate to do it," she said, "but we all agreed when we went into this that we'd do what came up, no matter whether we liked it or not, so here goes Number 1 on the program," and she wrote on her pad, beneath an elaborate

PROGRAM

which she had been drawing and decorating as she talked.

1. Explanatory address. Helen Morton.

"Now, then," queried Ethel Brown, "what next?"

"Music, if there's any one to tootle for the ladies," said Roger.

"Dorothy's the singer."

"Oh, I couldn't sing all alone," objected Dorothy shrinkingly. "But Mother said she'd drill a chorus of children and I wouldn't mind doing the solo part with a lot of others on the stage with me."

"How about a chorus in costume?" asked Helen.

"What kind of costume?"

"Oh, I don't know—something historical, perhaps."

"Why not the peasant costumes of the countries in the war?" suggested Ethel Blue. "We're working for the children and we'll have a child or two from each country."

"A sort of illustration of Helen's speech," said Tom.

"They might sing either the national songs of their countries or children's songs," said Dorothy.

"Or both, with you dressed as Columbia and singing the Star Spangled Banner at the end."

"La, la! Fine!" commended Margaret. "Put down Number 2, Helen, 'Songs by War Orphans.' We can work out the details later, or leave them to Dorothy and her mother."

"I've been thinking that we might as well utilize some of the folk dances that we learned at Chautauqua last summer," said Ethel Brown. "Wouldn't Number 3 be a good spot to put in the Butterfly Dance?"

"That was one of the prettiest dances at the Exhibition," said James. "Let's have it."

"Margaret and I are too tall for it, but you four young ones know it and you can teach four more girls easily enough."

"We'll ask them to-morrow at school," said Dorothy, "and we'll have a rehearsal right off. Mother will play for us and it won't take any time at all."

"The costumes won't take any time, either. Any white dress will do and the wings are made by strips of soft stuff—cheese cloth or something even softer, pale blue and pink and green and yellow. They're fastened at the shoulders and a loop goes over the wrist or the little finger so the arms can keep them waving."

"Do you remember the steps, Dorothy?"

"They're very simple, but almost anything that moves sort of swimmingly will do."

"There's Number 3, then," decided Dorothy. "Now the boys ought to appear."

"Yes, what have you three been planning to throw us in the shade?" inquired Della.

"I've got a fancy club-swinging act that's rather good," admitted Roger modestly.

"You have?" asked Tom in surprise. "So have I. What's yours?"

"Come over here and I'll tell you," and the two boys retired to a corner where they conferred. It was evident, from their burst of laughter and their exclamations that they highly approved of each other's schemes.

"We've decided that we won't tell you what our act is," they declared when they came back to the broken meeting. "We'll surprise you as well as the rest of the audience."

"Meanies," pronounced Ethel Brown. "Helen, put down 'Number 4, Club Swinging by Two Geese!'"

"Not geese," corrected Tom, with a glance at Roger, who made a sign of caution.

"What next?" queried the president.

"Let's have some of the small children now. Our honorary member ought to be on the card," said Della.

"Are you sure he wouldn't be afraid?" asked Tom of Dicky's brethren.

"Not Dicky," they shrieked in concert.

"I saw a pretty stunt in town the other evening. It was done by grown people but it would be dear with little kids," urged Della, her round face beaming with the joy of her adaptation of the idea. "It was a new kind of shadow dance."

"Pshaw, that's old," declared Tom with brotherly curtness.

"It wasn't done behind a sheet. That's the old way—"

"A mighty good way, too," supported James stoutly. "I've seen some splendid pantomimes done on a sheet—'Red Riding Hood' and 'Jack the Giant Killer,' and a lot more."

"This is much cunninger," insisted Della. "Instead of a sheet there's a dull, light blue curtain hung across the stage. The light is behind it, but the actors are in front of it."

"Then you don't see their shadows."

"You see themselves in silhouette against the blue. There is a net curtain down between them and the audience and it looks like moonlight with elves and fairies playing in it."

"It would be hard to train Dicky to be a fairy," decided Ethel Blue so gravely that all the others laughed.

"I was thinking that it would be fun to have Dicky and some other children dressed like pussy cats and rabbits and dogs, and playing about as if they were frisking in the moonlight."

"Why not have them do a regular little play like 'Flossy Fisher's Funnies' that have been coming out in the Ladies' Home Journal?" screamed Ethel Brown, electrified at the growth of the idea. "Take almost any one of them and get the children to play the little story it tells and I don't see why it wouldn't be too cunning for words."

"What kind of stories?" asked James who liked to understand.

"I don't remember any one exactly but they are something like this;—Mr. Dog goes fishing on the bank of the stream. A strip of pasteboard cut at the top into rushes will give the effect of a brook, you know. He pulls up a fish with a jerk that throws it over his head. Pussy Cat is waiting just behind him. She seizes the fish and runs away with it. Mr. Dog runs after her. The cat jumps over a wheelbarrow, but the dog doesn't see it and gets a fall—and so on."

"I can see how it would be funny with little scraps of kids," pronounced Tom. "Who'll train them?"

"I'll do that," offered Ethel Brown. "Dicky's always good with me and if he understands the story he'll really help teach the others."

"Pick out a simple 'Flossy Fisher' or make up an easy story with plenty of action," advised Margaret. "The chief trouble you'll have is to make the children stay apart on the stage. They'll keep bunching up and spoiling the silhouettes if you aren't careful."

"Number 5. Silhouettes," wrote Helen on her pad. "What's Number 6?"

"I don't know whether you'll approve of this," offered Dorothy rather shyly, "but when I was at the Old Ladies' Home the other day I thought they made a real picture knitting away there in the sunshine in their sitting room. Do you think some of them could be induced to come to the schoolhouse and make a tableau?"

"Fine!" commended Helen.

"You could have it a picture of sentiment, such as Dorothy had in mind, I judge," said Tom, "or you could turn it into a comic by having some one sing 'Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers.'"

"What's that?"

"A stay-at-home war song they're singing in England. It's funny because it's so full of S's that it's almost impossible to sing it without a mistake. I think it would be better, though, to have the old ladies just knitting away. After all, it's sympathy with the orphans we want to arouse."

"Couldn't we have a tableau within a tableau—a picture at the back placed with the figures posed behind a net curtain so that they'd be dimmed—a picture of some of the Belgian orphans refugeeing into Holland or something of that sort?"

"If Mademoiselle would only send us right off that Belgian baby that James got kissed for we'd have an actual exhibit," said Roger.

James made a face at the memory of the unexpected caress he had earned unwittingly, but he approved highly of the addition to the picture of the old ladies.

"They're thinking about the orphans as they knit—and there are the orphans," he said, and even his sister Margaret smiled at the approbation with which he looked on a tableau that left nothing to the imagination.

"Number 6 is settled, then. Why can't we have the minuet for Number 7?"

"Good. All of us here know it so we shan't need to rehearse much."

"On that small stage four couples will be plenty, I say," offered Roger.

"I think so, too. Eight would make it altogether too crowded," declared Helen. "That means that four of us girls will dance—we can decide which ones later—and you three boys, and we'll only have to train one new boy."

"What's the matter with George Foster? His sister is a dancing teacher and perhaps he knows it already."

"He's the best choice we can make. We want to get this thing done just as fast as we can for several reasons," continued Helen. "In the first place any entertainment goes off more snappily if the fun of doing it isn't all worn off by too many rehearsals."

"Correct," agreed Tom. "Remember that Children's Symphony we exhausted ourselves on for a month last winter, Della?"

Della did and expressed her memories with closed eyes and out-stretched hands.

"If each one of us makes himself and herself responsible for having his own part perfect and the stunts that he's drilling others in as nearly perfect as he can, then I don't see why we need more than ten days for it."

"Especially as we know all the dances now and the Old Ladies' Home tableau won't take much preparation."

"Have we got enough numbers on the program, Helen?"

"I think we ought to end with a long thing of some sort."

"We'll never pull off the show if you try to stick in a play," growled James.

"Not a play, but I was reading Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' the other day and it can easily be made workable with just a little speaking and some pantomime. Two or three rehearsals ought to do it."

"All right, then. Your sufferings be on your head."

"You'll all back me up, won't you?"

"We'll do whatever you tell us, if that's what you want."

"Read us the whole program, Madam President," begged Dorothy.

"Here you are; I've changed the order a little:

PROGRAM

1. Address, Helen Morton.

2. Songs by War Orphans, led by Dorothy Smith.

3. Butterfly Dance.

4. Club Swinging by Roger Morton and Thomas Watkins.

5. Knitting for the War Orphans by Ladies from the Old Ladies' Home.

6. Silhouettes by Dicky Morton and other Juniors.

7. Minuet.

8. "The Pied Piper."

"If I do say it as shouldn't, having had a modest part in its construction," remarked Roger complacently, "that's a good program."

"Do you know," added Margaret earnestly, "I think so too."

So, after discussion of details concerning responsibility and rehearsals, and the appointment of a publicity committee consisting of the officers of the Club plus Roger, the meeting adjourned.

CHAPTER X

THE EVENTFUL EVENING

IF the U. S. C.'s had thought themselves busy before they undertook their entertainment they concluded as they rushed from one duty to another in the ten days of preparation for that function that they had not learned the A B C of busy-ness. Mrs. Morton always insisted that, whatever was on foot, school work must not be slighted.

"Your education is your preparation for life," she said. "While you are young you must lay down a good foundation for the later years to build on. You know what happens when a foundation is poor."

They did. A building in Rosemont had fallen into a heap of ruins not long before, to the shame of the contractor who had put in poor work.

So all the school duties were attended to faithfully, and the out-of-door time was not skimped though the out-of-door time was largely devoted to doing errands connected with the "show," and the home lessons were learned as thoroughly as usual. But sewing went by the board for ten days except such sewing as was necessary for the making of costumes.

"Here's a chance for your Club to try out some of Roger's ideas of system," said Grandfather Emerson as he listened to the plans which were always on the lips of the club members whenever he met them.

"I think we're doing it all pretty systematically," Helen defended. "Each one of us is responsible for doing certain things and our work doesn't overlap. When we come together for a general rehearsal I believe we're going to find that all the parts will fit together like a cut-out puzzle."

Costume for Butterfly Dance

Mr. Emerson said that he hoped so in a tone of such doubt that Helen was more than ever determined that all should run smoothly. To that end she made a diplomatic investigation into every number of the program. Every one she found to be going on well. Her own address was already blocked out in her mind. Dorothy had taken bodily a singing class that Mrs. Smith had started at the Rosemont Settlement and, with the knowledge of singing that the children already had, they soon were drilled in their special songs and in the motions that enlivened them. Mrs. Smith and Dorothy were also preparing the costumes and they reported that the mothers of the children were helping, some of them providing actual peasant costumes that had come from the old country.

With four girls who already knew the butterfly dance the drilling of another quartette was swiftly done, and the Ethels were willing to put their flock of butterflies on the stage four days after they had begun to practice. Because every one of them had a white dress their costumes required almost no work beyond the cutting lengthwise of a yard and a quarter of cheesecloth. When they had gathered one end and attached the safety pin which was to fasten it to the shoulder, and gathered the other end and sewed on a loop which was to go over the little finger—all of which took about five minutes—that costume was finished.

About the boys' club swinging Helen could not obtain any information beyond the assurance that all was well. With that she had to content herself.

The old ladies at the Home were delighted to be able to help and also delighted at the excitement of taking part in the entertainment. They voted for the trio who should represent them in the tableaux and generously selected three who were the most handicapped of all of them. One was lame and always sat with her crutch beside her; one was blind, though her fast flying fingers did not betray it; and the third lived in a wheel-chair. They demurred strongly to their companions' choice, but the other old ladies were insistent and the appointees could not resist the fun. Mr. Emerson agreed to provide transportation for them, wheel-chair and all, and Doctor Hancock was to send over a wagonette from Glen Point so that the rest of the inmates of the Home might take advantage of the tickets that some mysterious giver had sent to every one of them. For the inner picture Dicky and two of his kindergarten friends were to be posed, clad in rags.

"It's no trouble to provide Dicky with a ragged suit," said Mrs. Morton. "The difficulty is going to be to make him look serious and poorly fed."

"A little artistic shading under his eyes and on his cheeks will make his plumpness disappear. I'll 'make up' the children," offered Mrs. Emerson.

Most difficult of all were the silhouettes. This was because the children who were to take part were so tiny that they could not quite remember the sequence of the story they were to act out. There were moments when the Ethels were almost disposed to give up the youngsters and try the shadows with larger children.

"The little ones make so much cunninger cats and dogs than the bigger children I don't want to do it unless we have to," said Ethel Brown, and they found at last that perseverance won the day. Here, too, the children's mothers helped with the costumes, and turned out a creditable collection of animal coverings, not one of them with a bit of fur.

"They're another help to your cotton crusade," Ethel Blue told Dorothy.

Grey flannelette made a soft maltese pussy; the same material in brown covered a dog; a white coat splashed with brown spots out of the family coffee pot was the covering of another Fido, while another white garment stained with black and yellow ornamented a tortoise-shell cat. The rabbits all wore white.

As with the butterfly dance so many of the performers knew the minuet that it needed only two rehearsals. The new boy worked in without any trouble and was so graceful and dignified that the U. S. C. boys found themselves emulating his excellent manner.

Helen herself took charge of "The Pied Piper" and so few were the speaking parts and so short and so natural the pantomime that she drilled her company in three rehearsals, though she herself worked longer in private over the manipulation of certain stage "properties," and had one or two special sessions with Dr. Edward Watkins who was to take the principal part.

Friday evening was chosen for the performance. The Rosemont young people usually had their evening festivities on Fridays because they could sit up later than usual without being disturbed about school work the next morning. The special Friday proved to be clear with a brilliant moon and the old ladies driving over from the Home felt themselves to be out on a grand lark. Evidently the boys had done their publicity work thoroughly, for not only did they see a goodly number of Rosemont people approaching the schoolhouse, but, just as they drove up to the door, a special car from Glen Point stopped to let off a crowd of friends of the Hancocks who had come over to see "what the children were doing for the war orphans."

The school hall held 300 people and no seats were reserved except those for the old ladies. They found themselves in front where they could see well and where they were near enough to appreciate the care with which the edge of the platform was decorated. That had been Margaret Hancock's work and she had remembered the success of the Service Club in preparing the platform for the Old First Night exercises at Chautauqua.

Tom had insisted that the Club should go to the extra expense of having tickets printed. James had objected.

"This old treasury of ours is almost an empty box," he growled. "We can't afford to spend cold cash on printing."

"It will pay in the end, believe me," insisted Tom slangily. "You know there are always a lot of people who think they'll go to a show and then at the last minute think they won't if something more amusing turns up. If you sell tickets beforehand you've got their contribution to the cause even if they don't appear themselves."

"Tom's right," agreed Margaret. "They won't mind losing so small a sum as a quarter if they don't go."

"And they'd think it was too small an amount to bother themselves about by hunting up the treasurer and paying it in if they didn't have a ticket," said Roger.

"And there are some people who'd be sure to come and swell the audience just because they had spent a quarter on a ticket," said Ethel Brown.

"What does the president think?" asked Ethel Blue.

Helen agreed with Tom and the tickets were printed. After all they came to only a small sum and Roger, peeking through a hole in the curtain, saw with satisfaction that if there were going to be any vacant seats at all they would not be many. When one of the old ladies turned about just before the curtain went up she saw a solid room behind her and people standing against the wall.

There was music before the curtain rose. This enrichment of the program was a surprise to the performers themselves. Young Doctor Edward Watkins had become so interested in the United Service Club when he met them at the French Line Pier that he had insisted on helping with their work for the orphans.

"If Mademoiselle really sends you that Belgian baby you may need a special physician for it," he said. "So you'd better stand in with one whose practice isn't big enough yet to take all his time."

He said this to Helen when he appeared with Tom and Della on the evening of the performance and announced that not only did he know his part in the "Piper" but he had brought his violin and would be glad to be a part of the orchestra.

"But we haven't an orchestra," objected Helen. "I wish we had."

"Who's going to play for the dances?"

"Aunt Louise."

"Why can't she and I do something at the beginning? It will seem a little less cold than just having the curtain go up without any preliminaries."

Mrs. Smith proved to be delighted to go over with Doctor Watkins the music he had brought and they selected one or two lively bits that would set the mood of the audience for the evening. So Mrs. Morton and the Emersons and the younger members of the cast were greatly surprised to hear an overture from a well-played violin accompanied by the piano. While the applause was dying away the curtain rose on Helen seated at a desk reading from a blank exercise book filled with Ethel Blue's neat writing.

"This is the report of the Secretary of the United Service Club," began Helen when the applause that greeted her appearance had subsided. She was looking very pretty, wearing a straight, plain pink frock and having her hair bound with a narrow pink fillet.

"Perhaps you don't know what the United Service Club is," she went on, and then she told in the simplest manner of the beginning of the Club at Chautauqua the summer before.

"What we're trying to do is to help other people whether we want to or not," she declared earnestly.

A soft laugh went over the audience at this contradictory statement.

"I mean," continued Helen, somewhat confused, "that we mean to do things that will help people even if we don't get any fun out of it ourselves. We want to improve our characters, you see," she added artlessly. "So far we haven't had much chance to improve our characters because all the things that have come our way to do have been things that were great fun—like to-night.

"To-night," she went on earnestly, "you have come here to see a little entertainment that we've gotten up to make some money so that we could send a bigger bundle to the Christmas Ship that is going to sail for Europe early in November. We thought we could make a good many presents for the war orphans but we found that our allowances didn't go as far as we thought they would, although we have a very careful treasurer," she added with a smiling glance at the wings of the stage where James greeted her compliment with a wry face.

"We made a rule that we would make all the money we needed and not accept presents, so this show is the result, and we hope you'll like it. Anyway, we've had lots of fun getting it up."

She bowed her thanks to the applause that greeted her girlish explanation and stepped behind the scenes.

Immediately a gay march sounded from the piano. It was a medley of well-known national songs and in time with its notes a group of children led by Dorothy ran upon the stage. Dorothy stepped to the front and sang a few lines of introduction to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."

"Here we are from Fatherland,
From Russia and from France,
From Japan and from Ireland
We all together dance.
"At home they are not dancing now;
There's war and awful slaughter;
We here in Rosemont make our bow,
Each one Columbia's daughter."

Then a flaxen-haired little girl stepped forward and sang a German folk song and after it she and two other children dressed in German peasant costume danced a merry folk dance. Representatives of the other countries which Dorothy's verses had named sang in turn. Then each group sang its national song, at the end uniting in "The Star Spangled Banner," in which the standing audience joined.

There was a great clapping when the curtain fell, but the managers had decided that there should be no encores, so the curtain merely rose once upon a bowing, smiling group and then fell with a decision that was understood to be final.

"Whatever we do wrong, the thing we must do right," Helen had insisted when she was drilling her performers, "is to have promptness in putting on our 'acts.'"

"That's so," agreed Tom, "there's nothing an audience hates more than to wait everlastingly between 'turns' while whispering and giggling goes on behind the scenes."

As a result of Helen's sternness the butterflies were waiting when the little internationals went off, and, as those of the children who were not to appear again filed quietly down into the audience where they could see the remainder of the performance, waving wings of soft pink and blue and green and yellow fluttered in from the sides. There was nothing intricate about the steps of this pretty dance. There were movements forward and back and to one side and another, with an occasional turn, but the slowly waving hands with their delicate burden of color made the whole effect entirely charming.

When Tom and Roger, jersey clad, stepped on to the stage for the club-swinging act all the other performers were clustered in the wings, for it had roused their curiosity. Evidently Roger was to swing first for he stepped to the front while Tom beckoned to the janitor of the hall who came forward and attached electric light wires to a plug in the edge of the platform. Tom made a connection with wires that ran up under the back of Roger's jersey and down his sleeves and through holes bored into his clubs, and then he stepped forward to the front.

"While Roger Morton is swinging his clubs the lights of the hall will be turned off," he explained. "I mention it so that no one will be startled when they go out."

Out they went, and in a flash Roger's clubs, made of red and white striped cotton stretched over wire frames which covered electric light bulbs screwed to a sawed-off pair of clubs, were illuminated from within. The beauty of the movements as the clubs flashed here and there in simple or elaborate curves and whirls drew exclamations of enjoyment from the audience.

"That's one of the prettiest stunts I ever saw," exclaimed Doctor Hancock, and Doctor Watkins led the vigorous applause that begged Roger to go on. True to his agreement with Helen, however, Roger stepped aside as soon as he was freed from his apparatus and the lights were turned on once more in the hall, and prepared to help Tom.

It was clear that Tom, too, was not going to do ordinary club-swinging. He took up his position in the centre of the stage and Roger brought forward a box which he deposited beside him. The actors behind the scenes craned their heads forward until they were visible to the audience, so eager were they to see what the box contained.

"My friend, Tom Watkins," said Roger gravely, "is something of a naturalist. In the course of his travels and studies he has come across a curious animal whose chief characteristic is what I may be permitted to call its adhesive power. So closely does it cling to anything to which it attaches itself that it can be detached only with great difficulty. So marked is this peculiarity of the Canis Taurus—"

A peculiar grunt of amusement from certain high school members of the audience interrupted Roger's oration. "Canis, dog; taurus, bull," they whispered.

"—of the Canis Taurus," he went on, "that Watkins has been able to train two of his specimens to do the very remarkable act that you are about to see."

As he ended he threw back the top of the box and there popped up over the edge the infinitely ugly heads of Cupid's two pup's, Amor and Amorette. A howl of laughter greeted their silly, solemn countenances. Tom whistled sharply and they sprang from their narrow quarters and ran to him. He stroked them, and faced them toward the footlights so that their eyes should not be dazzled by seeing them suddenly. Then he began to play with them, pushing them about and shoving them gently with the ravelled ends of two short pieces of knotted rope. When he had teased them for a minute he stood upright and Amor and Amorette were hanging each from a rope! It was a trick he had taught them as soon as their teeth were strong enough.

Slowly he swung them back and forth, and then in semi-circles constantly increasing in sweep, until in a flash they rose over his head and described regular simple Indian club evolutions. Every move was slow and steady with no jerks that would break the dogs' hold and Amor and Amorette held on with a firmness that did credit to their inheritance of jaw muscle and determination.

"Good for the Canis Taurus," laughed Mr. Wheeler, the high school teacher, from the back of the hall as the swinging died rhythmically away.

"Speak to the ladies and gentlemen," commanded Tom as he dropped the ropes and their attachments to the floor. Each dog was still holding firmly to his bit of rope and manifested no desire to part from it. At their master's order, however, they let go of their handles and uttered two sharp barks. Then they picked them up again and trotted off the stage.

All this was so unusual that it aroused the most fervent enthusiasm that had yet been shown. Feet stamped and canes rapped but Tom would do no more than walk on with a dog on each side of him and bow as they barked.

With the announcement of the knitting tableau there was a flutter among the old ladies from the Home. Here was an act in which they felt a personal interest. It was almost embarrassing to be so nearly related to a number on the program!

The curtain rose very slowly to soft music thrilling through the hall. It was a homely scene—just such a room as any one of the old ladies may have had when she still had a home of her own. There was a table with a lamp upon it and around the table were the three old ladies, one with her crutch and one in her wheel chair, and one sitting in the darkness that was daylight to her—the shining of a contented heart. All of them were knitting.

Slowly there grew into view behind them on the wall the picture of the thoughts that were in their minds—the picture of three children, pale, thin, tear-stained, trudging along a weary road. Each one carried a bundle far too heavy for him and each looked unsmilingly out of the frame, though Mrs. Morton breathed a sigh of relief when the touching scene faded and she knew that there was no longer any danger of Dicky's spoiling the effect by a burst of laughter or a genial call to some acquaintance in the audience.

Slowly the curtain fell and the old ladies were lost to view. Then the old ladies in front breathed a sigh of satisfaction. It had been simply perfect!

CHAPTER XI

"SISTER SUSIE'S SEWING SHIRTS FOR SOLDIERS"

WITH the evening well under way Helen was beginning to be relieved of the worry that she had not been able to control, but as the time for the silhouette approached the Ethels became distinctly disturbed. Dicky always was an uncertain element. Because he had behaved like an angel child in the tableau with the old ladies was no assurance that as a pussy cat in the silhouettes he would not raise an uproar which would put to shame any backyard feline of their acquaintance.

Dicky's companions in the animal play were ready behind the scenes and their funny costumes were causing bursts of suppressed mirth as they danced about excitedly. When Dicky finished his tableau he was hurried into his maltese coat and by the time that his Aunt Louise had played the "Owl and the Pussy Cat" and Dorothy had sung it, the blue curtain had been lowered, the light behind it turned on, and between it and the net curtain in front the dogs and the cats and the rabbits frisked happily. In fact the raising of the outside curtain caught them tagging each other about the stage in a manner that was vastly amusing but had nothing to do with the play.

For there was a little play. The Ethels had made it up themselves and it had to do not only with a fisher dog who lost his catch to a robber cat but with a clever rabbit who was chased by both dogs and cats and who took refuge in the rushes on the bank of the stream and was passed by because his pursuers mistook the tips of his ears for rushes. Then they made signs that, wherever he was, if he would come out and join them they should all be friends. He came out and they took paws and danced about in a circle. Against the dull blue background it looked as if the animals were playing in the moonlight, jumping and walking on their hindlegs like the creatures in the fairy books. The small children in the audience were especially pleased with this number and when at the end a boy appeared carrying his schoolbooks and all the animals fell into line behind him and walked off demurely to school it was so like what happens at the end of the holidays that they burst into renewed clapping.

The minuet went with the utmost smoothness. Doctor Watkins added his violin to the piano's playing of the Mozart music from "Don Giovanni" and the picturesquely dressed figures stepped and bowed and courtesied with grace and precision. Helen danced with Tom, Margaret with Roger, Ethel Brown with James, and Ethel Blue with the new boy, George Foster. The girls all wore ruffled skirts with paniers elaborately bunched over them, and they had their hair powdered. The boys wore knee breeches, long-tailed coats, and white wigs. On the wall hung an old portrait of a Morton ancestor. A spinet stood at one side of the room which the stage represented. The whole atmosphere was that of a day long gone by.

After this number was done Doctor Watkins appeared before the curtain.

"I am asked by the president of the United Service Club," he said, "to tell you that there will be an interval of ten minutes between the minuet and the next offering of the program. During that time I am going to sing you a song that the English soldiers are singing. It isn't a serious song, for the soldiers are hearing enough sad sounds without adding to them. I may make some mistakes in singing it—you'll understand why in a moment."

At a nod from him, Mrs. Smith broke into the opening notes of "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers," and by the time the doctor had finished the second stanza the audience was humming the chorus. "Come on," he cried. "I did make some mistakes. See if you can do better," and he led the tune for the four lines that announced,—

"Sister Susie's sewing shirts for soldiers.
Such skill at sewing shirts our shy young sister Susie shows,
Some soldiers send epistles, say they'd sooner sleep in thistles
Than the saucy, soft, short shirts for soldiers Sister Susie sews."

Everybody laughed and laughed and tried to sing and laughed again.

When the chorus was over, Doctor Watkins dashed into the Allies' song, "Tipperary," and followed it by "Deutschland ueber Alles." Then he taught the audience the words of "The Christmas Ship" and they quickly caught the air and soon were singing,—

"Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas Ship
As it starts across the sea
With its load of gifts and its greater load
Of loving sympathy.
Let's wave our hats and clap our hands
As we send it on its trip;
May many a heart and home be cheered
By the gifts in the Christmas Ship."

Edward had a good voice and he sang with so much spirit that every one enjoyed his unexpected addition to the evening's pleasure.

A bell behind the scenes announced that "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" was ready and the curtain rose on the room in the Town Hall of Hamelin in which the Corporation held its meetings. Dorothy, whose voice was clear and far-reaching, stood just below the stage at one side and read the explanation of what had been happening in the city.

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity,
Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking.

At this point the reading stopped and the action began. Roger, dressed as the Mayor in his mother's red flannel kimono banded with white stripes to which he had attached tiny black tails to give the effect of ermine, stalked in first. He wore a look of deep anxiety. Behind him came James and two of Roger's high school friends who represented members of the Corporation. They also were dressed in red robes but they did not attempt to equal the ermine elegance of the Mayor.

After the Mayor and Corporation came a body of the townspeople. They all appeared thoroughly enraged and as the city fathers took their seats at the council table in the centre of the room they railed at them.

First Citizen. [Tom, in rough brown jacket and baggy knee breeches, with long brown stockings and low shoes. He frowned savagely and growled in disgust.] "'Tis clear our Mayor's a noddy!"

Second Citizen. [George Foster, dressed like Tom.]
"And as for our Corporation—shocking,
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!"

Third Citizen. [Another high school boy. He was bent like a withered old man and spoke in a squeaky voice.]

"You hope because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?"
First Citizen.
"Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing."
The Mayor.
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,
I wish I were a mile hence."
First Member of the Corporation. [James.]
"It's easy to bid one rack one's brain—
I'm sure my poor head aches again,
I've scratched it so and all in vain."
Second Member of the Corporation.
"Oh, for a trap, a trap, a trap."

At this instant came a rap on the door. Helen did it, and a cry came from The Mayor.

"Bless us, what's that?"
First Member.
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"
The Mayor.
"Come in!"

In answer to this permission there entered Edward Watkins as the Pied Piper. He had dashed around to the back and slipped into his coat and Mrs. Emerson had painted his face while the first words of the poem were being read. He was tall and thin with light hair, yet a swarthy complexion. He wore a queer long coat, half yellow and half red and around his neck a scarf of red and yellow in stripes to which was attached a tiny flute with which his fingers played as if he were eager to pipe upon it. He smiled winningly and the people crowded in the council chamber whispered, wondering who he was and why his attire was so curious.

First Citizen.
"It's as my great-grandsire
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone."

The Pied Piper [Edward Watkins] advanced to the council table.
"Please your honors, I'm able
By means of a secret charm to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.
Yet, poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampire bats:
And as for what your brain bewilders
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?"
The Mayor and Corporation Together.
"One? Fifty thousand!"

Then The Piper walked slowly across the stage, erect and smiling, and he piped a strange, simple tune on his flute. As he disappeared at one side the stage was darkened and at the back appeared a picture such as had been used in the tableau of the old ladies knitting. The Mayor and the Corporation and the townsfolk turned their back to the audience and gazed out through this window. Across it passed first The Piper still piping, and after him a horde of rats. They were pasteboard rats and Helen was drawing them across the scene with strings, but they made a very good illusion of the dancing rats that the poet described;

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats;
Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats.

As the crowd in the room watched they uttered exclamations—"See!" "Look at that one!" "How they follow him!" "He's leading them to the river!" "In they go!" "They're drowning!" "Every one of them!" "Let's ring the bells!"

With faces of delight the townsfolk left the council chamber and from a distance came the muffled ringing of bells of joy.

The Mayor addressed them as they passed out;
"Go and get long poles,
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats."

The Piper entered suddenly. "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"

First Member of the Corporation. "A thousand guilders!"

The other members of the Corporation shook their heads in solemn refusal.

The Mayor.
"Our business was done at the river's brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what's dead can't come to life, I think."
Second Member of the Corporation.
"So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke—"
The Mayor.
"But as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke."
First Member.
"Besides, our losses have made us thrifty.
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!"
The Piper [looking serious, cried];
"No trifling! I can't wait, beside!
I've promised to visit by dinner time
Bagdat, and accept the prime
Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in,
For having left in the Caliph's kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor;
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe after another fashion."
The Mayor.
"How? D'ye think I brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!"

Once more the Piper laid the pipe against his lips and blew the strange, simple tune, and from both sides of the stage there came rushing in children of all sizes, boys and girls, flaxen-haired and dark-haired, blue-eyed and brown-eyed. They crowded around him and as he slowly passed off the stage they followed him, dancing and waving their hands and with never a look behind them.

Once more the window at the back opened and across it went the Piper, still fluting, though now he could not be heard by the audience; and behind him still danced the children, blind to the gestures of the Mayor and Corporation who stretched out their arms, beseeching them to return. Terrified, the city fathers made known by gestures of despair that they feared the Piper was leading the children to the river where they would meet the fate of the rats.

Of a sudden they seemed relieved and the picture showed the throng passing out of sight into a cavern on the mountain. Then limped upon the stage a lame boy who had not been able to dance all the way with the children and so was shut out when the mountain opened and swallowed them up. The Corporation crowded around him and heard him say:

Lame Boy.
"It's dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings;
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!"

The Mayor and Corporation were grouped around the Lame Boy listening and the citizens at the back leaned forward so as to hear every word. Almost in tears the boy limped from the stage followed slowly by Mayor and Corporation and citizens while Dorothy's clear voice took up the tale.

"Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher's pate
A text which says that heaven's gate
Opes to the rich at as easy rate
As the needle's eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper by word or mouth
Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor,
And Piper and dancers were gone forever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
'And so long after what happened here
On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six:'
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it the Pied Piper's Street—
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labor.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn:
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbors lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land.
But how or why, they don't understand."

At the conclusion of the play, after hearty applause, the audience broke again into the song of the Christmas Ship:

Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas Ship
As it starts across the sea
With its load of gifts and its greater load
Of loving sympathy.
Let's wave our hats and clap our hands
As we send it on its trip;
May many a heart and home be cheered
By the gifts in the Christmas Ship.

"That's as good a show as if it had been put on by grown-ups," declared a New Yorker who had come out with Doctor Watkins. "It's hard to believe that those kids have done it all themselves."

He spoke to a stranger beside him as they filed out to the music of a merry march played by Mrs. Smith.

"My boy was among them," replied the Rosemont man proudly, "but I don't mind saying I think they're winners!"

That seemed to be every one's opinion. As for the old ladies—the evening was such an event to them that they felt just a trifle uncertain that they had not been transported by some magic means to far away Hamelin town.

"I don't believe I missed a word," said the blind old lady as the horses toiled slowly up the hill to the Home.

"We'll tell you every scene so you'll know how the words fit in," promised the old lady in the wheel chair.

"It will be something to talk about when we're knitting," chuckled the lame old lady brightly, and they all hummed gently,

"Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas Ship
As it starts across the sea."

CHAPTER XII

JAMES CUTS CORNERS

"VERY creditable, very creditable indeed," repeated Doctor Hancock as he and James stepped into their car to return to Glen Point after packing the old ladies into the wagonette.

Mrs. Hancock and Margaret had gone home by trolley because the doctor had to make a professional call on the way. The moon lighted the road brilliantly and the machine flew along smoothly over the even surface.

"This is about as near flying as a fellow can get and still be only two feet from the earth," said James.

James was quiet and almost too serious for a boy of his age but he had one passion that sometimes got the better of the prudence which he inherited from the Scottish ancestor about whom Roger was always joking him.

That passion was for speed. When he was a very small child he had made it his habit to descend the stairs by way of the rail at the infinite risk of his neck. Once he had run his head through the slats of a chicken coop into which an over-swift hopmobile had thrown him. On roller skates his accidents had been beyond counting because his calculations of distance often seemed not to work out harmoniously with his velocity. It was because Doctor Hancock thought that if the boy had the responsibility for his father's machine and for other people's bones he would learn to exercise proper care, that he had consented to let him become his chauffeur. The plan had seemed to work well, but once in a while the desire to fly got the better of James's discretion.

"Here's where the car gets ahead of the aeroplane," said the doctor. "An aviator would find it dangerous work to skim along only two feet above ground."

"I did want to go up with that airman at Chautauqua last summer!" cried James.

"Why didn't you?"

"Cost too much. Twenty-five plunks."

The doctor whistled.

"Flying high always costs," he said meditatively.

"The Ethels went up. They haven't done talking about it yet. They named the man's machine, so he gave them a ride."

"Good work! Look out for these corners, now. When you've studied physics a bit longer you'll learn why it is that a speeding body can't change its direction at an angle of ninety degrees and maintain its equilibrium unless it decreases its speed."

James thought this over for a while.

"In other words, slow up going round corners," he translated, "and later I'll learn why."

"Words to that effect," replied the doctor mildly.

"Here's a good straight bit," exclaimed James. "You don't care if I let her out, do you? There's nothing in sight."

"Watch that cross road."

"Yes, sir. Isn't this moon great!" murmured James under his breath, excited by the brilliant light and the cool air and the swift motion.

"Always keep your eyes open for these heavy shadows that the moon casts," directed Doctor Hancock. "Sometimes they're deceptive."

"I'll keep in the middle of the road and then the bugaboo in the shadow can see us even if I can't see him," laughed James, the moonlight in his eyes and the rush of wind in his ears.