Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas ShipAs it starts across the seaWith its load of gifts and its greater loadOf loving sympathy.Let's wave our hats and clap our handsAs we send it on its trip;May many a heart and home be cheeredBy the gifts in the Christmas Ship.
"That's as good a show as if it had been put on by grown-ups," declared a New Yorker who had come out with Doctor Watkins. "It's hard to believe that those kids have done it all themselves."
He spoke to a stranger beside him as they filed out to the music of a merry march played by Mrs. Smith.
"My boy was among them," replied the Rosemont man proudly, "but I don't mind saying I think they're winners!"
That seemed to be every one's opinion. As for the old ladies—the evening was such an event to them that they felt just a trifle uncertain that they had not been transported by some magic means to far away Hamelin town.
"I don't believe I missed a word," said the blind old lady as the horses toiled slowly up the hill to the Home.
"We'll tell you every scene so you'll know how the words fit in," promised the old lady in the wheel chair.
"It will be something to talk about when we're knitting," chuckled the lame old lady brightly, and they all hummed gently,
"Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas ShipAs it starts across the sea."
JAMES CUTS CORNERS
"VERY creditable, very creditable indeed," repeated Doctor Hancock as he and James stepped into their car to return to Glen Point after packing the old ladies into the wagonette.
Mrs. Hancock and Margaret had gone home by trolley because the doctor had to make a professional call on the way. The moon lighted the road brilliantly and the machine flew along smoothly over the even surface.
"This is about as near flying as a fellow can get and still be only two feet from the earth," said James.
James was quiet and almost too serious for a boy of his age but he had one passion that sometimes got the better of the prudence which he inherited from the Scottish ancestor about whom Roger was always joking him.
That passion was for speed. When he was a very small child he had made it his habit to descend the stairs by way of the rail at the infinite risk of his neck. Once he had run his head through the slats of a chicken coop into which an over-swift hopmobile had thrown him. On roller skates his accidents had been beyond counting because his calculations of distance often seemed not to work out harmoniously with his velocity. It was because Doctor Hancock thought that if the boy had the responsibility for hisfather's machine and for other people's bones he would learn to exercise proper care, that he had consented to let him become his chauffeur. The plan had seemed to work well, but once in a while the desire to fly got the better of James's discretion.
"Here's where the car gets ahead of the aeroplane," said the doctor. "An aviator would find it dangerous work to skim along only two feet above ground."
"I did want to go up with that airman at Chautauqua last summer!" cried James.
"Why didn't you?"
"Cost too much. Twenty-five plunks."
The doctor whistled.
"Flying high always costs," he said meditatively.
"The Ethels went up. They haven't done talking about it yet. They named the man's machine, so he gave them a ride."
"Good work! Look out for these corners, now. When you've studied physics a bit longer you'll learn why it is that a speeding body can't change its direction at an angle of ninety degrees and maintain its equilibrium unless it decreases its speed."
James thought this over for a while.
"In other words, slow up going round corners," he translated, "and later I'll learn why."
"Words to that effect," replied the doctor mildly.
"Here's a good straight bit," exclaimed James. "You don't care if I let her out, do you? There's nothing in sight."
"Watch that cross road."
"Yes, sir. Isn't this moon great!" murmured James under his breath, excited by the brilliant light and the cool air and the swift motion.
"Always keep your eyes open for these heavy shadows that the moon casts," directed Doctor Hancock. "Sometimes they're deceptive."
"I'll keep in the middle of the road and then the bugaboo in the shadow can see us even if I can't see him," laughed James, the moonlight in his eyes and the rush of wind in his ears.
"There's something moving there! LOOK OUT!" shouted the doctor as a cow strolled slowly out from behind a tree and chewed a meditative cud right across their path. James made a swift, abrupt curve, and did not touch her.
"That was a close one," he whispered, his hands shaking on the wheel.
"It hasn't worried her any," reported his father, looking back. "She hasn't budged and she's still chewing. You did that very well, son. It was a difficult situation."
James flushed warmly. His father was not a man to give praise often so that every word of commendation from him was doubly valued by his children.
"Thank you. I shouldn't like to have it happen every day," James confessed.
They sped on in silence after the cow episode, the boy glad of the chance to steady his nerves in the quiet, the doctor thinking of the case he was to visit in a few minutes.
The patient's house stood on the edge of Glen Point, and James sat in the car resting and watching the machines of the townspeople passing by with gay parties out to enjoy the moonlight. Some, like themselves, had been to Rosemont, and some of his schoolmates waved to him as they passed.
"It was a great show, old man," more than one boy shouted to him.
It had been a good show. He knew it and he was glad that he belonged to a club that really amounted to something. They did things well and they didn't do them well just to show off or to get praise—they had a good purpose behind. He was still thinking about it when his father came out. Doctor Hancock did not talk about his cases, but James had learned that silence meant that there was need for serious thought and that the doctor was in no mood to enter into conversation. When he came out laughing, however, and jumped into the car with a care-free jest, as happened now, James knew that all was going well.
"Now, home, boy," he directed. "Stop at the drug store an instant."
He gave some directions to a clerk who hurried out to them and then they drove on. The moonlight sifted through the trees and flickered on the road. A cool breeze stimulated James's skin to a shiver. On they went, faster and faster. He'd had a mighty good time all the evening, James thought, and Father was a crackerjack.
"LOOK OUT, boy," his father's voice rang through his thoughts. The car struck the curb with a shock that loosened his grasp on the wheel and tossed him into the air. As he flew up he tried to say, "I cut the corner too close that time," but he never knew whether he said it or not, for his voice seemed to fail him and his father could not recall hearing such a remark.
It was quite an hour later when he came to himself. To his amazement he found himself in hisown room. The light was shaded, his mother with tears still filling her eyes was beside him, and his father and a young man whom he recognized as the new doctor who had just come to Glen Point, were putting away instruments. He tried to move in the bed and found that his leg was extraordinarily heavy.
"Did I bust my leg?" he inquired briefly.
"You did," returned his father with equal brevity.
"Weren't you hurt?"
"A scratch on the forehead, that's all. Doctor Hanson is going to patch me up now."
The two physicians left the room and James did not know until long after that the scratch required several stitches to mend.
His illness was a severe trial to James. His Scottish blood taught him that his punishment fitted his crime—that he was hurt as a direct result of doing what he knew was likely to bring that result. He said to himself that he was going to take his punishment like a man. But oh, the days were long! The Glen Point boys came in when they thought of it—there was some one almost every day—but the Indian Summer was unusually prolonged and wonderfully beautiful this year, and it was more than any one could ask in reason that the boys should give up outdoors to stay with him. Roger and Helen and the Ethels and Dorothy came over from Rosemont when they could, but their daily work had to be done and they had only a few minutes to stay after the long trolley trip.
"We must think up something for James to do," Mrs. Hancock told Margaret. "He's tired of reading. He can use his hands. Hasn't your Service Club something that he can work on here?" Margaretthought it had, and the result of the conversation was that Mrs. Hancock went to Rosemont on an afternoon car. The Ethels took her to Mrs. Smith's and Dorothy showed her the accumulation for the Christmas Ship that already was making a good showing in the attic devoted to the work.
"These bundles in the packing cases are all finished and ready for their final wrappings," Dorothy explained. "There are dresses and wrappers and sacques and sweaters and all sorts of warm clothing like that."
"And you girls did almost all of it!" exclaimed Mrs. Hancock.
"Helen and Margaret made most of those," said Ethel Brown. "In this box are the knitted articles that are coming in every day now. Most of them are from the Old Ladies' Home so far, but every once in a while somebody else stops and leaves something. We girls don't knit much; it seems to go so slowly."
"I brought one pair of wristers with me and I have another pair almost done," said Mrs. Hancock. "What are these?"
"Those are the boxes the boys have been pasting," said Ethel Blue, picking up one of them. "They began with the large plain ones first—the real packing boxes."
"Here are some that are large enough for a dress."
"We've gathered all the old boxes we could find in our house or in our friends' houses—Margaret must have hunted in your attic for she brought over some a fortnight ago. None of the things we are making will require a box as large as the tailors send out,so we took those boxes and the broken ones that we found and made them over."
"That must have taken a great deal of time."
"The boys paste pretty fast now. Some of them they made to lock together. They didn't need anything but cutting. They got that idea from a tailor's box that Roger found."
Mrs. Hancock examined the flat pasteboard cut so that the corners would interlock.
"The old boxes they cut down. That saves buying new pasteboard. And they've covered some of the battered looking old ones with fresh paper so they look as good as new—"
"And a great deal prettier," said Dorothy.
"We get wall paper at ten cents a roll for the covering," said Ethel Blue. "They have an old-fashioned air that's attractive, Aunt Marion says," and she held up a box covered with wild roses.
"They're lovely! And they must have cost you almost nothing."
"We did these when our treasury was very low. Now we've got almost fifty dollars that we cleared from our entertainment after we paid all our bills and repaid Mother what we owed her," explained Ethel Brown, "so now the boys can get some fresh cardboard and some chintz and cretonne and make some real beauties."
"Is this what James has been doing on Saturdays?"
"James is the best paster of all, he's so careful. He always makes his corners as neat as pins. Sometimes the other boys are careless."
"Then I don't see why James couldn't do some of this at home now. He has altogether too much time on his hands."
"Can't he study yet?"
"He learns his lessons but his father doesn't want him to go to school for at least a fortnight and perhaps not then, so he has long hours with nothing to do except read and it isn't good for him to do that all the time."
"We've got a lot of ideas for pasting that we've been waiting for time and cash to put into operation," said Helen who had come in in time to hear Mrs. Hancock's complaint. "If James could have an old table that you didn't mind his getting sticky, next to his wheel chair he could do a quantity of things that we want very much, and it would help, oh, tremendously."
"Tell me about them," and Mrs. Hancock sat down at once to receive her instructions. Helen brought a sheet of paper and made a list of materials to be bought and drew some of the articles over which she thought that James might be puzzled.
"Some of these ideas we got from magazines," she said, "and some people told us and some we invented ourselves. They aren't any of them very large."
"James will like that. It is more fun to turn off a number of articles. When he has an array standing on his table you must all go over to Glen Point and see them."
"We thought that perhaps you'd let us have a meeting of the U. S. C. at your house one Saturday afternoon, and we could take over some of our work to show James and we could see his, and we could work while we were there," suggested Helen diffidently.
"You're as good as gold to think of it! It will be the greatest pleasure to James. Shall we say this next Saturday?"
The girls agreed that that would be a good time, and Mrs. Hancock went home laden with materials for James's pasting operations and bearing the pleasant news of the coming of the Club to meet with him.
Long before the hour at which they were expected James rolled himself to the window to wait for their coming. Now that the leaves were off the trees he could just see the car stop at the end of the street and he watched eagerly for the flock of young people to run toward the house. It seemed an interminable wait, yet the car on which they had promised to come was not a minute late when at last it halted and its eager passengers stepped off. James could see the Ethels leading the procession, waving their hands toward the window at which they knew he must be, although they could not see him until they came much nearer.
Dorothy followed them not far behind, and Roger and Helen brought up the rear. Every one of them was laden with parcels of the strangest shapes.
"I know the conductor thought we were Santa Claus's own children," laughed Ethel Blue as they all shook hands with the invalid and inquired after his leg.
"We've come up to have a pasting bee," said Helen, "and we all have ideas for you to carry out."
"So have we," cried a new voice at the door, and Della and Tom came in, also laden with parcels and also bubbling with pleasure at seeing James so well again.
"We shall need quantities of smallish presents that you can manage here at your table just splendidly," explained Ethel Brown.
"And dozens of wrappings of various kinds that you can make, too."
"Great and glorious," beamed James. "'Lay on, Macduff.' I'll absorb every piece of information you give me, like a wet sponge."
"Let's do things in shipshape fashion," directed Roger. "What do you say to boxes first? We'll lay out here our patterns, and materials."
"Let's make one apiece of everything," cried Dorothy, "and leave them all for James to copy."
"And we can open the other bundles afterwards," said Della, "then those materials won't get mixed up with the box materials."
"Save the papers and strings," advised Ethel Brown. "We're going to need a fearful amount of both when wrapping time comes."
"The secretary has had a letter from Mademoiselle," Helen informed the invalid.
"Where from?" James was aflame with interest.
"She's in Belgium; you know she said she was going to try to be sent there. She doesn't mention the name of the town, but she's near enough to the front for wounded to be brought in from the field."
"And she can hear the artillery booming all the time," contributed Ethel Blue.
"And one day she went out right on to the firing line to give first aid."
"Think of that! Our little teacher!"
"She wasn't given those black eyes for nothing! She's game right through!" laughed Helen.
PASTING
"SOME of these ideas will be more appropriate for Christmas gifts here in America than for our war orphans, it seems to me," said Helen, "but we may as well make a lot of everything because we'll be doing some Christmas work as a club and nothing will be lost."
"Tell me what they are and I can do them last," said James.
"And we can put them on a shelf in the club attic as models," suggested Dorothy.
"Here's an example," said Helen, taking up a pasteboard cylinder. "This is a mailing tube—you know those mailing tubes that you can buy all made, of different sizes. We've brought down a lot of them to-day. Take this fat one, for instance, and cut it off about three inches down. Then cover it with chintz or cretonne or flowered paper or holly paper."
"Line it with the paper, too, I should say," commented James, picking up the pieces that Helen cut off.
"Yes, indeed. Cover two round pieces and fit one of them into the bottom and fasten the other on for a cover with a ribbon hinge, and there you have a box for string, or rubber bands for somebody's desk."
"O.K. for rubber bands," agreed Roger, "but forstring it would be better to make a hole in the cover and let the cord run up through."
String Box made from a Mailing TubeString Box made from a Mailing Tube
"How would you keep the cover from flopping up and down when you pulled the string?"
"Here's one very simple way. You know those fasteners that stationers sell to keep papers together? They have a brass head and two legs andwhen you've pushed the legs through the papers you press them apart and they can't pull out. One of those will do very well as a knob to go on the box part, and a loop of gold or silver cord or of ribbon can be pasted or tied on to the cover."
"If you didn't care whether it was ever used again you could put in the ball of twine with its end sticking through and then paste a band of paper around the joining of the top and the box. It would be pretty as long as the twine lasted."
"It would be a simple matter for the person who became its proud possessor to paste on another strip of paper when he had put in his new ball of twine."
"Any way you fix it," went on Helen, "there you have the general method of making round boxes from these mailing tubes."
"And you can use round boxes for a dozen purposes," said Margaret; "for candy and all the goodies we're going to send the orphans."
"Are you sure they'll keep?" asked careful James.
"Ethel Brown asked the domestic science teacher at school about that, and she's going to give her receipts for cookies and candies that will last at least six weeks. That will be long enough for the Christmas Ship to go over and to make the rounds of the ports where it is to distribute presents."
"Of course we'll make the eatables at the last minute," said Dorothy, "and we'll pack them so as to keep the air out as much as possible."
"Give that flour paste a good boiling," Helen called after Margaret as she left the room to prepare it.
"And don't forget the oil of cloves to keep it sweet," added Ethel Blue.
"These round boxes will be especially good for the cookies," said Ethel Brown, "though the string box would have to go to Father. A string box isn't especially suitable for an orphan."
"If you split these mailing tubes lengthwise and line them inside you get some pretty shapes," went on Helen.
"Rather shallow," commented Della.
"If you split them just in halves they are, but you don't have to do that. Split them a little above the middle and then the cover will be shallower than the box part."
"Right-o," nodded Roger.
"Then you line them and arrange the fastening and hinges just as you described for the string box?" asked James.
"Exactly the same. Another way of fastening them is by making little chintz straps and putting glove snappers on them."
"I don't see why you couldn't put ribbons into both cover and box part and tie them together."
"You could."
"You can use these split open ones for a manicure set or a brush and comb box for travelling."
"Or a handkerchief box."
"If you get tubes of different sizes and used military hair brushes you could make a box for a man, with a cover that slipped over for a long way," said Ethel Blue. "It would be just like the leather ones."
"You make one of those for Uncle Richard for Christmas," advised Ethel Brown. "I rather think the orphans aren't keen on military brushes."
"Oh, I'm just talking out any ideas that come along. As Helen suggested, an idea is always usefulsome time or other even if it won't do for to-day's orphans."
"I saw a dandy box the other day that we might have put into Mademoiselle's kit," said Roger. "It's a good thing to remember for some other traveller."
"Describe," commanded James.
"I don't think these round boxes would be as convenient for it as a square or oblong one. It had a ball of string and a tube of paste and a pair of small scissors, and tags of different sizes and rubber bands and labels with gum on the back."
"That's great for a desk top," said Della. "I believe I'll make one for Father for his birthday," and she nodded toward Tom who nodded back approvingly.
"A big blotter case is another desk gift. The back is of very stiff cardboard and the corners are of chintz or leather. The blotters are slipped under the corners and are kept flat by them," continued Roger, who had noticed them because of their leather corners.
"A lot of small blotters tied together are easy to put up," contributed Dorothy. "You can have twelve, if you want to, and paste a calendar for a month on to each one."
"I think we ought to make those plain boxes the boys have made for the dresses a little prettier. Can't we ornament them in some way?" asked Ethel Blue.
"The made-over ones are all covered with fancy paper you remember," said Tom.
"I was thinking of the plain ones that are 'neat but not gaudy.' How can we make them 'gaudy'?"
"Christmas seals are about as easy a decoration as you can get," Tom suggested.
"Pretty, too. Those small seals, you mean, that you put on letters. A Santa Claus or a Christmas tree or a poinsettia would look pretty on the smaller sized boxes."
"It would take a lot of them to show much on the larger ones, and that would make them rather expensive. Can't we think up something cheaper?" asked the treasurer.
"I'm daffy over wall paper," cried Dorothy. "I went with Mother to pick out some for one of our rooms the other day and the man showed us such beauties—they were like paintings."
"And cost like paintings, too," growled James feelingly.
"Some of them did," admitted Dorothy. "But I asked him if he didn't have remnants sometimes. He laughed and said they didn't call them remnants but he said they did have torn pieces and for ten cents he gave me a regular armful. Just look at these beauties."
She held up for the others' inspection some pieces of paper with lovely flower designs upon them.
"But those bits aren't big enough to cover a big box and the patterns are too large to show except on a big box," objected Margaret who had come back with the paste.
"Here's where they're just the thing for decoration of the plain boxes. Cut out this perfectly darling wistaria—so. Could you find anything more graceful than that? You'd have to be an artist to do anything so good. Paste that sweeping, drooping vine with its lovely cluster of blossoms on to thetop of one of the largest boxes and that's plenty of decoration."
Dorothy waved her vine in one hand and her scissors in the other and the rest became infected with her enthusiasm, for the scraps of paper that she had brought were exquisite in themselves and admirable for the purpose she suggested.
"Good for Dorothy!" hurrahed James. "Anybody else got any ideas on this decoration need?"
"Paste that vine on to the top of one of the largest boxes""Paste that vine on to the top of one of the largest boxes"
"I have," came meekly from Ethel Brown. "It isn't very novel but it will work, and it will save money and it's easy."
"Trot her forth," commanded Roger.
"It's silhouettes."
Silence greeted this suggestion.
"They're not awfully easy to do," said Helen doubtfully.
"Not when you make them out of black paper, and you have to draw on the pattern or trace it on and you can hardly see the lines and you get all fussed up over it," acknowledged Ethel. "I've tried that way and I almost came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the trouble I put into it unless you happened to be a person who can cut them right out without drawing them first."
"I saw a man do that at a bazar once," said Della. "It was wonderful. He illustrated Cinderella. He cut out a coach and tiny horses and the old fairy without drawing anything at all beforehand."
"Nothing doing here," Tom pushed away an imaginary offer of scissors and black paper.
"Here's where my grand idea comes in," insisted Ethel Brown. "My idea is to cut out of the magazines any figures that please you."
"Figures with action would be fun," suggested Roger.
"They'd be prettiest, too. You'll find them in the advertising pages as well as in the stories. Paste them on to your box or whatever you want to decorate, and then go over them with black oil paint."
"Good for old Ethel Brown!" applauded her brother. "I didn't think you had it in you, child! Have you ever tried it?"
"Yes, sir, I have. I knew I'd probably meet with objections from an unimaginative person like you, so I decorated this cover and brought it along as a sample."
It proved to be an idea as dashing as it was simple. Ethel Brown had selected a girl rolling a hoop. A dog, cut from another page, was bounding beside her. Some delicate foliage at one side hinted at a landscape.
"Wasn't it hard not to let the black run over the edges of the picture?" asked Della.
"Yes, you have to keep your wits about you all the time. But then you have to do that any way if you want what you're making to amount to anything, so that doesn't count."
"That's a capital addition, that suggestion of ground that you made with a whisk or two of the brush."
"Just a few lines seem to give the child something to stand on."
"These plans for decoration look especially good to me," said practical James, "because there's nothing to stick up on them. They'll pack easily and that's what we must have for our purpose."
"That's true," agreed Helen. "For doing up presents that don't have to travel it's pretty to cut petals of red poinsettia and twist them with wire and make a flower that you can tuck in under the string that you tie the parcel with—"
"Or a bit of holly. Holly is easily made out of green crêpe paper or tissue paper," cried Della.
"But as James says, none of the boxes for the orphans can have stick-ups or they'll look like mashed potatoes when they reach the other side."
"We'll stow away the poinsettia idea for home presents then," said Margaret. "What we want from James, however, is a lot of boxes of any and every size that he can squeeze out."
"No scraps thrown away, old man," decreed Tom, "for even a cube of an inch each way will hold a few sweeties."
"Orders received and committed to memory," acknowledged the invalid, saluting.
"By the way, I learned an awfully interesting thing to-day," said Helen.
"Name it," commanded Roger, busy with knife and pastepot making one of the twine and tag boxes that he had described.
"I'll tell you while we each make one of the thingswe've been talking about so that we can leave them for patterns with James."
Dorothy had already set about applying her wistaria vine to the cover of a box whose body Tom was putting together. Ethel Blue was making a string box from a mailing tube, covering it with a scrap of chintz with a very small design; Ethel Brown was hunting in an old magazine for figures suitable for making silhouettes; James was writing in a notebook the various hints that had been bestowed upon him so generously that he feared his memory would not hold them all without help; Helen and Della were measuring and cutting some cotton cloth that was to be used in the gifts that Della was eager to tell about.
"By the time Helen has told her tale I'll be ready to explain my gift idea," she said.
"Go on, then, Helen," urged James, "I'm ready to 'start something' myself, in a minute."
"You and Margaret have heard us talk about our German teacher?"
"We've seen her," said Margaret. "She was at our entertainment."
"So she was. I remember, she and her mother sat right behind the old ladies from the Home."
"And they knitted for the soldiers whenever the lights were up."
"I guess Mrs. Hindenburg knitted when the lights were off, too," said Helen. "I've seen her knitting with her eyes shut."
"She sent in some more wristers for the orphans the other day," said Dorothy. "She has made seven pairs so far, and three scarfs and two little sweaters."
"Some knitter," announced Roger.
"Fräulein knits all the time, too, but she says shecan't keep up with her mother. This is what I wanted to tell you—you remember when Roger first went there she told him that Fräulein's betrothed was in the German army. Well, yesterday she told us who he is."
"Is it all right for you to tell us?" warned Roger.
"It's no secret. She said that the engagement was to have been announced as soon as he got back from Germany and that many people knew it already."
"Is he an American German?"
"It's our own Mr. Schuler."
Roger gave a whistle of surprise; the Ethels cried out in wonder, and the Hancocks and the Watkinses who did not know many Rosemont people, waited for the explanation.
"Mr. Schuler was the singing teacher in the high school year before last and last year," explained Helen. "Last spring he had to go back to Germany in May so he was there when the army was mobilized and went right to the front."
"It does come near home when you actually know a soldier fighting in the German army and a nurse in a hospital on the Allies' side," said Roger thoughtfully.
"It makes it a lot more exciting to know who Fräulein's betrothed is."
"Does she speak of him?" asked Margaret.
"She talked about him very freely yesterday after her mother mentioned his name."
"I suppose she didn't want the high school kids gossiping about him," observed Roger.
"As we are," interposed James.
"We aren't gossiping," defended Helen. "She looks on the Club members as her special friends—shesaid so. She knows we wouldn't go round at school making a nine days' wonder of it. She knows we're fond of her."
"We are," agreed Roger. "She's a corker. I wonder we didn't think of its being Mr. Schuler."
"Her mother always mentioned him as 'my daughter's betrothed'; and Fräulein yesterday kept saying 'my betrothed.' We might have gone on in ignorance for a long time if Mrs. Hindenburg hadn't let it slip out yesterday."
"Well, I hope he'll come through with all his legs and arms uninjured," said Roger. "I hope it for Fräulein's sake, and for his, too. He's a bully singing teacher."
"Has she heard from him since the war began?"
"Several times, but not for a month now, and she's about crazy with anxiety. He was in Belgium when he got the last letter through and of course that means that he has been in the very thick of it all."
"Poor Fräulein!" sighed Ethel Blue, and the others nodded seriously over their work.
JAMES'S AFTERNOON PARTY
"NOW are you ready to take in all the difficulties of my art object?" asked Della.
"Trot her out," implored James.
"It's picture books."
A distinct sniff went over the assembly, only kept in check by a desire to be polite.
"There can't be anything awfully new about picture books," said Tom.
"Especially cloth picture books. You and Helen have been cutting out cambric for cloth picture books," accused Ethel Brown.
"Della has been making some variations, though." Helen came to Della's rescue. "She's made some with the leaves all one color, pink or blue; and here's another one with a variety—two pages light pink, and the next two pages pale green."
Ethel Brown cast a more interested eye toward the picture book display.
"How do you sew them together?" she asked.
"You can do it on the machine and let it go at that. In fact, that's the best plan even if you go on to add some decoration of feather-stitching or cat-stitching. The machine stitching makes it firmer."
"Is there an interlining?"
"I tried them with and without an interlining. I don't think an interlining is necessary. The two thicknesses of cambric are all you need."
"Dicky has a cloth book with just one thickness for each page," said Ethel Brown.
"But that's made of very heavy cotton," explained Helen.
"You cut your cambric like a sheet of note-paper," said Della.
"Haven't my lessons on scientific management soaked in better than that?" demanded Roger. "If you want to save time you cut just as many sheets of note-paper, so to speak, as your scissors will go through."
"Certainly," retorted Della with dignity. "I took it for granted that the members of the U. S. C. had learned that. Put two sheets of this cambric note-paper together flat and stitch them. That makes four pages to paste on, you see. You can make your book any size you want to and have just as many pages as you need to tell your story on."
"Story? What story?" asked Ethel Blue, interestedly.
"Aha! I thought you'd wake up!" laughed Della. "Here, my children, is where my book differs from most of the cloth picture books that you ever saw. My books aren't careless collections of pictures, with no relation to each other. Here's a cat book, for instance. Not just every-day cats, though I've put in lots of cats and some kodaks of my own cat. There are pictures of the big cats—lions and tigers—and I've put in some scenery so that the child who gets this book will have an idea of what sort of country the beasts really live in."
"It's a natural history book," declared James.
"Partly. But it winds up with 'The True Story of Thomas's Nine Lives.'"
"The kid it is going to won't know English," objected Roger.
"Oh, I haven't written it out. It's just told in pictures with 1, 2, 3, through 9 at the head of each page. They'll understand."
"Do you see what an opportunity the different colored cambric gives?" said Helen. "Sometimes Della uses colored pictures or she paints them, and then she makes the background harmonize with the coloring of the figures."
"Why couldn't you make a whole book of my silhouettes?" demanded Ethel Brown.
"Bully!" commended James.
"You can work out all sorts of topics in these books, you see," Della went on. "There are all the fairy stories to illustrate and 'Red Riding Hood,' and the 'Bears,' and when you get tired of making those you can have one about 'The Wonders of America,' and put in Niagara."
"And the Rocky Mountains," said Tom.
"And the Woolworth Building," suggested Ethel Brown.
"And a cotton field with the negroes picking cotton," added Ethel Blue.
"There wouldn't be any trouble getting material for that one," said Helen.
"Nor for one on any American city. I've got one started that is going to show New York from the statue of Liberty to the Jumel Mansion and the Van Cortland House, with a lot of other historical buildings and skyscrapers and museums in between."
"We'll be promoting emigration from the old country after the war is over if we show the youngstersall the attractions that Uncle Sam has to offer."
"There'll be a lot of them come over anyway so they might as well learn what they'll see when they arrive."
"I see heaps of opportunities in that idea," said Roger. "There's a chance to teach the kiddies something by these books if we're careful to be truthful in the pictures we put in."
"Not to make monkeys swinging down the forests of Broadway, eh?" laughed Tom.
"If I'm to do a million or two of these you'll all have to help me get the pictures together," begged James.
"I've brought some with me you can have for a starter," said Della, "and I'm collecting others and keeping them in separate envelopes—animals in one and buildings in another and so on. It will make it easier for you."
"Muchas gracias, Señorita," bowed James, who was just beginning Spanish and liked to air a "Thank you" occasionally.
"I know what I'm going to make for some member of my family," declared Roger.
"Name it, it will be such a surprise when it comes."
"Probably it will go to Grandmother Emerson so I don't mind telling you that I think I'll write a history of our summer at Chautauqua and illustrate it."
"That's the best notion that ever came from Roger," approved James. "I think I'll make one and give it to Father. The Recognition Day procession and all that, you know."
"Envelopes make me think that we may have some small gifts—cards or handkerchiefs—that wecan send in envelopes," said Ethel Blue, "and we ought to decorate them just as much as our boxes."
"They won't be hard. Any of the ideas we've suggested for the boxes will do—flowers and silhouettes, and seals. You're a smarty with watercolors so you can paint some original figures or a tiny landscape, but the rest of us will have to keep to the pastepot," laughed Margaret.
"For home gifts we can write rhymes to put into the envelopes, but I suppose it wouldn't do for these European kids," said Tom. "We don't know where they're going, you see, and it would never do if an English child got a German rhyme or the other way round."
"O-oh, ne-ver," gasped Ethel Blue whose quick imagination sympathized with the feelings of a child to whom such a thing happened. "We'll have to make them understand through their eyes."
"Fortunately Santa Claus with his pack speaks a language they can all understand," nodded Roger.
"Here comes his humble servant right now," exclaimed Mrs. Hancock at the door.
Tom ran to hold it open for her, and Roger relieved her of the waiter which she was carrying.
"James has to have an egg-nog at this time," she explained, "so I thought all of you might like to be 'picked up' after your hard afternoon's work."
These sentiments were greeted with applause though Tom insisted that the best part of the afternoon was yet to come as he had not yet had a chance to tell about his invention.
"One that you'll appreciate tremendously, Mrs. Hancock," he said gravely. "All housekeepers will. You must get Margaret to make you one."
"Don't tell her what it is and I can give it to her for Christmas," cried Margaret.
James's egg-nog and his wafers were placed on the table beside him. The others sat at small tables, of which there were several around the room, and drank their egg-nog and ate their cakes with great satisfaction.
"Tell me how this egg-nog is made," begged Helen. "It is delicious and I'm sure Mother would like to know."
"Mother always has it made the same way," replied Margaret. "I'm sure it is concocted out of six eggs and half a pound of sugar, and three pints of whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg."
"It's so foamy—that isn't the whipped cream alone."
"First you beat the yolks of the eggs and the sugar together until it is all frothy. Then you beat the whites of the eggs by themselves until they are stiff and you stir that in gently. Then you put the spice on top of that and lastly you heap the whipped cream on top of the whole thing."
"It's perfectly delicious," exclaimed Dorothy, "and so is the fruit cake."
"Mother prides herself on her fruit cake. It is good, isn't it? She's going to let me make some to send to the orphans."
"Won't that be great. Baked in ducky little pans like these."
"They'll keep perfectly, of course."
"Would your mother let us have the receipt now so we could be practicing it to make some too?" asked Dorothy.
"I'm sure she'd be delighted," and Margaret ran off to get her mother's manuscript cook book from which Dorothy copied the following receipt: