The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ethel Morton at Sweetbrier Lodge, by Mabell S. C. Smith

“Carefully! O, do be careful, Ethel Brown! I’m so afraid I’ll drop one of them!”

It was Ethel Blue Morton speaking to her cousin, who was helping her and their other cousin, Dorothy Smith, take Dicky Morton’s newly hatched chickens out of the incubator and put them into the brooder.

“I have dropped one,” exclaimed Dorothy. “Poor little dinky thing! It didn’t hurt it a bit, though. See, it’s running about as chipper as ever.”

“Are you counting ’em?” demanded Dicky, whose small hands were better suited than those of the girls for making the transfer that was to establish the chicks in their new habitation.

“Here’s one with a twisted leg. He must have fallen off the tray when he was first hatched.” cried Ethel Brown.

“He lookth pretty well. I gueth he’ll live if I feed him by himthelf tho the throng ones won’t crowd him away from the feed panth,” said Dicky, examining the cripple, for in spite of his small supply of seven years he had learned from his big brother Roger and from his grandfather Emerson a great deal about the use of an incubator and the care of young chickens.

“That’s a good hatch for this time of year,” Ethel Brown announced when she added together the numbers which each handler reported to her. “A hundred and thirty-seven.”

“Hear their little beaks tapping the wooden floor,” Ethel Blue said, calling their attention to the behavior of the just-installed little fowls who were making themselves entirely at home with extraordinary promptness.

“They take naturally to oatmeal flakes, don’t they?” commented Dorothy. “I always thought the old hen taught the chicks to scratch, and there’s a little chap scratching as vigorously as if he had been taking lessons ever since he was born.”

“They don’t need lessons. Scratching is as natural as eating to them. Hear them hum?”

They all listened, smiling at the note of contentment that buzzed gently from the greedy groups of crowding chicks. As the oatmeal disappeared the chickens looked about them for shelter and discovered the strips of cloth that did duty for the maternal wings. Rushing beneath them they cuddled side by side in the covered part of the brooder.

“Look at that one tucking his head under his wing like a grown-up hen!” exclaimed Ethel Blue.

“I’ll have to turn the lamp up a little higher tho they won’t crowd and hurt each other,” Dicky decided.

“I’d wait a minute until they begin to warm the whole of their house by the warmth from their bodies,” urged Ethel Brown, and her brother agreed that there was no need of haste, but he watched them closely until he saw that they were not trampling on each other’s backs or sitting down hard on each other’s heads.

“When will they come out again?” asked Dorothy, who had never seen an incubator and brooder in operation before and who was immensely interested.

“It’s a foster-mother,” corrected Ethel Blue. “It isn’t anything so horrid as a step-mother.”

“Yeth, they are,” insisted Dicky. “All the fairy stories say they’re cruel.”

“I imagine fairy stories are right about step-mothers,” insisted Ethel Blue.

“No, I never did; but I have a feeling that they couldn’t love a child that wasn’t their own.”

“Why not?” demanded Ethel Brown. “Mother loves you just as well as she does her own children and you’re only her niece.”

“Not her own niece, either—Uncle Roger’s niece,” corrected Ethel Blue; “but then, Aunt Marion is a darling.”

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t be but I don’t believe she ever is,” and Ethel Blue stuck to her opinion.

“Well, there aren’t any ‘steps’ around this family, so we can’t tell by our own experience,” cried Dorothy, “and we’ve got this chicken family moved into its new house, so let’s go and see what the workmen are doing at our new house.”

Dorothy’s mother had been planning for several months to build a house on a lot of land on the same street that they were living on now, but farther away from the Mortons’ and nearer the farm where lived the Mortons’ grandfather and grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. The contractor had been at work only a few days.

“He had just finished staking off the ground when I was there the other afternoon,” said Ethel Brown.

“He’s way ahead of that now,” Dorothy reported as they walked on, three abreast across the sidewalk, their blue serge suits all alike, their Tipperary hats set at the same angle on their heads, and only the different colors of their eyes and hair distinguishing them to a careless observer. “He told me yesterday that the whole cellar would be dug by this afternoon and they would be beginning to put in the concrete wall.”

“Sometimes they are, but when there isn’t stone all cut, concrete is more convenient and cheaper, too.”

“I should say it did. Those old Pyramids in Egypt are partly made of concrete, they think, and they are three or four thousand years old.”

“She wants it durable; and fireproof, any way, because we’re some distance from the engine house.”

“If we watch this house grow it will be almost like building it with our own hands, won’t it?” exclaimed Ethel Brown, for, although the house was her aunt’s, Mrs. Smith had made all the cousins feel that she wanted them to have a share in the pleasure that she and Dorothy were having in making a shelter for themselves after their many years of wandering. She and her daughter consulted over every part of the plans and they had often asked the opinion of the Mortons, so that they all had come to say “our house” quite as if it were to belong to them.

As they approached the knoll which they had been calling “our house lot” for several months, they saw that the gravel for the concrete was being hauled to the top of the hill where the bags of sand and cement had already been unloaded and a small concrete mixer set up.

“They do things fast, don’t they!” exclaimed Dorothy. “There’s Mr. Anderson, the contractor.”

“Have you come to superintend us, Miss Dorothy?” he asked pleasantly. “We’re going to make all our preparations for mixing the concrete to-day, and then we’ll start up the machine to-morrow.”

“You won’t have the cellar wall all built by to-morrow after school, will you?” asked Dorothy anxiously. “We want to see how you do it.”

“It won’t take long to do this small cellar so you’d better hurry right here from your luncheon,” Mr. Anderson returned as he walked away to attend to the placing of the pile of gravel, and to lay a friendly hand on the sides of the panting horses.

“If your driveway doesn’t wind around more than this road that the hauling men have made all your friends’ horses will be puffing like mills when they reach the top,” Ethel Blue warned her cousin.

“Mother and the architect and a landscape gardener have it all drawn on paper,” Dorothy responded. “It’s going to sweep around the foot of the knoll and come gently up the side and lie quite flat on top of the ridge for a little way before it reaches the front door.”

“And for Dorothy, too. She’ll walk most of the time even if Aunt Louise is going to set up a car.”

“There’s to be a footpath over there,” Dorothy indicated a side of the hill away from the proposed driveway. “It will be a short cut and it’s going to be walled in with shrubs so it won’t be seen from the driveway.”

“O, the lines would interfere, the landscape artist said. You mustn’t have things confused, you know,” and she shook her head as if she knew a great deal about the subject.

“I suppose it would look all mixy and queer if you should see the grounds from an airship,” guessed Ethel Brown, “but I don’t see what difference it would make from the ground.”

“I guess it would be ugly or he wouldn’t be so particular about it,” insisted Dorothy. “That’s his business—to make grounds look lovely.”

“I think I can see what he means,” ventured Ethel Blue, who knew something about drawing and design. “I watched Aunt Marion’s dressmaker draping an evening gown for her one day. She made certain lines straight and other lines curved, but the two kinds of lines didn’t cross each other any old way; she put them in certain places so that they would each make the other kind of line look better and not make the general effect confusing.”

“Don’t you remember how it was when we were planning Dorothy’s garden on top of this ridge, back of the house and the garage?” Ethel Brown reminded them. “We had to draw several positions for the different beds because some of our plans looked perfectly crazy—just a mess of square beds and oblong beds and round beds.”

“They made you dizzy—I remember. We found we had to follow Roger’s advice and make them balance.”

“Helen says there’s a lot of geometry in laying out a garden. I guess she’s right.”

Helen and Roger were Ethel Brown’s older sister and brother. They were in the high school.

They had come now to the excavation for the cellar and watched the Italian laborers throwing out the last shovelfuls of earth.

“They’re very particular about making the earth wall smooth,” commented Ethel Brown.

“They’ve cut it under queerly at the foot on both sides; what’s that for?”

“I haven’t the dimmest,” answered Dorothy briefly. “Let’s ask Mr. Anderson.”

“You’d find it hard to stand up straight if you had only a leg to stand on and not a foot,” that gentleman answered to the question. “That concrete foot gives a good solid foundation, and it helps to repel the frost if that should get into the ground so deep. Do you see the planks the men are setting up twelve inches in from the bank?”

“They are making a fence all around the cellar you see; that is to keep the concrete in place when it is poured in, and to give it shape.”

“It is made of one part of cement and two and one-half parts of sand and five parts of gravel. Do you cook?”

“When you come to-morrow you’ll see the mixing machine making a stiff batter of those three things—cement and sand and gravel.”

“It must be like putting raisins in a plum pudding,” suggested Ethel Brown. “You have to be careful the stones—the raisins—don’t all sink to the bottom or get bunched together in one place.”

“That’s the idea,” smiled Mr. Anderson. “All those things and water go into one end of the mixer and they come out at the other end concrete in a soft state. Then the men shovel the stuff into the space between the fence and the earth bank, making sure that that widening trench at the foot is chock full and they thump it down and let it ‘set.’”

“I think the cellar will look very ugly with that old plank wall,” decided Dorothy seriously.

“Do you see those rolls of heavy paper over there? The planks will be lined with that so that the concrete will come against a perfectly smooth surface. When the wood is taken away the men will go over it with a smoothing tool and when they have finished even your particular eye will see nothing to take exception to.”

“O, I knew it would be right somehow,” murmured Dorothy, who was afraid she had hurt Mr. Anderson’s feelings. “I just didn’t know how you managed it.”

“Here’s the way the end of the wall would look if you could slice down right through it,” and the contractor took out his notebook and drew a cross section of the concrete wall showing its widened foot.

“Concrete—four inches of it,” answered Mr. Anderson promptly. “It will slope a trifle toward this end, and there a drainage pipe will be laid to carry off any water used in washing the floor. Then a layer of cement will go on top of the concrete.”

“To make it all smooth. It will be rounded up at the corners and sides where it joins the walls, so there won’t be any chance for the dust to collect.”

“The cellar in our house is awfully damp,” remarked Ethel Brown. “Sometimes you can see the water dripping down the stones.”

“The walls and the floor of this cellar will be waterproofed with a mixture of rich cement and sand mortar, and I think you’ll find, young ladies, that you’ll have a cellar that’ll be hard to beat.”

The contractor slapped his notebook emphatically and beamed at them so amiably that they felt the greatest confidence in what he proposed.

“Where does the sun rise from here?” asked Ethel Blue as she stood at the spot where was to be the front of the house, and gazed about her. “Does the house face directly south?”

“No, it faces just half way between south and west. The corners of the house point to north, south, east and west. Mother said that if the front was due south the back would be due north and she didn’t want a whole side of her house facing north.”

“With a point stretching toward the north the rooms that have a northern exposure will also have the morning sun and the afternoon sun.”

“I know Aunt Louise will have her dining room where the morning sun will shine in.”

“Yes, ma’am,” returned Dorothy emphatically. “It makes you feel better all day if you eat your breakfast in the sunshine. By this plan of Mother’s every room in the house will have direct sunshine at some part of the day.”

“It’s great,” approved Ethel Blue. “Can’t we ask Mr. Anderson about making a bird’s bath out of cement?” she inquired. “Ethel Brown and I saw a beauty at Mrs. Schermerhorn’s and perhaps he’d let us have some of the concrete to-morrow when the men are mixing it, and we can try to make one.”

The girls raced over to the spot where the contractor was just about to get into his Ford, and stopped him.

“Would you mind letting us have a little concrete to-morrow to make a bird’s bath with?” begged Dorothy breathlessly.

“A bird’s bath?” repeated Mr. Anderson. “How are you going to make it?”

“Couldn’t we put some concrete in a pan and squeeze another pan down on to it and let it harden?”

“I suppose you want the bird’s bath for your garden, Miss Dorothy;—why don’t you make a little pool for the garden?”

“If you could get a tub and lay down a flooring of concrete and then put in another tub enough smaller so that there would be a space between the walls, then you could fill the space with concrete. When it set, you could take out the inner tub after two or three days and turn the concrete out of the outer tub and there you’d have a concrete tub that you could move about.”

“That sounds great,” beamed Dorothy, “but wouldn’t it be awfully heavy?”

“Here’s a better way, then. If you can make up your mind exactly where you want to have it in your garden you can have a hole dug, lay down your floor of concrete and put your small tub on it.”

“I see—then you fill the space between the tub and the earth with concrete.”

“Precisely; thump it down hard and let it stand untouched for a while. Then take away your tub, and there you are again.”

“No, indeed. You must have everything ready to do the whole thing at once. Put in your tub which is to be your mold, while the floor is still plastic—”

“Soft enough to mold; and then pour in the walls right off quick. You can’t fool round when you’re working with concrete.”

“It would be fun to keep gold fish in it,” she said, “but they would have to have fresh water, wouldn’t they?” She turned appealingly to Mr. Anderson.

“That’s not hard to manage,” he said. “You can put a bit of broomstick between the earth wall and the outer wall of your tub-mold and pour the concrete around it. When the concrete has hardened you pull out the stick and there is a hole. Then you can have a drain dug that will tap that hole on the outside and carry off the water through a few lengths of drain pipe.”

“What’s to prevent the water running off all the time?” Ethel Blue wanted to know.

“Keep a plug in it,” answered the contractor briefly. “And there should be waterproofing stuff mixed with the materials. You have your gardener dig a hole in the garden,” he said, adding, “don’t forget to have plenty of grease.”

“Same here. On the cellar wall we lined the inside of the wooden forms with paper. That isn’t so easy with round forms, so you grease them.”

“I never thought there was any likeness between concrete and cooking,” laughed Ethel Brown as the girls watched Mr. Anderson’s skill in taking his little car over the rough ground around the cellar excavation, “but there seems to be plenty.”

“Let’s chase off and see if we can collect the things we shall need to-morrow,” urged Dorothy. “I’ll have to find Patrick and bring him here and show him just where to dig the hole.”

“Won’t it be too warm in summer? If you’re going to have gold fish you don’t want to boil them.”

“The water would get pretty hot in the sun, wouldn’t it?” considered her cousin. “What do you think of a place under that tree?”

“It ought not to be too near the tree because the roots will grow out a long way from the trunk of the tree and they might get under the pool and break up the concrete.”

“Oh, could a tender little thing like a root break concrete that’s as hard as stone?”

“It certainly can. Grandfather showed me a crack in a concrete wall of his on the farm that was made by the root of a big tree not far off.”

“Well, then we can’t have our pool anywhere near a tree. A shrub wouldn’t hurt it, though; why can’t it go near those shrubs that are going to separate the flower garden from the vegetable garden?”

“That place would be all right because there’s a tall spruce there that throws a shadow over the shrubs for a part of the day. That’s all you need; you don’t want to take away all the sunshine from the pool.”

So the exact spot was decided on and marked so that Patrick should make no mistake, and then the girls rushed off on a search for shallow basins and a tub.

CHAPTER II
PLAYING WITH CONCRETE

It was not the Ethels and Dorothy alone who appeared at the “new place” the next afternoon to make the experiments with concrete. Helen, Ethel Brown’s elder sister, and her friend, Margaret Hancock, of Glen Point, were so interested in the younger girls’ account of what they were going to do with Mr. Anderson’s help that they came too.

As they puffed up the steep knoll on which the new house was to stand they stopped beside the cellar hole to see what progress had been made since the day before.

“They have just frisked along!” Dorothy exclaimed when she saw that not only was the inside fence-mold all built but that the concrete floor was laid and that the men were pouring the mixture in between the planks and the earth wall and pounding it down as they poured.

“Mr. Anderson said ‘you can’t fool round when you’re working with concrete,’” Ethel Brown repeated. “They aren’t, are they?”

The men were all working as fast as they could move, some of them shovelling the materials into the mixer, others running the machine, others wheeling the wet concrete in iron barrows to the men at the edge of the cellar who tamped it down as fast as it was poured into the narrow space that defined the growing wall.

“When it is full, way up to the top, what happens next?” Dorothy inquired of Mr. Anderson who came over to where they were standing.

“Then we’re going to build on it a three foot wall of concrete blocks to support the upper part of the house.”

“We’re going to make her a beauty,” promised the contractor. “Come up into your garden now and let’s get this concrete work up there done. Here, Luigi,” he called to an Italian, “bring us a load of concrete over there,” and he waved his hand in the direction of the spot where Patrick had dug the hole for the tub.

They all examined the hole with care and the Ethels fitted in the tub and found that their digger had done his work skilfully, since there were just about three inches between the earth and the tub all around. They pulled the tub out again and under Mr. Anderson’s direction they greased it thoroughly.

“We want to do every bit we can ourselves,” they insisted when he suggested that Luigi might do that part for them.

“Don’t forget the hole for the drainage,” he reminded them. “Have you got your stick? And on which side are you going to have that?”

They surveyed the ground about the hole and decided that a drainage pipe might run a few inches underground for a short distance and discharge itself at the edge of a bank below which a vegetable garden was to lie.

“If you’re careful what you plant there it will be an advantage to the ground to have this dampening once in a while,” said Mr. Anderson, who was something of a gardener. “There won’t be enough water to drown out any of your plants.”

Luigi emptied a load of concrete into the hole and while he was gone to get a new supply the girls thumped it down hard, fitted in the greased tub and wedged a bit of broomstick which Roger, Ethel Brown’s brother, had cut for Dorothy into the space between the tub and the earth just at the top of the concrete flooring. When Luigi came back they were ready to thump as he poured and three loads filled up the space entirely.

“Now, then, Luigi will bring you one of the smoothing tools that the men over there are using and you can make the top look even,” and Mr. Anderson gave more instructions to the Italian.

“It will be pretty to have some plants at the edge so they’ll bend over and see themselves in the water,” suggested Margaret.

“I should think there must be some water plants that would grow inside without much trouble,” Ethel Blue said.

“We must look that up; they’d probably need a little soil of some sort,” Helen reminded them.

“They’d be awfully pretty,” said Dorothy complacently. “Don’t you seem to see it—with gold fish swimming around among the stems?”

“Dicky might lend us his old turtle,” laughed Ethel Brown. “He’s tired of taking care of it. You could put a stick in here partly above the water, for him to sun himself on. I don’t see why he wouldn’t be quite happy here.”

Dicky’s turtle was a family joke. Dicky had found him two years before and had taken him home thinking he was a piece of stone. His excitement and terror when the stone lying on the library table stuck out first a head and then one leg after another to the number of four, had never been forgotten by the people who saw him at this thrilling moment.

“Now for your bird’s bath,” Mr. Anderson reminded his pupils. “You have to work fast, you know.”

Dorothy brought out her two shallow basins, one smaller than the other. The larger had its inside well greased and the smaller was thoroughly rubbed over on its under side. Into the larger they poured about an inch of concrete and then squeezed the smaller dish into it, but not so sharply that it cut through. They filled in the crack between the two, pushing and patting the mixture into place, and they smoothed the edge so that it turned over the rim of the larger bowl before they cut it off evenly all around with a wire.

“There,” said Mr. Anderson as he watched them. “We’ll see what will come from that. It might be better done—” at which the girls all pulled long faces—“but also, it might be worse, or I’m very much mistaken.”

“I wish we could make some garden furniture,” sighed Dorothy, holding up her dripping hands helplessly, but at the same time gazing with joy at their new manufacture.

“You could if you would make the forms,” said Mr. Anderson. “All you need to do is to make a bench inside of another bench and fill the space between with concrete.”

“That sounds easy, but if you were a girl, Mr. Anderson, you might find it a little hard to make the forms.”

“We can all drive nails,” insisted Ethel Brown stoutly. “I believe I’ll try.”

But the others laughed at her and reminded her that she would have to drive the nails through rather heavy planking, so she gave up the notion.

“Something fireproof, Mother said, but I don’t know what she finally decided on. I’ll ask Mr. Anderson.”

“Plaster on hollow tile,” the contractor answered absent-mindedly over his shoulder, as he walked briskly before them back to the cellar.

The girls saw that he was too full of business now to pay any more attention to them, so they thanked him for giving them so much time and made some investigations on their own account among the piles of material lying about on the grounds.

“I wonder if this could be ‘hollow-tile,’” Ethel Blue said to the rest as she came across a stack of strange-looking pieces of brown earthenware.

“It’s certainly hollow,” returned Ethel Brown, “but I always supposed tiles were flat things. That’s a tile Mother sets the teapot on to keep the heat from harming the polish of the table.”

They stood about the pile of brown, square-edged pipes, roughly glazed inside and out, through whose length ran three square holes. They asked two workmen as they passed what they were. One said “Hollow tile,” and the other, “Terra-cotta.”

“I suspect they’re both right,” Helen decided. “Probably they’re hollow tile made of terra-cotta.”

“But I thought terra-cotta was lighter brown and smooth. They make little images out of terra-cotta,” insisted Dorothy.

“I’ve seen those,” agreed Margaret, “but I suppose there can be different qualities of terra-cotta just as there are different qualities of china.”

“This stuff is fireproof, any way,” explained Dorothy. “I remember now hearing Mother and the architect talking about it. And they said something about a ‘dead air space.’ That must mean the holes.”

“I think it dries up the dampness, or keeps it out so that it doesn’t get into the house.”

“These are useful old blocks, then, even if they aren’t pretty,” decided Helen, patting the ugly pile.

Mr. Anderson strolled toward them again after giving various directions to his men.

“Just how is this tile used?” inquired Dorothy, as he seemed to be more at leisure now.

“We build a wall of this hollow tile,” he answered; “then we put the plaster right on to it. Do you see that the outside is rather rough? That is so the plaster will have something to take hold of. We mix it up of cement and lime and sand and put on three coats. The first one is mixed with hair, and mashed on hard so that it will stick and it is roughened so that the next coat will stick to it.”

“Without the hair; and the third coat is as thin as cream and is flowed on to make a smooth-looking outside finish.”

“That’s not all we’re going to do to your walls; Mrs. Smith wants them to be a trifle yellowish in tone—a little warmer than the natural color of the plaster—so we’re going to wash on some mineral matter that will give them color and waterproof them at the same time.”

“Then the whole house will look plastery except the roof and chimneys,” said Ethel Brown.

“Including the roof and chimneys,” returned Mr. Anderson. “We’re going to use concrete shingles—”

“‘Reinforced’ must mean ‘strengthened,’ but how do you strengthen it?” inquired Margaret.

“You’ve seen how we build a mold to pour the concrete in; inside of the mold we build a sort of cage of steel rods. Don’t you see that when the concrete hardens it would be almost impossible for such a reinforced piece of work to break through?”

“An earthquake might give a piece of solid concrete such a twist that it would crack through, but suppose the crack found itself up against a steel rod? Don’t you think it would complicate matters?”

“I’m awfully glad our chimney is going to be reinforced,” Dorothy exclaimed, “because up on this knoll we’re going to feel the wind a lot and it would be horrid if the chimney should fall down!”

“It certainly would,” agreed the Ethels, but Mr. Anderson assured them that they need not be afraid of any accident of the sort with a reinforced concrete chimney.

“I’ve seen skyscrapers going up in New York,” said Margaret “and all the beams were of steel. Are you going to use steel beams here?”

“No, we don’t often use steel construction for small houses, but this house is going to be more fireproof than most small houses even if it does have wooden beams. You watch it as it goes on and notice all the points that make for fireproofness. It will interest you,” Mr. Anderson promised as he walked away.

The girls all washed their hands as well as they could with the hose with which the workmen watered the concrete mixture, but they had nothing to dry them on and they walked down the road holding them before them and waving them in the breeze.

“Mother will think we are crazy if she happens to be looking out of the window,” said Dorothy.

“She seems like a new aunt to us; James and I haven’t seen her since we were little bits of things.”

“In Washington. She’s an interior decorator and she’s awfully busy, so when she has had to come on to New York to buy materials or to see people she has never had a chance to stay with us.”

“She has come for a long visit now. She has a commission to decorate a house in Englewood. It’s going to take her several weeks, and then she wants to rest and do some studying and to make the rounds of the decorators in the city, so it will be several months before she goes back again.”

“That’s nice,” said Ethel Blue politely, and she was glad she had thought so because Margaret said at once, “We think it’s splendid. She’s a young aunt, lots and lots younger than Mother, and James and I think she’s loads of fun.”

“O, we were telling her about the United Service Club and the things we did—sending gifts to the war orphans and celebrating holidays and our plans for helping some poor women and children in the summer and for taking care of the Belgian baby. She was awfully interested and said she felt as if she knew all of you people and the Watkinses quite well, we talked about you so much. Then we told her about Dorothy’s house, and how Mrs. Smith had said we might all give our opinions about the decorating, and she asked us to tell you that she’d be very glad indeed to act as consulting decorator when you come to the inside work.”

“Why, that’s awfully sweet of her!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Mother isn’t going to have a regular decorator, and I know she’ll be immensely pleased to have Miss—what is your aunt’s name?”

“—to have Miss Graham give us advice and ‘check up’ on our suggestions.”

“By the time your house is ready for that part she will have finished her Englewood house; but she said she’d be glad to come over and see the house and the plans any time when she was free for the afternoon, and she hoped you’d consult her about everything you wanted to.”

“Daisy is a pretty name, isn’t it?” Ethel Blue murmured to herself. “I wish one of us was named Daisy.”

“Her name is really Margaret; I’m named after her. Daisy is the nickname for Margaret, you know.”

“And please tell Miss Daisy that I think she’s the finest ever, and Mother will think so, too, when I tell her about this,” added Dorothy.

“And do ask her to come over to one of the U. S. C. meetings when we happen to be doing something that will interest her,” concluded Helen, who was the president of the club.

CHAPTER III
THE CLUB SELECTS THE BENCHES

It seemed to Dorothy and the Ethels that the outside of Sweetbrier Lodge, as Mrs. Smith had determined to call her house, went up with remarkable speed, but that the inside would never be done—never! Every day the girls walked down the road after school, and stood and surveyed the general appearance from the sidewalk and from across the street and sometimes they went on to Mrs. Emerson’s and discussed vigorously as to whether the view of the corner of the house that was to be seen now would still be seen after the leaves came out or whether the house would be entirely concealed by the foliage.

“That’s ‘one of the things no feller knows,’” Mr. Emerson quoted. “We shall have to wait and see.”

“Only there’ll be a lot of planting,” Dorothy explained. “There’ll be a hedge along the street and a lot of shrubs on the knoll and the house will be covered with vines in the course of time.”

“That’s another good point about concrete,” declared Mr. Emerson; “vines don’t injure it as they do brick.”

“I thought it was to be a bungalow,” said Mrs. Emerson. “Your mother has always spoken of it as a bungalow, but the plans I saw the men following the other day when I went up the hill to take a look at things, seemed to me like a two story house.”

“Mother changed her mind,” said Dorothy. “She thought a bungalow would be too crowded now that we have little Belgian Elisabeth with us, so the house is going to have two stories and an attic.”

“The U. S. C. couldn’t get on without Dorothy’s attic,” smiled Ethel Brown, for almost all of the presents for the Christmas Ship had been made in the attic of Dorothy’s present abiding place, and the Club had had many meetings there.

“There’s nothing like having a well-thought-out plan before you attempt building,” said Mr. Emerson, “and that your mother had.”

“She tried to think of every possible need, Ayleesabet’s as well as our own,” continued Dorothy, using the pronunciation that the Belgian baby had given her own name.

“He didn’t make the very lowest bid,” said Dorothy. “There was one man who was lower, but he was such a lot lower that Mother thought there must be something the matter with the quality of the material he used, or that he employed workmen so poor that they might not do their work well, so she didn’t consider that offer at all.”

“She was very wise,” commended Mr. Emerson. “He might have spoiled the whole thing and have cost her more money in the end by turning out a poor job.”

While the building was going on and before the inside work was done the girls spent a good deal of time in planning for the furnishing of the garden. The flower and vegetable beds had all been arranged some weeks before and many of them had been planted, but the artistic part of the garden had been left until there should be time to devote to it. Mrs. Smith had promised Dorothy that she should have the choice of the garden furniture, reserving for herself a veto power if her daughter chose anything that seemed to her entirely unsuitable.

“Not that I expect to use it,” she said, smiling at the girls who were listening to her.

The selection of the benches and tables and trellises was made a subject of attention by the whole United Service Club. A meeting was called in the partly begun garden so that they might have the “lie of the land” before them as they talked. Dorothy took with her a number of catalogues from which to select or to gather ideas.

“We’ve got a good shelter of large trees already provided for us,” she said as they all seated themselves in such shade as the young leaves made.

“There ought to be a fine large settee under it where we can have Club meetings all summer, no matter how warm it is,” urged Tom Watkins with wise foresight. Tom and his sister, Della, came out from New York for the club gatherings, and the prospect of meeting out of doors instead of in the attic, which was delightful in winter but not so attractive in warm weather, made him offer this shrewd suggestion.

“In the first place,” said Dorothy again, opening the various catalogues and spreading them on the grass where they could all see them, “don’t you think it would be pretty to have all the chairs and benches of one pattern? Or don’t you?”

“I think it would,” answered Ethel Brown, examining the pages carefully before she made her decision.

“I should like them all alike. It would be messy to have a lot of different patterns.”

Ethel Blue, who had a good deal of artistic sense and ability, nodded her agreement with this belief. They all came to the same conclusion.

“Then, let’s pick out the pattern,” said Dorothy, who had an orderly mind.

“Something plain, so the visitor’s eye won’t be drawn to the benches instead of the flowers,” recommended Helen. “Suppose we were sitting here, for instance, and looking toward the flower beds—there will be some tables and chairs between us and the flowers, probably—”

“What’s the plainest pattern there is?” asked Della, extending her hand for a book.

“That one—but that’s too plain,” remonstrated Ethel Blue. “That’s so plain that it draws your attention as much as if it were all fussed up.”

“I rather think this one with cross bars is pretty,” she decided seriously. “You wouldn’t get tired of that—especially if they’re all painted dark green so you won’t see them much.”

“You girls seem to want to have invisible furniture,” grinned Roger. “Me for something more substantial.”

“These will be substantial enough—they’re made of cypress,” retorted Helen, “but you don’t want to see a lot of chairs and benches when you come out to observe the beauties of nature, my child.”

“I can bay the moon on a white bench with an elaborate pattern just as musically as on a plain, dark green one,” insisted Roger.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” urged Ethel Brown, which crushing remark from a younger sister was rewarded by a hair-pull effectively delivered by Roger.

“The Lady of the Garden has made her decision,” announced James, tooting through his hands as if he were a herald making an announcement. “Now for the shapes. How many are you going to have, Lady?”

“I think there ought to be a very large bench that would hold almost all the Club, and then one or two smaller benches and two or three chairs and two small tables for lemonade and cocoa.”

“And to hold the Secretary’s book when she’s writing,” urged Ethel Blue who held the office of scribe and had not always found herself conveniently situated to do her work.

“Here’s a bully bench for the whole U. S. C.,” cried Tom. “It’s curved so it will fit right under this semi-circle of trees as if it were made for this very spot.”

He held up the picture of a wide bench with two wings. It was greeted with applause.

“When that is made in the pattern we chose it will be as pretty as any one could ask for,” Dorothy decided.

“And painted green,” added Ethel Blue, at which they all laughed. “I’m serious about the green,” she insisted. “Don’t you see what I mean, Dorothy?” she continued, appealing to the person who was to have the final decision on the question.

“I think you’re right,” replied Dorothy. “Don’t mind what they say. Write down one of those, Miss Secretary, and one of these right-angled ones—don’t you all of you think that’s a comfy one?”

They did, and they also approved of the single bench and the chairs and the small tables.

“They won’t be all jammed up in this corner, of course,” Dorothy explained gravely, “but when we have a Club meeting we can bring them together if we want to and room enough for everybody.”

“I thought we were all to sit on the big bench,” objected Tom with an air of deep disappointment.

“So we shall if you boys are too lazy to pull the other benches and chairs over here,” answered Dorothy. “If we have plenty we can arrange them any way we want to.”

“What about trellises?” inquired Ethel Blue who had been continuing her researches in the catalogues. “Here are some beauties. Don’t you think you’ll need some?”

“She certainly will if that Dorothy Perkins rambler rose gets busy as it ought to,” decided Roger.

“There’ll be a lot of vines and tall things if they’ll only grow,” said Dorothy hopefully. “I think there ought to be one or two flat ones and an arbor that will be a trellis.”

“Here’s an arbor that you can walk through or sit down in while you admire your plants, and you will be protected from the sun,” Tom pointed out.

“And that same one with a lattice back and a bench inside makes a pretty good imitation of a summer house,” suggested Ethel Brown.

“Count up and see how much stuff you’re planning to order,” Roger suggested. “You’ve got a huge big place to set them in here but you don’t want too much wood work, nevertheless.”

They came to the conclusion that there were not too many for the size of the grounds and were well satisfied with their choice.

“Do you see how well we’re going to see the house from here?” Dorothy asked.

“My idea is that the garden must look well from the house,” said Dorothy. “Mother wants a pergola somewhere. Don’t you think the right place for it would be covering a walk leading from the house to here?”

“That’s a great notion,” approved Tom. “As you came toward the garden you’d have a—what do you call the effect—where you see a view framed in somehow?”

“It will be lovely!” Helen said decisively. “And I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a trellis framing a view of the woods toward Grandfather Emerson’s; that would be pretty, too.”

Dorothy went over to look at the drawing that Helen held up to her and decided straightway that it was worth trying. They all went toward the upper side of the garden where young peach trees were planted on the northern slope of the ridge and chose a spot which gave a charming picture of the adjoining field with its brook and the woods beyond.

“The birds are coming along pretty well now,” announced James who had been lying on his back gazing up into the branches swaying in the upper breeze.

“I suppose we’ll have to if we want them to stay late in the season or all winter,” replied her cousin. “But bird houses are so ugly.”

“Not the modern ones,” interposed James eagerly. “You make them out of pieces of the trunks of trees with the bark on, and you fix up a platform with a stick on it that has spikes to hang suet on and they aren’t a bit conspicuous and lots of birds will stay all winter that otherwise would go south before the regular Palm Beach rush.”

“We must have some then,” Dorothy made up her mind. “Say ‘Robert of Lincoln’?” she begged Ethel Brown, who was the Club’s reciter, “and then we’ll go home and have some cocoa and cookies.”

“Do, Ethel Brown;” “Come on,” were the cries from all the U. S. C. members as they settled themselves to listen to Bryant’s charming verses.

Merrily swinging on brier and weed,

Near to the nest of his little dame,

Over the mountain side and mead,

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name,

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Snug and safe is that nest of ours,

Hidden among the summer flowers,

Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gaily dressed,

Wearing a bright black wedding coat;

White are his shoulders and white his crest,

Hear him call in his cheery note:

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Look, what a nice new coat is mine,

Sure there was never a bird so fine.

Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife,

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,

Passing at home a patient life,

Broods in the grass while her husband sings:

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Brood, kind creature; you need not fear

Thieves and robbers while I am here.

Chee, chee, chee.

Modest and shy as a nun is she,

One weak chirp is her only note,

Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,

Pouring boasts from his little throat:

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Never was I afraid of man;

Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can.

Chee, chee, chee.

Six white eggs on a bed of hay,

Flecked with purple, a pretty sight!

There as the mother sits all day,

Robert is singing with all his might:

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Nice good wife that never goes out,

Keeping house while I frolic about.

Chee, chee, chee.

Soon as the little ones chip the shell

Six wide mouths are open for food;

Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,

Gathering seed for the hungry brood.

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

This new life is likely to be

Hard for a gay young fellow like me.

Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made

Sober with work and silent with care;

Off is his holiday garment laid,

Half forgotten that merry air,

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Nobody knows but my mate and I

Where our nest and our nestlings lie.

Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes, the children are grown;

Fun and frolic no more he knows;

Robert of Lincoln’s a humdrum crone;

Off he flies and we sing as he goes:

Bob-o’link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

When you can pipe that merry old strain,

Robert of Lincoln, come back again.

Chee, chee, chee.

CHAPTER IV
CHRISTOPHER FINDS A NEW LODGING

There was trouble in chicken circles. The young chicks that the Ethels and Dorothy had helped Dicky move from the incubator to the brooder were making rapid progress toward broiler size, and had been transferred to a run of their own where they scratched and dozed happily through the long spring days. Dicky and Ayleesabet, the Belgian baby, were examining them on a late June afternoon. Dicky had brought with him his old friend, the turtle, which had not yet been moved to Dorothy’s pool, since his present owner wanted to wait until his aunt’s house was occupied before he let so cherished a possession go where he might slip away and his loss, perhaps, be unnoticed.

“When you’re living right there tho you can watch Chrithtopher Columbuth all the time I’ll let you have him,” Dicky had promised Dorothy.

“I see myself in my mind’s eye sitting side of the tank all day and night holding the turtle’s paw!” Dorothy exclaimed when she told the Ethels of Dicky’s decision.

Perhaps because he felt that he was soon to be parted from his old comrade Dicky’s affection for Christopher seemed to increase and he developed a habit of carrying him about, sometimes in his hand and sometimes in a little basket which Dorothy had made for Christopher’s Christmas gift. To-day he had brought him to the chicken yard in his hand and had laid him down on the ground while he examined his flock and called Ayleesabet’s attention to the beauties of this or the other miniature hen.

Elisabeth’s words were few, but she managed to make her wants and opinions known with surprising ease, and she never had the least trouble about expressing her emotions. Her little playmate had learned this and therefore when he heard loud howls behind his back he knew that it was not anger that was disturbing the usually placid baby, but terror. Shriek after shriek arose although it seemed to him that he turned about almost instantly.

He was not in time, however, to prevent her from being thrown down in some mysterious way, or to see the cause of the commotion among the chickens. They fluttered and squawked and ran to and fro, tumbling over each other and running with perfect indifference over the baby as she lay yelling on the ground. Her blue romper legs came up every now and then out of the mass of chicken feathers, and their kicking only added to the disturbance and confusion of the chicks.

The hubbub did not go unnoticed. Roger ran from his vegetable garden to see what was the matter; Helen appeared from her garden of wild flowers; Miss Merriam, the baby’s caretaker, ran from the porch where she was talking with the Ethels who were waiting for the out-of-town members of the U. S. C. to arrive. At the moment when all these people were rushing to the rescue, Margaret and James Hancock, just off the Glen Point street car, hurried from the corner, and Della and Tom Watkins, arrived by the latest train from New York, burst open the gate in their excitement.

To meet all these inquiries came Dicky, tugging after him by the leg, the baby, howling pitifully by this time as she was dragged over the grass. Miss Merriam seized her and hugged her tight.

“I don’t know,” replied Dicky, his own lip trembling as he tried to understand the rapid, thrilling experience.

“Tell Gertrude what happened,” Miss Merriam urged the baby, wiping away her tears and setting her down on her feet on the grass just as Christopher Columbus bumped his way over the sod to join them.

Ayleesabet’s conversational powers were not equal to the explanation, but her little hands could tell a great deal, and her caretaker was skilled in interpreting them. She pointed to the turtle and called him by the nickname that Dicky had given him, “Chriththy”; then she spread out her fat little fingers and waved a forward motion with her hand.

“Chrissy stuck out his head and legs and walked ahead,” interpreted Miss Merriam. “Where was he, Dicky?”

Elisabeth was kneeling beside the turtle now, tapping his shell with a chubby forefinger; after which she rolled over on her back and screamed.

Miss Merriam shook her head at this demonstration, but Dicky translated it out of his previous experience.

“The chickenth hit hith thhell with their beakth, and, when he moved they were frightened and knocked her over,” he guessed.

“That’s just what happened, I believe,” said Roger, setting Elisabeth on her feet once more. “I’ve seen the chickens run like anything from Christopher, and probably they ran between the baby’s legs and upset her and then scampered all over her. I don’t wonder she was scared.”

Christopher gave no testimony in the case. He may have been overcome by the confusion; at any rate he withdrew into his shell and preserved a studied calm from which he could not be roused.

“I think you can have him,” said Dicky suddenly to Dorothy, who had come through the fence at the corner where her yard joined her cousins’. “He botherth me.”

“Very well,” said Dorothy. “Let’s take him over to Sweetbrier Lodge this afternoon. We’re all going over there anyway—bring him along, Dicky.”

So the procession set forth, Dicky and his shell-covered friend at the fore, escorted by all the rest of the United Service Club, while Miss Merriam and her charge, whose walking ability had not yet developed much speed, brought up the rear.

As they all toiled up the hill to Sweetbrier Lodge Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Morton came out on the veranda of the new house to watch them.

“Has anything happened?” called Mrs. Smith as soon as they were within earshot.

“We’re just bringing Christopher over to his new home,” Dorothy explained to her mother.

“‘The time of the singing of birds is come,

And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,’”

quoted Mrs. Morton. “I used to think that that meant a turtle like Dicky’s and not a turtle-dove,” and the two mothers laughed and disappeared within the house while the younger people kept on to the garden and the concrete pool.

“We can reach it with the hose and fill it up in no time,” his cousin explained.

“It’ll run out of the hole,” pointing to the hole made by the broomstick when the concrete was soft.

“I don’t want to leave him here all alone,” screamed Dicky, overcome by a renewal of his former misgivings. Casting himself on the ground he hugged his treasure to his breast and waved his legs in the air.

“You can take him back again if you want to,” Ethel Brown reminded him, “but you know he’s always getting into trouble with the chickens now. He seems to run away every day.”

As the memory of the latest encounter between Christopher and the chicks with Elisabeth’s overthrow, flashed before him, Dicky howled again. There seemed to be no haven on earth for his favorite.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” suggested Dorothy soothingly. “Let’s go down to the house. The laundry is finished, and we can put him in one of the tubs there until this pool is fixed to suit you.”

“Not in this laundry. You see,” explained Dorothy, sitting down beside the sufferer and patting him gently, “the house is built on the side of a hill, so the laundry has full sized windows and is bright and cheerful though it’s on a level with the cellar. I think Christopher will like it.”

Dicky stood up, his face smeared with tears, but a new interest gleaming in his reddened eyes.

“Come on,” urged Ethel Blue, tactfully; “let’s all go and see if we can’t make him comfortable.”

“I’ll pick up a piece of log for him as we go along,” promised Roger, and he and Tom and James went off towards the woods to look for just the right thing.

“What a perfectly dandy cellar. Why, it’s as bright as the upper part of the house!” exclaimed Margaret as the procession invaded the lower regions of the Lodge.

“Isn’t it fine!” agreed Dorothy. “The workmen have cleared it all up, and, if this part were all, it might be lived in right off.”

“Curtains will look sweet the day after you take in the winter supply of coal,” grinned Roger, who appeared with the other boys, carrying Christopher’s bit of log.

“They won’t look dirty, if that’s what you mean by ‘sweet,’” Dorothy retorted. “Look—” and she opened the door of a coal bin—“the coal is put in through a concrete chute that leads directly into the bin and the bin is entirely shut off from the cellar. No dust floats out of that, young man.”

“Here’s a little door that slides up and catches. You notice that the floor of the bin isn’t level with the cellar floor; it’s raised to make it a comfortable height for shoveling. Under it is the place for the logs for the open fires. There are two bins, one for furnace coal and the other for the coal for the stoves, and the kindling wood goes in this third one. They are all together and large enough but not too large, and the furnace coal is near the boiler and the small coal is near the laundry and the wood is close to the dumb waiter that will take that and the clean clothes upstairs.”

“All as compact as a cut-out puzzle,” approved Roger. “I take off my hat to this arrangement.”

“Thank you,” courtesied Dorothy. “Mother and I worked that out together, and we’re rather pleased with it ourselves.”

“What do you do with the ashes?” asked Roger, who took care of several furnaces in the winter time, and therefore made his examination as a specialist.

“Put them down that chute with a swinging door and into a covered can. It will be hard for the ashes to fly there.”

“This is the concrete floor we superintended,” said Helen, looking at it closely.

“All smooth and well drained with rounded edges. It’s going to be as clean as a whistle down here. See the metal ceiling? That’s for fire prevention, and so is the sprinkler system and there’s a metal covered door at the head of the cellar stairs.”

“There seems to be a lot of machinery for a small house,” observed James as he carried his examination around the space.

“Mother said she couldn’t afford luxuries but she could afford comforts and these are some of the comforts,” smiled Dorothy.

“‘Handsome is as handsome does,’” quoted her cousin. “When these things get to working you won’t care whether they’re beautiful to look at or not.”

“What’s the heating system—steam or hot water?” asked Tom, standing before the boiler.

“Hot water. They say it’s more convenient for a small house because you don’t have to keep up such a big fire all the time.”

“That’s so; in steam heating there has to be fire enough to make steam, anyway, doesn’t there?”

“And when the steam in the pipes cools it turns to water and dribbles away, but in the hot water system there will be some heat in the outside of your radiator as long as the water inside has any warmth at all.”

“How does the expense compare?” inquired James who was always interested in the financial side of all questions.

“Why are there so many pipes?” asked Ethel Brown, looking with a puzzled air at the collection before her.

“Hear me lecture on heating!” laughed Dorothy; “but I did study it all out with Mother, so I think I’m telling you the truth about it. There have to be two sets of pipes, one to take the hot water to the radiators and the other to bring it back after it has cooled.”

“Mains and branch pipes they call them. The man who put these in said this house was especially well arranged for piping because it wouldn’t take any more pressure to force the water into one radiator than another. He says there’s going to be a good even heat all over everywhere.”

“There isn’t a lot of difference between radiators for steam and those for hot water, is there?” asked Ethel Blue.

“No, you have to put something with water in it on top of both kinds to make the air of the room moist. Here you have to open the air valve yourself and let out the air that accumulates in the radiator. In the steam ones they are automatically worked by steam.”

“There can’t be much air in the hot water radiator, I should think,” said Margaret thoughtfully.

“There isn’t. You only have to open the valve two or three times in the course of the winter. The biggest difference is that the hot water system has to have an expansion tank.”

“Why, when steam is shut up it just presses harder than ever, but when water is heated it swells and it’s likely to burst open whatever it’s in, so there has to be an open tank up at the top of the house where it can go and swell around all it wants to,” laughed Dorothy.

“What are these affairs?” inquired Margaret who had been looking at two other arrangements near by.

“That one is a gas thing for heating water in summer when there isn’t any other fire. There’s a tiny flame burning all the time, and when the water is drawn out of the tank the flame becomes larger automatically and heats up a new supply.”

“That’s a fine scheme; you don’t have to heat the house up and yet the water is always ready. What’s the other?”

“That’s to burn up the garbage. In the kitchen there’s a tiny closet for the garbage pail. It’s ventilated from the outside. There is a thing that burns the garbage and makes it heat the water, but Mother decided that we had so small a family that there might be days when there wouldn’t be fuel enough to make a decent fire, so we’d better have the gas heater.”

“Here’s the refrigerating plant,” Dorothy said, motioning toward a tank and a set of pipes and a small motor.

“We’re going to be independent of him. Mother doesn’t like natural ice, any way; she went over to the Rosemont pond last winter when the men were cutting and the ice was so dirty she made up her mind right off that she didn’t want any more of it. This thing will chill the refrigerator up in the kitchen and pipes from it are going under the flooring of the drawing room and the dining room so they can be made comfy in summer.”

“It makes small cakes of ice too, so we can always have plenty for the Club lemonades.”

“I don’t know but I think that’s more useful than the heating arrangements,” approved plump little Della.

“That’s because you’re fat,” responded Tom with brotherly frankness. “You think you suffer most in summer, but if you didn’t have any heat in winter you’d change your cry.”

“We don’t mean to if we can help it,” laughed Dorothy. “This is the air-washing arrangement over here,” went on Dorothy, as she continued her round of the cellar.

“As long as we have a little motor we’re going to make it useful. There’s a small fan here that brings in the fresh air. It goes into a ‘spray chamber’ and is washed free of dust with water that is cold in summer and warm in winter.”

“I see clearly that the temperature of this castle is going to be just right,” exclaimed Roger.

“After the air leaves the spray chamber it goes over some plates that take all the moisture out of it, and then the fan forces it through the pipes that go into every room.”

“Are those the little gratings I noticed in all the rooms the other day?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Those are the ventilators. Don’t you think we’ve made everything very compact here? All these pipes take up very little room.”

“Mighty little!” commended Roger. “And they’re all open so you can get at them without any trouble.”

“Here’s a scheme Patrick suggested,” laughed Dorothy, pointing upward to what looked like a concrete shelf with an upturned border almost at the top of the cellar wall.

“That shelf is directly underneath the seat beside the fireplace in the drawing room. Patrick plans to save himself the trouble of carrying up the logs by piling them on this shelf down here. Then he lifts the cover of the seat upstairs and all he has to do is to take out his wood and make his fire!”

“He’s especially tickled with the vacuum cleaner run by this same little motor. You ought to hear him talk about it.”

“That one with the glass doors is for preserves, and the place in the other corner that has a fence for its two inside walls is a place for cleaning silver and shoes and lamps and brasses. See—there are cupboards along the inside of the fence. They hold all the cleaning materials, and the cleaner can sit in a swing chair in the middle and use a different part of the concrete shelf against the two cellar walls for boots or fire-irons or knives and forks or lamps. At one end is a sink so he can have what water he needs for his work and he can wash his hands when he turns from one kind of cleaning to another.”

“I may move that bench up in the attic later,” explained Dorothy, “but I thought I’d leave it here until the house was done, because there are apt to be little things to be hammered and nailed for some time, I suppose.”

“How long are you going to be before you fikth a plathe for Chrithopher Columbuth?” demanded Dicky, whose patience was entirely exhausted.

“We’ll make him happy right here and now,” answered Dorothy briskly, throwing open the door of the laundry.

The sun shone gayly on the concrete floor and the room was a cheerful spot. An electric washing machine stood ready although covered tubs were built against the wall for use in emergencies, and at one side was a drying closet. There were numerous plugs against the wall for the attachment of pressing irons.

“What’s this?” asked Ethel Brown, lifting a cover of a hopper at the base of a chute.

“That’s the chute for soiled clothes. The other end is on the bedroom floor, and it saves carrying.”

“Shall I put Christopher’s log in here?” asked Roger, lifting the top of one of the stationary tubs.

“Yes, fix it so he can crawl up and sit in the sunshine where it strikes the tub. We’ll have to draw some water from the hydrant outside; the water isn’t turned on in the house yet.”

Roger picked up a pail that was standing near by and went up the cellar stairs two at a time.

“Now, sir,” he said to Dicky when he came back, “I’ll lift you up and you can put Christopher into his new abode.”

Dicky deposited his charge gently on the log and he lay there poking out his head to enjoy the sunshine.

For answer Dicky turned out of the pocket of his rompers a handful of chopped beef.

“Certainly unappetizing in appearance,” said Tom, wrinkling his nose, “but I dare say Christopher is not particular.”

CHAPTER V
THE LAW OF LAUGHTER

The Mortons were sitting on their porch on a warm evening waving fans and trying to think that the coming night promised comfortable sleep. The Ethels sat on the upper step, Roger was stretched on the floor at one side, Helen sat beside her mother’s hammock which she kept in gentle motion by an occasional movement of her hand, and Dicky was dozing in a large chair. In a near-by tree an insect insisted that “Katy did,” and in the grass a cricket chirruped its shrill call.

“I do feel that Aunt Louise’s being able to build this pretty house after all her years of wandering is about the nicest thing that ever happened out of a fairy story,” murmured Helen softly to her mother, but loudly enough for the others to hear.

“There are people who talk about the law of compensation,” smiled Mrs. Morton in the darkness. “They think that if one good is lacking in our lives other goods take its place.”

“I believe that everything that happens to us comes because we have obeyed or disobeyed God’s laws. Sometimes we are quite unconscious of disobeying them, but the law has to work out just as if we knew all about it.”

“For instance?” came a deep voice from the floor, indicating that Roger had awakened.

“You didn’t know anything about the law of gravitation, but the law worked in your case just as if you had known all about it.”

“I’m bound to state that it did,” confirmed Roger, still gently rubbing his nose as he lay in the shadow.

“It seems as if it might have held up for a little boy who didn’t know what he was going to get by disobeying it,” said Ethel Blue sympathetically.

“But it didn’t and it never does,” returned Mrs. Morton. “That’s one reason why we ought to try to learn what God’s laws are just as fast and as thoroughly as we can; not only the laws of nature like the law of gravitation, but laws of morality and justice and right thinking and unselfishness and kindness toward others.”

“Sometimes mighty mean people seem to prosper,” said Ethel Brown, with a hint of rebellion in her voice.

“That’s because those people obey to the letter the law that controls prosperity of a material kind. A man may be cruel to his wife and unkind to his children, but he may have a genius for making money. Some people call it the law of compensation. I call it merely an understanding of the financial law and a lack of understanding of the law of kindness.”

“I don’t see what law dear Aunt Louise could have broken to have made her have such a hard time,” wondered Ethel Blue. “Her husband being killed and her having to wander about without a home for so many years—that seems like a hard punishment.”

“Men have decided that ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’!” said her aunt, “and the same thing is true of laws that are not man-made.”

“That seems awfully hard,” objected Helen; “it doesn’t seem fair to punish a person for what he doesn’t know.”

“If a cannibal should come to Rosemont and should kill some one and have a barbecue, we should think that he ought to be deprived of his liberty because he was a dangerous person to have about, even if we felt sure that he did not know that he was doing an act forbidden by New Jersey law. The position is that although a person may be ignorant of the law it is his business to know it. That seems to be the way with the higher laws; we may break them in our ignorance—but we ought not to be ignorant. We ought to try just as hard as we know how all the time to do everything as well as we can and to be as good as we can. If we never let ourselves do a mean act or think a mean thought we’re bound to come to an understanding of the great laws sooner than if we just jog along not thinking anything about them. I believe one reason why your Aunt Louise was so slow in reaching the end of her troubles after Uncle Leonard died was because she was unable to control her sorrow. She has told me that she was completely crushed by his death and the condition of poverty in which she found herself with a little child—Dorothy—to take care of.”

“She blames herself, because she has learned that giving way to grief paralyzes all the powers that God has given us to carry on the work of life with. If our minds are filled with gloom our bodies don’t behave as they ought to—I dare say even you children know that.”

“I know,” agreed Ethel Blue, who was sensitive and imaginative and suffered unnecessarily over many things.

“Your mind doesn’t go, either,” Roger added. “I know when I got in the dumps last spring about graduating I couldn’t do a thing. My work went worse than ever. It was only when Mr. Wheeler”—referring to the principal of the high school—“jollied me up and told me I was getting on as well as the rest of the fellows that I took a brace; and you know I did come out all right.”

“I should say you did, dear,” acknowledged his mother proudly. “Instances like that make you understand how necessary it is to be brave and to be filled with joy because life is going on as well as it is. It is our duty to make the most of everything that is given us—our bodies, our minds, our spirits—and if courage will help or joy will help then we must cultivate courage and joy.”

“Not for a long time, she says. After the shock of Uncle Leonard’s sudden death had worn away somewhat she began naturally to have a little more courage—not to be so completely crushed as she was at first. Then she saw that when she was feeling brave she could accomplish more, and succeed better in new undertakings. If she went to ask for work somewhere and had no hope that she would receive it she usually did not receive it; but if she went feeling that this day was to be one of success for her it usually was.”

“I suppose she went in with a sort ‘Of course you’ll give it to me’ air that made the men she was asking think of ‘of course’ they would,” smiled Roger.

“I don’t doubt it. Then she says that she found out that there was real value in laughter.”

“In laughter!” repeated Ethel Brown. “Why laughter is just foolishness.”

“Lord Chesterfield told his son he hoped he’d never hear him laugh in all his life,” offered Roger.

“Lord Chesterfield hated noisy laughter as much as I do. There’s nothing more annoying than empty, silly giggling and laughter; but the laughter that means real delight over something worth being delighted at—that’s quite another matter. Lord Chesterfield and I are agreed in being opposed to a vulgar manner of laughing, but we are also agreed in believing that delight needs expression. Isn’t it in that same letter that he says he hopes he will often see his son smile?”

“Aunt Louise says she found that even if she wasn’t feeling really gay she could raise her spirits by doing her best to laugh at something. If you hunt hard enough there is almost always something funny enough to laugh at within reach of you.”

“Poor little man. You needn’t carry him up yet, though. He’s not uncomfortable there.”

“There’s one thing I think is perfectly wonderful about Aunt Louise,” said Ethel Blue; “she takes so much pleasure out of little things. She’s interested in everything the U. S. C. does, and she wants to help on anything the town undertakes—you know how nice she was about the school gardens—and sometimes when a day comes that seems just stupid with nothing to do at all, if you go over to Aunt Louise’s she’ll tell you something she’s seen or heard that day that you never would have noticed for yourself and that really is interesting.”

“She gets their full value out of everything that passes before her eyes. It’s the wisest thing to do. The big things of life are more absorbing but very few of us encounter the big things of life. Most of us meet the small matters, the everyday happenings, and nothing else.”

“Isn’t life full of a mess of ’em!” ejaculated Roger. “Getting up and dressing and brushing your hair and eating three meals a day have to be done three hundred sixty-five times a year; whereas you hear some splendid music or come across a fine new poem or find yourself in a position where you can do a real kindness about once in a cat’s age. Queer, isn’t it?”

“That’s just why it’s a good plan to see the opportunities in the little things. If we see with clear eyes we may be able to do some small kindnesses oftener than ‘once in a cat’s age.’ It’s certainly true that the everyday troubles, the trifling annoyances, are really harder to bear than the big troubles.”

“The big troubles give you a bigger shock, but then you pull yourself together and summon your strength, and strength to endure them comes. But the small matters—they come so often and they seem such pin pricks that it seems not worth while to call upon your powers of endurance.”

“Yet if you don’t you’re as cross as two sticks all the time,” finished Helen. “I know how it is. It’s like having a serious wound or a mosquito bite.”

They all laughed, for Roger, as if to illustrate her remarks, gave a slap at a buzzing enemy at just the appropriate moment.

“Another thing that helps to make Aunt Louise a happy woman now is that she is at peace not only with everybody on earth but also with herself. If she makes a mistake she doesn’t fret about it; she does her best to remedy it, and she does her best not to repeat it. ‘Once may be excusable ignorance,’ she says, ‘but twice is stupidity,’ and then she tells the tale of the boy who was walking across a field and fell into a dry well which he knew nothing about. He roared loudly and after a time a farmer heard him and pulled him out. The next day he was walking across the same field and he fell again into the same well.”

“A perfect imitation of the previous one. The same farmer came. When he looked down the well and saw the same boy he said disgustedly, ‘Yesterday I thought ye were a poor, unknowin’ lad; to-day I know ye’re a sad fool.’”

“She’s always cheerful and always affectionate and she’s as dear as she can be and I’m glad she’s going to have this lovely house and I wish we had one just like it,” cried Helen in a burst.

“We Army and Navy people can’t expect to own houses, my child. You don’t need to have that told you at this late day.”

“I know that. If Father weren’t so keen on having us all together while we’re being educated we wouldn’t have been in Rosemont as long as we have; but I sometimes envy the people who have a home of their own that they are sure to stay in for ever so many years.”

“When you feel that way you must think of the many advantages of the Army and Navy children. If your father had not been on the Pacific station when you were the Ethels’ age you wouldn’t have had a chance to see California when you were old enough to enjoy it and remember it.”

“I know, Mother. I didn’t mean to growl. I just thought that Father had as much money as Aunt Louise from his father, and he had his salary besides, and yet we haven’t a house of our own.”

“We’ve had a good many of Uncle Sam’s houses, which is more than your Aunt Louise has had. But you must remember that her inheritance from your Grandfather Morton was accumulating for many years while her family didn’t know where she was, while your father and Ethel Blue’s father have been spending the income of theirs all along.”

“Uncle Roger has had a lot of children to spend his on, but Father hasn’t had any one but me,” said Ethel Blue, whose life had been entirely spent with her cousins because her mother had died when she was a tiny baby. Never before had she thought whether her father, who was a captain in the Army, had any money or not. Now she saw that he must be better provided with it than his brother, her Uncle Roger, the father of Ethel Brown and Helen and Roger and Dicky, who was a Lieutenant in the Navy.

“Your father is always generous with his money, but I dare say he is saving it for some time when he will want it,” suggested Mrs. Morton.

“I don’t know when he’ll want it any more than he does now,” said Ethel Blue.

“Perhaps he’ll want to have a house of his own at whatever post he is when he has a grown-up daughter,” smiled Helen. “You’d better learn to keep house right off.”

The idea thrilled Ethel. Never before had she happened to think of the possibility of joining her father after her school days were over. Never having known any home except with Ethel Brown and her other cousins she had always seen the future as shared with them. The notion of leaving them was painful, but the chance of being always with her father, of being his housekeeper, of seeing him every day, of making him comfortable, was one that filled her with delight. Her blue eyes filled with tenderness as she dreamed over the possibility.

“I have lots to learn yet before I should know enough,” she murmured, staring almost unseeingly at her cousin, “but it’s wonderful to think I could do it.”

The new idea would not leave her mind, though, indeed, she made no effort to drive it out. That the future might hold for her a change so complete was something she wanted to let her thoughts linger on. She hardly noticed that Roger was gathering Dicky up into his arms to carry him upstairs to bed, or that there was a general stir on the veranda, betokening a move indoors.

“Miss Graham was at Dorothy’s this afternoon,” Ethel Brown said as she rose and picked up the straw cushion on which she had been sitting.

“Was she?” inquired Helen interestedly. “I wish I had seen her. I never have yet, you know.”

“Neither has Ethel Blue. She and Aunt Louise and Dorothy and I went over to the new house and looked at the attic. She says she’ll come over next week and help us about the bedroom floor. That will be ready then for us to talk about the decorating.”

“Be sure and let me know when she is coming. What did she say about the attic?”

“She liked it especially because it had been sheathed, following all the ins and outs. She thought the irregularity was pretty. She suggested a closet for furs over the kitchen. It won’t cost much to bring the refrigerating pipes up there, she says.”

“That’s bully. Aunt Louise may take care of my fur gloves for me next summer if the moths don’t eat them up this year,” promised Roger who had stopped in the doorway to hear Ethel Brown’s report, and stood with the still sleeping Dicky over his shoulder.

“She suggested a raised ledge about fourteen inches high to stand trunks on.”

“Then you don’t break your back bending over them when you’re hunting for something,” exclaimed Helen. “That’s splendid. She seems to have practical ideas as well as ornamental ones.”

“She thought there ought to be a fire bucket closet up there, too. You know Aunt Louise has had them put in on all the other floors, but she didn’t think of it there.”

“Just a narrow closet with four shelves. On each of the lower three are fire buckets to be kept full of water all the time and on the top shelf are some of those hand grenade things and chemical squirt guns. They don’t look very well when they’re right out in sight. This way covers them up but makes them just as convenient. There is to be no lock on the door of the closet and FIRE is to be painted outside so every one will know where it is even if he gets rattled when the fire really happens.”

“Two little beauties, and a bath-room between them. One room is to be pink and the other blue and they’re going to have ivory paint and fluffy curtains just like Dorothy’s.”

“Did you think to say anything to Miss Graham about the Club’s using the attic in winter for weekly meetings?”

“Dorothy did. She thought a movable platform would be a great scheme; one wide enough for us to use for a little stage when we wanted to have singing or recitations up there. She picked out a good place for the phonograph, where the shape of the ceiling wouldn’t make the sound queer, and she thought rattan furniture stained brown would be pretty, and scrim curtains—not dead white ones, but a sort of goldeny cream that would harmonize with the wood. There are lovely big cotton rugs in dull blues, that aren’t expensive, she says; and if we don’t want to see the row of trunks and chests against the wall we can arrange screens that will shut them out of sight and will also take the place of the pictures that you can’t hang on a wall that slopes the wrong way.”

“I don’t see, then, but Aunt Louise will have an attic and we’ll have a club room and both parties to the transaction will be pleased,” beamed Helen, who, as president of the Club was always careful that the members should be comfortable when they gathered for their weekly talking and planning and working.

“Doesn’t Miss Graham come from Washington?” asked Ethel Blue dreamily, half awakening to the conversation.

“Ask her when you see her,” recommended Ethel Brown, and they all went in to bed as a clap of thunder gave promise of a cooling shower.

CHAPTER VI
SPRING ALL THE YEAR ROUND

It proved to be quite a week later before the workmen were far enough along to make it worth while for Miss Graham to be summoned to a conference on the decoration of the bedroom floor, and when Ethel Blue met her at last she forgot altogether to ask if she knew her dearly beloved father.

There were several reasons why she did not ask. In the first place she had forgotten that she meant to; in the next, Miss Daisy was so absorbed in what she was hearing from all the Club members about their ideas for the bed-rooms, and so interested in comparing them with her own practical knowledge of how they could be carried out, that no one who listened to her or saw her at work wanted to interrupt her with any questions that had no bearing on the matter in hand.

Not that she was not interested in the young people. She was thoroughly interested in them. She knew all of their names and sorted out one from the other immediately just from Margaret’s and James’s descriptions of them. She listened attentively to their suggestions and they all felt that she was treating their ideas with respect and that if she did not always agree with them she had a good reason for it.

“I think she’s the most competent woman almost that I ever saw,” said Helen admiringly to Margaret as they stood at one side of the upper hall and watched her as she rapidly sketched for Mrs. Smith what she meant by a certain plan of window hanging.

Helen was greatly interested in new occupations for women and the fact that this woman had studied to be an interior decorator and had succeeded so well that she had orders from the suburbs of New York itself had impressed the young girl as making her well worth trying to know well. Helen was not drawn toward interior decorating—she had already made up her mind, that she was to be one of the scientific home-makers educated at the School of Mothercraft—but she admired women with the courage to start new things, and this work seemed to her to be perfectly suited to a woman and at the same time of enough importance to be really worth while putting a lot of preparation into it. The dressing of shop windows seemed to her another peculiarly feminine occupation, hardly entered at all, as yet, by women, and capable of being developed into an art.

“The decoration of a room or a building ought to seem a sort of growth from the room or the building,” Miss Graham was explaining to the Ethels. “It ought to seem perfectly natural that it should be there, just as a blossom seems perfectly natural to find on a plant. I never like the phrase ‘applied design,’” she continued, smiling as she turned to Mrs. Smith. “It sounds as if you made a design and then clapped it on to the afflicted spot as if it were a plaster of some kind.”

“Too often it looks that way,” Mrs. Smith smiled in return. “Come and see how we’ve arranged our sleeping porches.”

As Miss Graham stood in the doorway that opened on to the porch of Dorothy’s room, one hand resting on Ethel Brown’s shoulder, Helen felt more than ever the power—for friendliness and good will as well as for the execution of her art—that this dark-eyed, dark-haired, ruddy-cheeked young woman possessed. Her nose was a trifle too short for beauty and her mouth a bit too wide, but her coloring denoted health, her hair curled crisply over a broad forehead, her teeth were brilliantly white, and the straight folds of her gown showed the lines of her strong figure as the strange dull blue-green of her linen frock, dashed with a bit of orange, brought into relief all the good points of her tinting.

“She makes you want to stop and look at her,” Helen decided, “and you want to know her, too.”

Mrs. Smith had arranged for three sleeping porches, one for her own room, one for Dorothy’s, and a larger one outside of the nursery where the Belgian baby enjoyed herself in the daytime. This porch was also shared by Elisabeth’s care-taker. Each porch was on a different side of the house, so that they did not encroach upon each other, and each was somewhat different in arrangement.

“Did you originate this idea?” asked Miss Graham, as she examined the sliding windows by which the bed was to be shut off from the room at night and enclosed in the room in the morning. “You never need step out of bed on to the cold floor of the porch,” she commented approvingly.

“I saw that in a sanitarium,” returned Mrs. Smith. “It was desirable that the patients should never be chilled and the doctor and architect invented this way of preventing it.”

“It’s capital,” smiled Miss Graham, “and so simple. When the inside sash is closed, the outside is up, and vice versa. Are they all like this?”

“Yes,” answered her hostess. “Dorothy is to have a couch in that corner, and a table and chairs. There is to be a screw eye attached to the foot of the couch. A weight on the end of a cord will go through a pulley fastened to the wall, high up over the head of the couch. There will be a hook at the other end of the cord. When this hook goes into the screw eye and the weight is pulled, the couch will stand on its head and will be out of the way at any time when floor space is more to be desired than lying down comfort.”

“Of course there will be some sort of drapery to cover the under side when it is hauled up against the wall,” said Miss Graham with a question in her voice.

“Dorothy has something in mind that is going to meet that difficulty, she thinks,” answered Mrs. Smith.

“I’ve been perfectly crazy for a rose-colored room, ever since I was a tiny child,” answered Dorothy. “I’ve set my heart on this room’s looking like a pink rose—”

Ethel Blue looked quickly at the decorator when she made this suggestion which at once stirred the young girl’s imagination to a mental sight of a springtime tree laden with clusters of blossoms, whose delicate white was flushed with the delicate pink of the dawn. The suggestion appealed to her immediately as possible of a development far more exquisite than that which Dorothy had planned. Both would be pink, yet the fineness of the new color scheme seemed to her suited to Dorothy’s slender grace. She could not have put it into words but she felt that Miss Graham had a feeling for color that enabled her to adapt the room in which the color was to be used to the personality of the young girl who was chiefly to use it. Instinctively she moved closer to Miss Graham and met her smiling glance with a nod and smile of understanding.

“I think an apple-blossom room would be perfectly lovely,” she exclaimed. “If Mother would only let me use wall-paper—I saw such a beauty pattern the other day. There were clusters of apple-blossoms all over it.”

“Dorothy and I decided that we would not use wall-paper in the bed-rooms at any rate,” answered Dorothy’s mother.

“I wish we hadn’t,” pouted Dorothy, but she was cheered when Miss Graham nodded her approval of their decision.

“You’re quite right,” she said. “Apart from the sanitary side it isn’t a good plan to paper walls until the plaster is thoroughly dry. This is especially true of a house built on the side of a hill.”

“This house has such a wonderful concrete foundation,” said Margaret, “that I should think it would be always perfectly solid.”

“So should I,” answered Miss Graham, “but there’s always a chance that some part of the soil beneath may give a little when the full weight of a house rests upon it. The settling of a house for only a half inch or an inch would play havoc with the plaster on these walls.”

“You think we’d better hold back the paper for a final resort?” asked Mrs. Smith.

“I never advise paper in bed-rooms unless there’s good reason to do so,” answered the decorator. “Here is what I should suggest for an apple-blossom room—though perhaps you have some ideas that you would like to have carried out?” she interrupted herself to ask Dorothy.

“No,” said Dorothy, “as long as it’s pink and pretty I don’t care how it is decorated.”

Miss Graham stood in the centre of the room now, noticing how the sunshine fell on the floor, the shadow at the end where the sleeping porch was, and the possible positions for the various articles of furniture.

“I seem to see these walls washed with a white which is tinted with a faint flush of pink,” said Miss Graham slowly, as she thought it out. “That means a pink so delicate that it will not irritate the weariest nerves and will soothe to sleep by its beauty. The wood-work should be similar in tone but a trifle more like ivory. Do you know that chintz that has blurry, indefinite flowers on it?”

“I saw a lovely piece of it the other day with a design of apple-blossoms. I should use that as a covering for your bed, your couch, your chairs, and for hangings for the windows. Then across one end of the wall—on that shadiest side,—I should throw a branch of apple-blossoms, painted in the same blurry, indefinite way in which the flowers appear on the chintz. I knew a man who was enough of the artist in his soul to do the thing as if the wall had suddenly grown thin and through it you could see an apple tree in blossom out in the orchard.”

“I think that would be perfectly lovely,” said Dorothy, and all the others expressed the greatest pleasure at the proposed scheme of decoration.

“Here is what I would suggest for the windows,” said Miss Daisy, taking out her note book, and sketching with a few rapid lines the folds of apple-blossom chintz, falling straight at the sides, with a valance at the top showing a very slight fullness.

“Between these and the windows,” said Miss Graham, “I should put Swiss muslin, either perfectly plain or dotted or with a fine cross-bar, whichever you like best. I should have those muslin curtains next to the glass all alike all over the house and the shades, too, so that the effect from the outside will be uniform and not messy.”

“That neatness will suit Ethel Brown’s ideas of what is harmonious,” laughed Helen, and Miss Graham flashed her brilliant smile on Ethel Brown, who was nodding her approval of the idea as she listened.

“Now, how had you planned to finish the other sleeping porches?” inquired Miss Graham.

“We thought we’d better have a radiator on the one leading off the nursery,” said Mrs. Smith.

“You’ll have to be awfully careful about its freezing,” warned Miss Graham.

“I suppose we shall, but it seemed as if it might be advisable with a child who has been so delicate as Elisabeth. You will see that the outer ledge of her porch is somewhat higher than either Dorothy’s or mine and there are pieces of lattice work to fill in the openings on very cold nights. We thought we’d have out there a low play-table for the baby, and one or two little chairs and a work-table and easy-chair for Miss Merriam.”

“There are cotton Chinese rugs that are extremely pretty for upstairs porches,” said Miss Graham. “One that is largely white but has a dash of green and pink, would be charming for Dorothy’s porch. What color is the baby’s room to be?”

Again a vivid look of appreciation came into Miss Graham’s eyes as she turned them on Ethel Blue, but she merely said, “There are charming Chinese rugs in white with dull blue designs like old Chinese pottery. Tell me what you had planned in your mind for Elisabeth,” she continued, turning toward the young girl and extending her hand so winningly that Ethel found herself not only standing beside her with a feeling that she had been her friend for a long time, but filled with confidence that her suggestions would not be laughed at, and might indeed be really good.

“I thought of walls and paint of white faintly colored with blue. It was just about what you suggested for Dorothy’s room, only blue instead of pink; and it seemed to me that there might be blue birds—for happiness, you know—skimming along the walls, up near the top.”

“One of those big Chinese rugs that is almost all white, but has a little blue, would be lovely, wouldn’t it?” cried Helen, seizing the idea.

“Several small ones would be better,” returned Miss Graham, “because a baby’s room has to be kept so spick and span that you want to have light rugs that are easy to take up and clean.”

“You know those little round seats that you sometimes see in railway waiting rooms?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Don’t you think one would be cunning for Elisabeth? The seat part ought to be awfully low and there could be light blue cushions on it. And then I think it would be fun if there was a low bench running around two sides of the room, with cushions of the same color on it. It would do for a table and a seat both.”

“Wouldn’t a sort of bluish-white like the wood-work be pretty,” asked Ethel Blue. “You know that shiny paint that is so highly polished that the baby’s finger marks won’t show on it.”

“Enamel paint,” translated Miss Graham. “I think it would be very pretty, and I should have all the little chairs and tables painted the same way. There are a lot of little things that would be charming in the nursery,” she continued. “You can have a solid table, whose top lifts off, disclosing a sand-pile inside. And some parts of that seat around the room ought to lift up so that the baby can put away her own toys in the box underneath the cushions.”

“I thought a great big doll’s house might fit into one corner so that it would be two-sided,” said Ethel Blue. “If the lower floor was all one room the baby could walk right in and sit down with the dolls.”

“Do you think she could keep still long enough to make a real visit?” laughed Helen.

“You’ll want to interest her in plants and animals as she grows up,” suggested Miss Graham. “You might begin even now by having an aquarium with a few water plants and some gold fish and you must arrange to have it on a good solid stand so that it won’t tip over if Elisabeth should happen to throw her fat little self against it. I suppose she’s too small to have had any regular training as yet?” she continued, turning to Mrs. Smith.

“Miss Merriam, who is taking care of her, is trying some of the Montessori ideas.”

“I thought perhaps she was. Madame Montessori tries to make all her training a natural outcome of the children’s lives and to develop them to use what they know in their daily occupations. If Elisabeth had a clothes-closet small enough for her to hang up and take down her own dresses and coats and rompers, I think Miss Merriam would find that she would be trying to put them on and fasten them herself very soon.”

“Wouldn’t a clothes pole about three feet high be too cunning for words,” exclaimed Ethel Blue, and Dorothy cried, “Do let us have all these things, Mother. Elisabeth will look like a little white Persian kitten, trotting around in this blue and white room!”

“Oh, Aunt Louise, I do wish you’d have one of those gray rooms, with scarlet lacquer furniture,” cried Helen eagerly.

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “A room like that has several reasons for non-existence. They are very handsome because the real scarlet lacquer is beautiful in itself, and it’s valuable too, but a room whose chief appeal to the eye is scarlet is not restful.”

“Not at all suitable to my way of thinking. It’s exciting, rather than soothing. Another objection to it here is that a room containing such a vivid color should be a dark room, and all of your bed-rooms are splendidly light. But the most serious objection to my mind, is this. Just step out here in the entry with me for a minute.”

“In a house as small as this,” she said, “you can see from the hall into all the bed-rooms. That means that from the decorator’s point of view, the entire floor ought to be harmonious. Behind us, for instance, is the baby’s delicate blue nursery. Just ahead is Dorothy’s apple-blossom room. Do you think that a room of gray and scarlet and black is going to be harmonious with those delicate tints?”

“I decorated a small apartment last winter,” she said, “that turned out very happily. The sitting room was one of these scarlet lacquer rooms and the bed-room was done in tones of pale green and dull orange. You felt as if you were sitting in an orange grove in Florida on an evening when a frost was expected and they were burning smudges to warm the trees.”

“I know,” cried Dorothy, “I’ve seen them do that. You see the oranges gleaming through the misty smoke, and it’s all hazy and beautiful.”

“It turned out well in this room that I did,” said Miss Graham, modestly, “but if you accept the blue and pink colorings for the other rooms here,” she said, turning to Mrs. Smith with a smile, “I’m afraid your own room will have to be of some delicate tone to harmonize with them.”

“There are certain shades of yellow, that would be suitable,” returned Mrs. Smith.

“A primrose yellow,” answered Miss Graham, “would be charming, and it would not be hard to find a lovely chintz, that would give you just the spring-like atmosphere that you’d enjoy having about you all the time.”

“I think we’re going to have this floor a little piece of spring all the year around,” said Ethel Blue; and again Miss Graham flashed at her a look of understanding.

CHAPTER VII
CLOSETS AND STEPMOTHERS

After they had shown all the rest of the house to Miss Daisy the family party gathered on the brick terrace outside of the drawing room to investigate lemonade and little cakes. The Ethels had brought the lemonade from home in a thermos bottle which kept it cool and refreshing, and that morning Dorothy had made some “hearts and rounds” which proved most appetizing with the cool drink.

A few canvas chairs which Mrs. Smith had sent over from home, so that she might have something to sit down on when she visited the new house, were all the furniture of the veranda, but the girls found several boxes which the workmen had left, and they laid planks on them and made benches that were entirely comfortable. A similar arrangement with the boxes turned on their ends provided a little table on which they placed the refreshments. Paper cups answered every necessary purpose, although they were not beautiful, and paper plates held the hearts and rounds just as well as if they had been china.

They were all a little tired after walking about the house for so long a time, and those of them who had chairs leaned back with satisfaction and looked over the low parapet to the adjoining meadow with its brook and its cluster of woods at the upper end. Beyond the fields the Emersons’ house could be seen dimly through the trees.

“We wondered in the springtime whether we should be able to see this house from Grandfather’s house,” said Ethel Brown. “I haven’t looked lately, but I guess we can, or else we shouldn’t be able to see Grandfather’s house from here.”

“The line of those far-away mountains is very beautiful against the sky,” Miss Graham noticed, with her keen observation of everything that added to the loveliness of the landscape.

“They are far enough away to have a blue haze hanging over them,” said Mrs. Smith, “and they give you a feeling that our quiet country scene here has a great deal of variety after all.”

“Your house is admirably placed to make the most of every beauty around you,” said Miss Daisy, “and I hope you’ll allow me to compliment you on the way it is turning out. You know they say that you have to build two or three houses in order to build one exactly to your satisfaction, but I should think that you were almost accomplishing that with your first attempt.”

“I am glad you like so many things about it,” said Mrs. Smith. “Dorothy and I would be pleased with almost any house that really belonged to us, for we’ve had nothing of our own for many years, but of course it is a tremendous satisfaction to have this develop into something that is beautiful and livable too.”

“You’ve added so many happy touches,” said Miss Graham. “Take for instance this terrace. A brick terrace always makes me think of some old country house in England, with its dark red walls buried among the brilliant green foliage. So many of those houses have terraces like this, partly roofed like yours, and wide enough to be really an extra room.”

“Aunt Louise’s terrace is really two extra rooms,” said Ethel Blue, “because it opens from the drawing room and also from the dining room.”

“We’re going to have all our meals out here in pleasant weather, whenever it’s warm enough,” said Dorothy.

“I can see you’re sufficiently afraid of New Jersey mosquitoes to have a part screened.”

“It’s the only prudent thing to do,” returned Mrs. Smith. “Jersey mosquitoes are really more than a joke, but if you have this wire cage to get into you can defy them. You can see that at the end of the terrace opposite the dining room our cage covers the whole of the floor, while up at this end only a part is wired in. In the evening when the buzzers are buzzing we can take shelter behind the screen, but in the daytime we can sit outside as we’re doing now.”

“There are to be long glass sashes that fit into the same grooves that hold the screens now. The open fire will take off the chill on autumn mornings and the radiator ought to keep us warm even when the snow is banked against the glass.”

“With palms and rubber plants and rugs and wicker chairs and tables—I suppose you’ll have wicker?” Mrs. Morton interrupted herself to inquire of her sister-in-law.

“Yes, wicker, but we haven’t decided between brown or green,” and Mrs. Smith turned appealingly to Miss Graham.

“Neither, I should say. Don’t you think a dull dark red, a mahogany red—would be pretty with this brick floor?”

“And against the concrete wall. I do; and it ought not to be hard to find rugs with dull reds and greens that will draw all those earthy, autumnal shades together.”

“You might have one of those swinging settees hanging by chains from the ceiling.”

“So would we,” interposed Ethel Brown. “I seem to see myself perching on it, waving my lemonade cup.”

“Don’t illustrate all over me,” remonstrated Ethel Blue, dodging the flowing bowl.

“I like very much the seclusion you’ve gained by building up the wall at the end of the terrace on the side toward the road,” said Miss Graham.

“We found that people could see from the road any one sitting on the terrace, although we’re so high here,” said Mrs. Smith, “but with the parapet built up at that end, they can’t see anything, even though there is an opening in the wall.”

“And the window frames a lovely picture of the meadows across the road from you.”

“I don’t see,” said Ethel Brown, “why you always call your living room a drawing room, Aunt Louise.”

“It isn’t a living room,” returned Mrs. Smith. “A living room is really a room which is used both as a sitting room and a dining room. No room which is used for only one of those purposes should be called a living room.”

“Drawing room seems a very formal name for it,” Helen said. “Of course we’re used to it, because Grandmother Emerson always calls her parlor a drawing room, but she has a huge, big room, so my idea of a drawing room is always something immense.”

“Perhaps it is rather old-fashioned and stately,” admitted Mrs. Smith; “but the drawing room is simply a place where the family withdraws to sit together and talk together, and it need not be any more formal than the people who use it. But I protest that my drawing room or sitting room, or whatever it may be, shall not be called a living room, because it is not devoted to eating as well as sitting.”

“I am glad you make that distinction,” said Miss Graham. “So many people are careless about using the word and nowadays you seldom find a real living room except in a bungalow in the country where people are living very informally during the summer, and where space is limited. There’s another thing about your house that I like exceedingly,” she continued, “and that is your closets.”

Mrs. Morton, who had joined the party on the terrace, laughed heartily at this praise.

“That ought to please you, Louise,” she said, and added, turning to Miss Graham, “Louise has spent more time inventing all sorts of cupboards and closets than in drawing the original plan of the house, I really believe.”

“I know it wasn’t wasted time,” returned Miss Graham. “I have every sympathy with a craze for closets. You can’t have too many to suit me. Do you remember that room at Mt. Vernon entirely surrounded by cupboards and closets? I always thought Washington must have had an extraordinarily orderly mind to want to have all his dining room belongings carefully placed on shelves behind closed doors!”

“I wonder how many different kinds of closets we have,” murmured Dorothy, beginning to count them up on her fingers. Everybody tossed in a contribution, naming the closet which she happened to remember.

“Clothes closets in every bed-room and two extra ones in the attic,” added Mrs. Smith.

“A dress closet with mirrors on the doors, that turn back to make a three-fold dressing glass. I envy you that comfort, Louise,” said Mrs. Morton.

“You’ll notice that the coat closets and the clothes closets all have long poles with countless hangers on them,” said Mrs. Smith. “They’ll hold a tremendous number of garments; many more than Dorothy and I have.”

“The closet I’m craziest about is the one that is filled with glass cubes to put hats in,” said Helen. “You open the door and there are half a dozen, and you can see the hats right through, so you don’t have to keep pulling out one box after another, always getting the wrong one first.”

“That’s a perfectly splendid idea,” approved Miss Graham. “I suppose along the lower part of the closet side of your room, you have small closets and cupboards for shoes and for blouses.”

“Did you notice the tall, thin closet for one-piece dresses?” asked Ethel Blue.

“I should think that would be splendid because it doesn’t jam up your evening dresses,” said Helen, who was beginning to think longingly of real, grown-up evening dresses.

“That’s the closet Ethel Blue always calls the ‘stepmother closet,’” laughed Ethel Brown.

“Because it would pinch a stepmother so hard if she got into it,” said Ethel Blue.

“Ethel Blue hates stepmothers. She doesn’t know why, except that they are always horrid in fairy stories, but she thinks this long narrow closet would be just the place to put a horrid one into to punish her.”

“I had a stepmother,” said Miss Graham, “and I couldn’t have loved my own mother more tenderly, and I’m sure she loved Margaret’s mother and me quite as well as if we had been her own children. In fact, I think she was more careful of us than she was of her own children. She used to say we were a legacy to her and that she felt it her duty as well as her delight to be extra good to us, for our mother’s sake.”

Ethel Blue listened and smiled at the kind brown eyes that were smiling at her, but she shook her head as if she were unconvinced.

“At any rate you might select your closet to fit your stepmother,” Miss Daisy laughed, “and if you wanted to be very bad to a thin one, you could make her squeeze up small in one of the glass hat boxes, and a fat one would suffer most in this narrow closet of yours.”

“You noticed, I hope,” said Mrs. Smith, “that almost every closet in the house has an electric bulb inside that lights when you open the door and goes out again when the door is closed.”

“Yes, indeed. Did you notice that the linen closet is on the bedroom floor? There need be no carrying up and down stairs of heavy bed linen. The linen for the maid’s room, in the attic, is kept in a small linen closet up there, and the table linen belongs in a closet made especially for it in the dining room. It has many glass shelves quite close together, so that each table cloth may have a spot to itself and the centrepieces and doilies may be kept flat with nothing to rumple them.”

“I suppose the medicine closets will go into the bath-rooms when the other fittings are installed,” said Mrs. Morton.

“Did you notice the pretty cedar shavings that the carpenters left on the floor of the cedar closet?” asked Dorothy. “They say they always leave the cedar shavings they made, because people like to put them among their clothes to make them fragrant.”

“I’m glad you are having a cedar closet,” said Margaret. “Mother got along with a cedar chest for a great many years, but she has always longed for a cedar closet. She had one built this summer.”

“We have both,” said Dorothy. “The chest is going up in the attic and the closet is on the bedroom floor.”

“The thing that pleases me most in the closet line,” said Ethel Brown, who is a good cook, “is the pastry closet just off the kitchen. The carpenter told me there was a refrigerating pipe running around it so that it would always be cool, and there was to be a plate glass shelf on which the pastry could be rolled out.”

“You certainly have the latest wrinkles,” exclaimed Mrs. Morton admiringly. “I have never seen that arrangement in real life. I thought it only existed in large hotels or the women’s magazines!”

“There are lots of other little comforts in our house,” laughed Dorothy, “and there are two or three more kinds of closets if we count bookcases that have doors and cupboards to keep games in.”

“They’re every one modern and useful except that stepmother squeezer,” said Miss Graham, rising to take leave. “That sounds like some invention of the Middle Ages when people used to torture each other to death so cheerfully.”

“Unless she were a really truly fairy story bad one,” Miss Daisy insisted. “Could you resist that?”

She held Ethel Blue’s eyes for just a second with her smiling gaze that was graven down in the depths of her warm brown ones.

“I wouldn’t really hurt her,” Ethel Blue repeated, and wondered why she felt as if she had been taken seriously.

CHAPTER VIII
“OFF TO PHILADELPHIA IN THE MORNING”

“Helen,” called Mrs. Morton a few days later just after the morning visit of the letter carrier, “I have a note here from Uncle Richard asking me if I can run over to Philadelphia and attend to a little matter of business for him. He is so tied up at Fort Myer that he can’t possibly get away. Do you think it would be pleasant if you and I went over for a few days and took Roger and the children with us?”

The “children” of the Morton family meant those younger than Roger and Helen. Helen received the suggestion with a cry of delight.

“It would be just too lovely for anything,” she said, waving in the air the little linen dress she was making for Elisabeth.

“The younger girls had the Massachusetts trip this summer that you and Roger didn’t share,” her mother said. “I think this time we might all of us go, and I’m not sure that it would not be pleasant to ask the Watkinses and the Hancocks.”

“The whole U. S. C.!” cried Helen. “Mother, you certainly were born a darling. How did you ever think of anything so perfectly galoptious?”

“It’s natural for me to be ‘galoptious,’” her mother returned, laughing. “Now, we shall have to work fast, if we are going to accomplish Uncle Richard’s errand, because the people whom he wants me to see will be in Philadelphia only to-morrow. He has telegraphed them, asking them to keep an hour for me, so I must go over to-day or very early to-morrow morning.”

“Would you like to have me call up Margaret and Della on the telephone and see if they can go to-day? If they can, I don’t see why we can’t fly around tremendously and get our bags packed this morning and take an afternoon train,” said Helen, who was beginning to grow energetic as the full prospect of the pleasure before her appeared before the eyes of her mind.

Mrs. Morton agreeing, Helen flew to the telephone, and was lucky enough to catch Margaret at Glen Point and Della in New York without any difficulty. They both said that they would consult their mothers and would call Helen again within an hour. She then telephoned to Dorothy, but found that she was at Sweetbrier Lodge and as the telephone had not been put in yet, she was, for a moment, at a loss what to do. She remembered, however, that Ethel Brown and Ethel Blue had spoken of spending the morning at Grandmother Emerson’s, and she therefore called up her house in the hope that they might be there.

They had just left there to go and do a little house-cleaning in the cave in Fitzjames’ woods, where they frequently enjoyed an afternoon lemonade. Mrs. Emerson said, however, that she could easily send a messenger after them, and that it would not be many minutes before she would ring Helen in her turn.

“I haven’t anything to report,” Helen said to her mother after she had made these various calls, “but I had better be getting out our handbags and trying to find Roger, I suppose.”

Mrs. Morton was already packing her valise with her own and Dicky’s requirements and she nodded an assent to Helen’s suggestion.

It was not many minutes before the telephone bell began ringing. The first summons was from Margaret Hancock who said that her mother and father were delighted with the opportunity to have her and James go to Philadelphia in Mrs. Morton’s care.

“It will be a real Club expedition,” she said gleefully, “and I’m just as sure as if I saw it with my own eyes, that you’re packing a ‘History of Philadelphia’ in your hand-bag.”

Helen laughed because she was well accustomed to being joked about her love of history.

“I notice all of you are willing enough to listen when I tell about places,” she said, “and this time you’ll have to take it from me because Grandfather won’t be there to tell you.”

“What do you want of us?” Ethel Blue asked in a tone that sounded as if she were not particularly pleased at being called back.

“Do you really mean it?” asked Ethel, who was not quite sure that her ears were hearing correctly.

“I do mean it, and if you and Ethel Blue want to go with Mother and me this afternoon, you must rush home just as fast as you can and get your bags packed. Aunt Louise says Dorothy may go, but I can’t find her, so please stop at the new house and see if she’s there and tell her about it.”

“Well I should say we would,” returned a voice that was now filled with delight. “Ethel Blue wants to know why Mother is going?” she asked.

“On some business for her father—for Uncle Richard. But do stop chattering and come home as fast as you can rush. If we don’t get off this afternoon, we can’t go until to-morrow morning and we shan’t be able to stay so long in Philadelphia.”

It was not until they reached home that the Ethels learned that the Watkinses and the Hancocks were to join the party, and they were so excited over the prospect of this Club pilgrimage, that they were hardly able to get together their belongings.

The most difficult person to find was Roger who did not seem to be within reach of the telephone anywhere. They called up all the places where they thought it possible that he might be, but he could not be found, and he walked in just before luncheon quite unprepared for the surprise that awaited him.

“Helen has packed your bag for you,” his mother told him, “so rush and change your clothes and go to the train to meet Della and Tom.”

Rosemont being already part way on the road from New York and Philadelphia, it was necessary for the party to take a local train to the nearest stopping place of the Express. The Watkinses came out from New York on a local and the Hancocks arrived on the trolley, so that the entire group met at the Mortons’ about half an hour before the time to start. They were all chattering briskly, all filled with enthusiasm for this new adventure.

“Don’t you think I’d better go too?” Mr. Emerson asked his daughter, as he counted up the throng and noticed their eagerness.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, Father,” Mrs. Morton replied. “Roger and Tom and James are surely big enough to escort us, and I know Philadelphia so well that I have no fear of our being lost in the city with three such competent young men to take care of us.”

Mr. Emerson smiled somewhat doubtfully and murmured something about his daughter’s having a hopeful disposition.

“You don’t realize how serious Roger can be when he feels that he has actual responsibility,” said Mrs. Morton, “and as for James Hancock, he is sometimes so grave that he almost alarms me.”

“The children seem to think he has a great deal. At any rate I feel sure that no difficulty is going to come to us with these three big boys on hand and I wouldn’t think of taking you on this fatiguing trip, on such a hot day,” insisted his daughter.

Mr. Emerson looked somewhat relieved although he again assured Mrs. Morton that he would be entirely willing to escort her and her flock.

It was at the station and just as the train was drawing in that Mr. Emerson handed Helen a notebook.

“You’ve taken me by surprise this morning,” he said, “and I haven’t had much time to get up my usual collection of historical poetry, but I couldn’t let you go off without having something of the kind to remember me by.”

Helen and the Ethels laughed at this confession, for Mr. Emerson was so fond of American history that he was in the habit, whenever they all went on trips together, of supplying himself with ballads concerning any historical happenings in the district through which they were to travel.

“Philadelphia ought to be a fertile field for you, sir,” said James Hancock.

“It is,” returned the old gentleman, “but you’ll escape the full force of my efforts this time, thanks to your quick start.”

The run to the junction and then to Philadelphia was made in a short time. It was fairly familiar to all of them and the country presented no beauties to make it remarkable, although Roger pretended to be a guide showing wonderful sights to the New Yorkers, Della and Tom.

“Do you think, Mother, we shall have time to look up some of the historical places in the city?” asked Helen.

“I thought that would be the most interesting thing to do,” Mrs. Morton replied. “I shan’t have to meet my business people until midday to-morrow, so this afternoon and to-morrow morning we can see many points of interest if we don’t delay too long at each one.”

“Being related to the Navy through my paternal ancestor,” said Roger in large language, “Philadelphia has always interested me because the father of old William Penn, its founder, was an Admiral in the English Navy.”

“Watch me run for base!” exclaimed Roger. “I got one off of Helen on the first ball. It isn’t often that Helen admits there’s something she doesn’t know about American history.”

“You miserable boy! You sound as if I were pretending to be a ‘know-it-all’! There are plenty of things I don’t know about American history. For instance I know very little about William Penn, except that he was a Quaker.”

“Well then,” said Roger, “allow me to inform you, beloved sister, that William Penn was an Oxford man and a preacher in the Society of Friends. He seems to have had some pull because the powers gave him a grant of Pennsylvania (that means Penn’s Woods), in 1680. He went to America two years later and founded this minute little town which we are approaching.”

“Those old Englishmen on the other side certainly had a calm way of giving out grants of land without saying anything about it to the Indians, didn’t they?” said Margaret.

“Penn got along much better with the Indians than many of the heads of the colonies. He made a treaty with them, which is said to have been very remarkable in two ways; in the first place he wouldn’t swear to keep it because he was a Quaker, and Quakers won’t take an oath; and in the next place, he did keep it, which was quite an event in colonial circles!”

“You’re going to see a statue of him as soon as you get off the train,” interposed Mrs. Morton.

“On top of the City Hall. It’s the first thing you see when you come out of the railroad station. In fact you’re so close to the Public Buildings, as they’re called, that I doubt if you can see the top at all until you get farther away from them.”

“I’ve been told it was thirty-seven feet high,” returned Mrs. Morton, “and that the rim of the old gentleman’s hat was so wide that a person could walk on it comfortably.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun to do our back step on the edge of his hat!” exclaimed Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown, as they looked out the cab which was taking them to the hotel, and saw the figure of the benevolent Quaker black against the sky some five hundred feet above the ground.

The hotel wherein Mrs. Morton established her flock was “in the heart of conservative Philadelphia.” Immediately after luncheon they packed themselves into a large touring car and began their historical explorations.

“If we do things according to time, we ought to go first to all of the places that have to do with William Penn,” said Helen.

“I’m afraid that might make us jump around the city a little,” said Mrs. Morton, “because if I am not mistaken, the house that William Penn gave to his daughter Letitia, is out in Fairmount Park, and the one belonging to his grandson is in the Zoo. We’ll see them before we go home, but now we had better give our attention to the things that are here in the city. To begin with we can go to the little park on whose site William Penn made his famous treaty with the Indians. It takes us somewhat out of our way, but I know Helen’s orderly mind will like to begin there.”

Helen smiled at her mother’s understanding of her, and the car sped northwards along the river front, now given over to business and tenements. At the Treaty Park they looked about them with their imaginations rather than with their eyes, for there was little of interest before them, while the Past held a vision of the elm tree under which the group of broad-hatted Friends discussed terms with the copper-colored natives. Lieutenant Morton’s children were interested in seeing not far away the ship building yards where many an American battleship had slipped from the ways to pursue her peaceful course upon the ocean.

Returning as they had come, they passed on Second Street the site of a house in which the Great Settler had lived, and promised themselves to remember that in Independence Hall they were to look for a piece of the Treaty Tree.

“Everything that isn’t called ‘Penn’ in this town seems to be called ‘Franklin,’” said Ethel Blue, after reading many of the signs on the buildings.

“That’s because the great Benjamin lived here for most of his life,” said James, by way of explanation. “He was born in Boston, but he soon deserted those cold regions for a warmer clime, and made a name for himself here.”

“I should say he left it behind him,” commented Ethel Blue again as she read another sign, this time of a “Penn Laundry.”

“Penn and Franklin are the two great men of old Philadelphia, without any doubt,” said Mrs. Morton, as the machine stopped before Carpenters’ Hall.

“Help! Help!” cried Tom. “I blush to state that I don’t know Carpenters’ Hall from a ham sandwich.”

“Stand right here before we set foot inside and let me tell you that I am perfectly shocked that any American boy, old enough to have graduated from high school and to be going to Yale in a few weeks, should make such a statement as that!”

She was genuinely troubled about it and Tom flushed as he saw that she really was scornful of his ignorance.

Tom meekly said that he remembered that in December, 1773, a number of Boston men disguised as Indians had thrown overboard from a ship in the harbor, boxes of tea on which they refused to pay the British duty.

“I’m glad you remember that much,” she said tartly. “After that Tea Party there was a continual and rapid growth of dislike for the Old Country, which was trying to tax the colonists, without allowing them any representation in the Parliament which was governing them. The feeling grew so strong that a Continental Congress, made up of delegates from the thirteen original Colonies, was called to meet here in Philadelphia, in September, 1774. It met here at Carpenters’ Hall,” she concluded triumphantly.

“In this very identical place,” said Helen, and then she allowed the procession to enter the building.

“September 17, 1774,” repeated Ethel Brown thoughtfully. “Why, that was the autumn before the battles of Concord and Lexington.”

“Yes, the Revolution had not yet begun. The Continental Congress met to talk over the situation, and here are the very chairs the members used.”

“Look at the inscription,” said James, calling their attention to the lettering. “WITHIN THESE WALLS HENRY, HANCOCK AND ADAMS INSPIRED THE DELEGATES OF THE COLONIES WITH NERVE AND SINEW FOR THE TOILS OF WAR!”

“John Hancock was my great-great-grandfather’s brother,” said James proudly.

“Good for you, old chap,” exclaimed Roger, thumping him on the back, while Helen beamed at Margaret.

“After about a month they agreed on what they called a Declaration of Rights, and they sent it over to Franklin, who was in England, and asked him to present it to the House of Commons.”

“In the light of after events I suppose the House of Commons didn’t take a look at it,” said Roger.

“They certainly did not,” replied Helen, “and the battles of Lexington and Concord were the result. You remember they were fought in April of 1775. Ticonderoga was captured in May of the same year and the battle of Bunker Hill was fought in June.”

“Yes; the men discussed each new move as it was made. Early in June one of the members made a motion before the Congress that ‘these Colonies ought to be Independent.’”

“That idea seems simple enough to us now,” said Tom, “but I dare say it was startling when a mere colonist proposed to break off with the mother country.”

“It seems to me it’s about time for Grandfather Emerson to have some poetry on this period of history,” said Ethel Brown. “If he were here, I’m sure he would never have let this Congress sit for eight or nine months without discovering something in poetry about it.”

“You certainly understand Grandfather,” she said. “In just about a minute, while we’re going over to Independence Hall, I’m going to read you some verses that belong right in here. On the first of July they began to debate about this proposal that the colonists should be independent. It was a mighty important matter, of course, because if they adopted it, it certainly meant war, and if they did not beat in the war, it might mean a worse state of affairs than they were in at the present moment. So there was much to be said on both sides and it looked as if the vote was going to be very close. Here’s where Rodney the delegate did some hard riding,” and Helen took out one of the type-written sheets, which her grandfather had given her.

“Rodney was from Delaware,” she returned, “Now listen, while I read you this poem.”

“RODNEY’S RIDE

“In that soft mid-land where the breezes bear

The North and South on the genial air,

Through the county of Kent, on affairs of state,

Rode Cæsar Rodney, the delegate.

“Burly and big and bold and bluff,

In his three-cornered hat and coat of snuff,

A foe to King George and the English State,

Was Cæsar Rodney, the delegate.

“Into Dover village he rode apace,

And his kinsfolk knew, from his anxious face,

It was matter grave that brought him there,

To the counties three on the Delaware.

“‘Money and men we must have’m,’ he said,

‘Or the Congress fails and the cause is dead:

Give us both and the King shall not work his will.

We are men, since the blood of Bunker Hill!’

“Comes a rider swift on a panting bay:

‘Ho, Rodney, ho, you must save the day,

For the Congress halts at a deed so great,

And your vote alone may decide its fate.’

“Answered Rodney then: ‘I will ride with speed;

It is Liberty’s stress; it is Freedom’s need.

When stands it?’ ‘To-night. Not a moment to spare,

But ride like the wind from the Delaware.’

“‘Ho, saddle the black! I’ve but half a day,

And the Congress sits eighty miles away—

But I’ll be in time, if God grants me grace,

To shake my fist in King George’s face.’

“He is up: he is off! and the black horse flies

On the northward road ere the ‘God-speed’ dies;

It is a gallop and spur as the leagues they clear,

And the clustering mile-stones move a-rear.

“It is two of the clock! and the fleet hoofs fling

The Fieldboro’s dust with a clang and a cling;

It is three; and he gallops with slack rein where

The road winds down to the Delaware.

“Four; and he spurs into New Castle town,

From his panting steed he gets trim down—

‘A fresh one, quick! not a moment’s wait!’

And off speeds Rodney the delegate.

“It is five; and the beams of the western sun

Tinge the spires of Wilmington gold and dun;

Six; and the dust of Chester Street

Flies back in a cloud from the courser’s feet.

“It is seven; the horse-boat, broad of beam,

At the Schuylkill ferry crawls over the stream—

And at seven-fifteen by the Rittenhouse clock,

He flings his reins to the tavern jock.

“The Congress is met; the debate’s begun,

And Liberty lags for the vote of one—

When into the hall, not a moment late,

Walks Cæsar Rodney, the delegate.

“Not a moment late! and that half day’s ride

Forwards the world with a mighty stride;

For the act was passed ere the midnight stroke

O’er the Quaker City its echoes woke.

“At Tyranny’s feet was the gauntlet flung;

‘We are free!’ all the bells through the colonies rung,

And the sons of the free may recall with pride

The day of Delegate Rodney’s ride.”

“Pretty stirring, isn’t it! I take it that the Continental Congress had moved over to Independence Hall by this time,” said Tom, when the reading was done.

“Yes, they were over here, sitting in the East Room, when they passed the Declaration of Independence.”

An attendant seeing the interested faces of the young people, took them about the room and explained the relics to them.

“This,” he said, “is the very furniture that was in the room at the time of the signing of the Declaration. Right on this very table the Document received the signature of the President of the Congress—”

“Is the original document here?” asked James, who was thrilling with interest, but who preserved the calmness which he inherited from his Scottish ancestors.

“No,” answered the caretaker. “That is kept at Washington in the Library of the State Department, but there is an exact copy of it over there on the wall.”

Going upstairs, the party remembered to look up the piece of the elm tree, under which Penn had signed his Treaty with the Indians, and they saw in addition the original Charter of Philadelphia, bearing the date 1701.

In another room they found some furniture belonging to Washington and Penn and various portraits of more historic than artistic interest. They enjoyed more seeing some of the boards of the original floor. These were carefully kept under glass, as if they were great treasures.

“Now we’re going to see the most sacred relic in America, next to the Declaration itself,” said Helen, leading the way down the staircase at whose foot was the famous Liberty Bell, which had rung out its message of joy on July 4, 1775, when the delegates passed the Declaration and the people of Philadelphia knew that war was before them, and yet were glad to meet whatever might be the outcome of the defiance.

They gathered in silence around the bell and read its description:—“PROCLAIM LIBERTY TO ALL THE LAND AND TO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF.” They noticed the crack which ran through it, and felt that they were looking upon a real veteran of that far-away time.

“Grandfather told me not to forget to tell you about the little boy who gave the signal to the bell-ringer,” Helen said. “He was stationed where he could see the door-keeper of the room in which the delegates were sitting. When the final vote was taken, the door-keeper gave the signal to the boy and he ran out, shouting the cry that resounded through the colonies, ‘Ring! Ring! Ring!’”

CHAPTER IX
HELEN DISTINGUISHES HERSELF

“Come out into the Park for a few minutes,” said Mrs. Morton. “I’m perfectly sure Helen has some poetry to read to us before very long, and if we can sit down for a minute or two on the benches, we can hear it at our convenience.”

“The fire of discontent had been smouldering for a long time,” said Helen, beginning her lecture promptly when they were seated, “and just as soon as the Declaration was passed the flames burst out. There was fighting all over the colonies from South Carolina to New York City. Washington was made Commander-in-Chief of the little Army there, but he was quite unable to defeat the large force which the British sent. He retreated across New Jersey, and in December of 1776—”

Helen nodded and continued: “he reached the Delaware River. The British followed him on the other bank of the river, with the centre of the army at Trenton, New Jersey. On Christmas Night of 1776, the future of the Colonies looked about as dark as the night itself, but here is what happened, told in some of the rhymes that Grandfather found for us.” And Helen read Virginia Woodward Cloud’s poem, called the “Ballad of Sweet P.”

“She was too nice a girl to be a deceiving girl,” said Ethel Blue, and a vigorous discussion as to how much deception was fair in war time would have broken out if Helen had not continued her account of the Revolution around Philadelphia.

“At day-break on the 26th of December, Washington entered Trenton and surprised the enemy,” Helen ended.

“It was in the battle of Trenton and in the battle of Princeton about a week later, that our Emerson great-great-great-grandfather fought, wasn’t it?” said Roger, recalling the account which his grandfather had read to the Mortons several times from the old family Bible.

“Yes, don’t you remember how he fought against his daughter’s English lover?”

“We must ask the chauffeur where the Betsy Ross house is,” said Mrs. Morton, rising and leading the way to the car.

The man knew and set off at once through the few narrow streets, and before long they were standing in front of the old-fashioned dwelling.

“Who is the lady?” murmured Tom in an undertone to Ethel Brown, pretending to be afraid that Helen would hear him but really speaking loudly enough to draw her attention.

“Tom Watkins, you’re perfectly dreadful,” Helen exclaimed promptly. “Do you really mean that you don’t know who Betsy Ross was?”

This direct question was too much for Tom’s truthfulness and he broke into a laugh.

“I don’t know that I should have known if I hadn’t read the other day a tale about a play that some urchins wrote for the stage at Hull House in Chicago.”

“She did, so it must be true. It was entirely original with some immigrant boys who had been studying American history. It went something like this:—in the first act some American Revolutionary soldiers are talking together and one of them says, ‘Gee, ain’t it fierce! We ain’t got no flag.’ The others agreed that it was fierce. In the next act a delegation of soldiers approached General Washington. They saluted, and then said to him, ‘General, we ain’t got no flag. Gee, ain’t it fierce?’”

“Washington agreed that it was fierce, and said that he’d do something about it, so the next act shows him at the house of Betsy Ross. He said to her, ‘Mrs. Ross, we ain’t got no flag. Ain’t it fierce? What shall we do about it?’”

“Mrs. Ross said, ‘It is fierce. You hold the baby, George, and I’ll make you something right off.’”

“And that last realistic scene took place in this little house!” said Mrs. Morton, shaking with mirth. “It belongs to the city now, so Betsy’s patriotism and industry are remembered by many visitors.”

“Here’s Grandfather’s contribution to this moment,” smiled Helen as she brought out still another of her type-written sheets, and read some lines by Minna Irving.

“BETSY’S BATTLE FLAG

“From dusk till dawn the livelong night

She kept the tallow dips alight,

And fast her nimble fingers flew

To sew the stars upon the blue.

With weary eyes and aching head

She stitched the stripes of white and red,

And when the day came up the stair

Complete across a carven chair

Hung Betsy’s battle flag.

“Like the shadows in the evening gray

The Continentals filed away,

With broken boots and ragged coats,

But hoarse defiance in their throats;

They bore the marks of want and cold,

And some were lame and some were old,

And some with wounds untended bled,

But floating bravely overhead

Was Betsy’s battle flag.

“When fell the battle’s leaden rain,

The soldier hushed his moan of pain

And raised his dying head to see

King George’s troopers turn and flee.

Their charging column reeled and broke,

And vanished in the rolling smoke,

Before the glory of the stars,

The snowy stripes, and scarlet bars

Of Betsy’s battle flag.

“The simple stone of Betsy Ross

Is covered now with mold and moss,

But still her deathless banner flies,

And keeps the color of the skies,

A nation thrills, a nation bleeds,

A nation follows where it leads,

And every man is proud to yield

His life upon a crimson field

For Betsy’s battle flag.”

“When was it that Washington made his historic visit to Betsy?” asked Roger of Helen.

“That was in June of 1776. A year later, on the fourteenth of June, 1777, Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as our flag.”

“That’s why June 14th is celebrated as Flag Day, I suppose,” said Ethel Blue.

“I think our flag has more meaning to it than any other flag in the world,” declared Roger. “The thirteen stripes mean the thirteen original colonies, don’t they?”

“There were thirteen stars at the beginning. They’ve added a star for every new state that has joined the Union.”

“It certainly does make your heart beat to look at it, especially when you happen to come on it suddenly as Miss Bates said in those verses of hers that we had in our Peace Day Program on Lincoln’s Birthday.”

“A Russian sea-captain once told me it looked to him like a mosaic,” Mrs. Morton said.

“But every piece of the mosaic is full of meaning,” said Ethel Blue, “and mosaics make beautiful pictures any way.”

“There was a sad time ahead for Philadelphia in spite of Washington’s successes at Trenton and Princeton,” said Helen, taking up her story once more. “The Americans were successful in Vermont and northern New York, but in September, 1777, they were defeated at Brandywine Creek, and the British marched into Philadelphia a fortnight later and took possession of the town.”

“Wasn’t it about that time that the American army spent the winter at Valley Forge?” asked Margaret. “I seem to remember something about their living in a great deal of distress, such as the soldiers in Europe are enduring now.”

“This was the time,” confirmed Helen. “Grandfather has a few lines of Reed’s here telling about it.”

“Such was the winter’s awful sight,

For many a dreary day and night,

What time our country’s hope forlorn,

Of every needed comfort shorn,

Lay housed within a buried tent,

Where every keen blast found a rent,

And oft the snow was seen to sift

Along the floor its piling drift,

Or, mocking the scant blanket’s fold,

Across the night-couch frequent rolled;

Where every path by a soldier beat,

Or every track where a sentinel stood,

Still held the print of naked feet,

And oft the crimson stains of blood;

Where Famine held her spectral court,

And joined by all her fierce allies;

She ever loved a camp or fort

Beleaguered by the wintry skies,—

But chiefly when Disease is by,

To sink frame and dim the eye,

Until, with seeking forehead bent,

In martial garments cold and damp,

Pale Death patrols from tent to tent,

To count the charnels of the camp.

Such was the winter that prevailed

Within the crowded, frozen gorge;

Such were the horrors that assailed

The patriot band at Valley Forge.”

“How long did the British hold the city?” asked Tom, after he had shaken his head over the Americans’ troubles.

“Six or eight months,” said Helen, “and you can imagine what a thrilling time it was for American girls like Sweet P. I can fancy them walking daintily along the street turning their heads aside when a British officer passed them, as if he were too far beneath their notice for them even to glance at.”

“When Sir Henry Clinton evacuated Philadelphia in the middle of June, he started for New York. Washington followed him but did not win in the skirmish which they fought at Monmouth, New Jersey. The Indians on the western frontier had joined the British, and there was some terrible fighting there. Our fleet, as a general thing, was successful on the ocean. Clinton stayed for more than a year in New York City. Washington established himself just above the city where he could keep an eye on him.”

“Wasn’t that the time when my old friend, Anthony Wayne, stirred up a little excitement up the Hudson?” asked Roger.

“Yes, it was then he took Stony Point, which we saw when we went up the river to West Point. There was fighting in New Jersey and in the South, and the British seemed to be getting tired out.”

“It was at the end of several sharply fought fields that Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in Virginia, wasn’t it?” inquired Roger.

“It certainly is a great thing to be related to the Army and Navy. Here’s Helen, a walking ‘History of the Revolution,’ and old Roger actually remembering something about Cornwallis’s surrender!”

“They tell a story about the way that Philadelphia heard the news of the surrender,” interposed the caretaker of the Betsy Ross house, who had been listening to the conversation. “There was an old German watchman walking the streets, and calling the hours through the night, as was the custom then. He cried out; ‘Bast dree o’clock and Cornvallis ist daken.’ People who had turned over in bed growling when they had been awakened by him before, were only too thankful to hear his hoarse voice croaking out the good news.”

“That was in October, 1781,” went on Helen, after nodding her thanks to the caretaker for his addition to the story. “It took a good many months for the British to leave the country, for transportation was a difficult matter at that time.”

“I’ll bet you the Americans were thankful to have peace,” exclaimed James.

“It sounds to me very much as if the British were, too,” said Roger. “Any country must be grateful for a rest from such long distress.”

“Grandfather’s poetry is by Freneau this time,” said Helen. “I’m going to read you only two stanzas of it.”

“The great unequal conflict past,

The Britons banished from our shore,

Peace, heaven-descended, comes at last,

And hostile nations rage no more;

From fields of death the weary swain

Returning, seeks his native plain.

In every vale she smiles serene,

Freedom’s bright stars more radiant rise,

New charms she adds to every scene,

Her brighter sun illumes our skies.

Remotest realms admiring stand,

And hail the HERO of our Land.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Helen. “These verses were written when he was traveling through Philadelphia on his way to Mt. Vernon.”

“I know enough American history to tell you that he didn’t stay there long,” said Tom, proud of being able to bring forward one sure piece of information. “He was made President on his war record. That I do know.”

They all applauded this contribution. The care-taker of the house again could not resist joining the conversation.

“The five years after the signing of the Treaty of Peace in 1783 were very critical years,” he said. “The new country had almost no money and no definite policy, now that they had cut themselves free from England. Somebody proposed a Federal Convention and it met here in Philadelphia in 1787.”

“Now they had to draw up some sort of Constitution for the new country. Washington was chosen President of the Convention and they worked from May until September in planning the Constitution, which they nick-named the ‘New Roof.’”

“Yes, I know about that,” cried Helen. “Grandfather gave me a poem about that. He thought we’d be especially interested in it on account of Dorothy knowing so much about the building of a house,”—and she read them the old poem called ‘The New Roof,’ by Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Come muster, my lads, your mechanical tools,

Your saws and your axes, your hammers and rules;

Bring your mallets and planes, your level and line,

And plenty of pins of American pine:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be,

Our government firm, and our citizens free.

Come, up with the plates, lay them firm on the wall,

Like the people at large, they’re the ground-work of all;

Examine them well, and see that they’re sound,

Let no rotten part in our building be found: