DOROTHY COOKS
DOROTHY and her mother had a room in a house near the trolley gate. When they had first come to Chautauqua the year before a sign in front of the house had attracted their attention. It read:
LIGHT HOUSEKEEPINGPERMITTED
Light housekeeping was just what Mrs. Smith wanted to do, so she made inquiries and was able to complete arrangements so satisfactory that she went to the same place when she returned for this second summer.
There were several reasons why she did not want to go to a boarding house. In the first place she wanted to have her expenses as small as possible, and in the next she wanted to teach Dorothy something about cooking, for she believed that every girl ought to know something of this important branch of home-making and in the wandering lifethey had led it had not always been possible for them to live otherwise than in a boarding house.
"You can take the domestic science work at the Girls' Club," she had said, "and then we can have our little home here and you can apply your knowledge for our own benefit."
So well had this plan worked and so competent had Dorothy become in simple cooking that this summer she was specializing in cooking for invalids.
"It's mighty lucky I took the invalids' cooking," she exclaimed as her mother came in from the art store at noon the day after the fire, and sat down to the nice little dinner that Dorothy had prepared.
"It's one of the things that may be valuable to you in many ways and at any time."
"It's valuable now. Have I told you about my friends at the Girls' Club, two cousins, both named Ethel Morton?"
"Morton? What are their fathers' names? Where do they live?" said Mrs. Smith, speaking more quickly than was usual with her.
"I don't know their fathers' names—their fathers aren't here."
"Oh!" Mrs. Smith leaned back in her chair as if she were especially weary.
"They live in the cottage that was burned yesterday."
"They do! I wonder, then, if it wasn't one of them that brought a little boy to the art store while the fire was going on."
"Did she call him Dicky?"
"Yes, Dicky."
"Did the girl have blue eyes or brown?"
"I didn't notice—or, yes, I believe I did—they were blue."
"That was Ethel Blue, then. They call the other one Ethel Brown to tell them apart. This morning they didn't come to the club because they had so much to do to put their new cottage in order, but Ethel Brown ran in just for a minute to ask me if I could cook some special things for her grandfather while he was sick. He was hurt yesterday at the fire."
"Oh, poor man."
"It's not very serious, Ethel Brown says, only he's bruised and he swallowed a lot of smoke and he can't eat what the rest of them do."
"Haven't they a maid?"
"They only have one here, and she has been Dicky's nurse until a little while ago, and he got so scared yesterday that he's almost sick to-day and keeps calling for Mary all the time. So Mrs. Morton is cooking for the family and she can't manage to do special things for her father."
"Do they want you to go there?"
"The kitchen is too small. That's why the grandmother or the older sister doesn't do it. They want me to make broths and jellies and things at home here and take them down there."
"You must do your very best, dear. It will be a splendid chance for you to take such a responsibility."
"The doctor says Mr. Emerson is to have chicken broth and toast at three o'clock, so I went to theirhouse after the club and got a tray and a small bowl and some plates, and then stopped at the meat market on the way home, so the broth is started now."
She waved her hand toward the corner of the room where the low-turned flame of a gas plate was causing a soft simmering in a large saucepan.
"You put the chicken in cold water, didn't you, to draw the goodness out?"
"Yes, indeed. I cut up the chicken and cracked the bones so that all that inside goodness wouldn't be wasted. A quart and a pint of water covered it well and it's going to stay on until the meat all falls to pieces. That will be about three hours from the time I put it on."
"Are you going to put rice in it?"
"I'm going to take down the rice in a separate little bowl this time because I don't know whether Mr. Emerson likes rice."
"Be sure you don't over-cook it. Every grain should be separate."
"I learned the very simplest way to cook rice. Wash it and put it into boiling salted water, a quart of water to a cupful of rice. Putting the rice in will stop the boiling, so when it boils up again you give it just one stir to keep the kernels from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan. You mustn't stir it any more or you'll break the grains. It will be done in about twenty minutes. Then you pour it lightly into a colander and turn it lightly from the colander into your serving dish, and there you are, every grain separate."
"If you save the rice water it serves as a vegetable stock for a soup."
"Our teacher told us a story about the value of rice water. It was in a famine time in India and some of the natives went to the English and said that if they could have the water the camp rice was cooked in they wouldn't ask for anything else."
"They knew how strong and good it is. Mr. Emerson won't want more than a cupful of chicken broth this afternoon—what are you going to do with the rest of it?"
"One gill of it will make chicken custard with the beaten yolks of two eggs and a pinch of salt. You cook it in a double boiler until it is thick."
"That ought to taste good and be nourishing, too."
"I shall put on another gill of the broth, with a teaspoonful of Irish moss if I can find the kind that is prepared in powder form. After that has boiled about fifteen minutes I shall strain it through a piece of cheesecloth into a cup and when it has stiffened and I'm ready to serve it, I'll turn it out on a pretty little plate and lay a sprig of parsley on top."
"That will just about use up the broth from one chicken."
"I can give Mr. Emerson a variety by making mutton broth. A quart of cold water to a pound of meat is the right proportion, and then you make it just like chicken broth."
"You mustn't forget to trim off all the fat you can before you put it in, and to skim off any bubbles of fat that rise to the top."
"I shan't make any beef tea unless they ask for it especially, because the doctors say nowadays that there isn't much nourishment in it, it's just stimulating. I shall give my patient cereals and porridges made exactly according to the directions that are on the boxes."
"A thoroughly baked white potato served piping hot is delicious. Break it open at the last minute and put into it a dab of butter and a teaspoon of cream and a wee bit of salt, and a dash of pepper if your patient can stand pepper. A baked potato goes well with a broiled breast of chicken."
"If this 'case' of mine lasts long enough so that I have to make more chicken broth I shall cut off the breast before I cut up the chicken for the broth."
"Broil it until it is quite brown, and after you have put it on a warm plate ready to serve, add a tiny dab of butter and a little salt. Do the same with a lamb chop, and be sure that every bit of meat except the choice mouthful or two is cut away before you cook it."
"I shan't let the butcher trim it, though. Those bits that come off help out in a soup."
"Tapioca jelly is something you must try for one of your invalid's desserts."
"The doctor said he must have fruits mostly, but I'd like to try the tapioca once."
"Take half a cupful of tapioca and two cupfuls of water, the juice and a little of the grated rind of half a lemon, and a teaspoonful of sugar. Soak the tapioca in the water for four hours. Stir in the sugar just as you put it all in the double boiler.Cook it for about three-quarters of an hour. You should stir it often and it ought to be perfectly clear when it is done. Stir in the lemon at the last minute and then pour it into cups or molds."
"That sounds good to me. I think I'll try it for our own dessert some day."
"When you make toast always be careful to cut your slices of bread all of the same thickness and to cut off the crusts. Then warm the slices first and afterwards brown them delicately. When you make milk toast butter the slices and sprinkle on a few grains of salt and then pour over them a cupful of boiling milk thickened with half a teaspoonful of flour. Do it carefully. It is care about little things that makes a dish palatable for an invalid, you must remember."
"Della Watkins gave me some flowers to-day, so I shall have one to put on the waiter."
"I want to tell you, dear, why I am especially glad that you are having this opportunity to show that you can put your knowledge into actual practice."
"I did last winter when I made the baskets for Christmas."
"You did wonderfully. You've noticed that I am always advising you to learn things that will be valuable to you. I mean valuable in a money way as well as in giving pleasure to yourself and others."
Dorothy curled up in her mother's lap and made a soft hum of assent.
"The reason I've done that is because I've seen our little stock of money growing smaller andsmaller all the time. Last winter I didn't make quite enough at the art store to support us both, and I had to draw on our principal in spite of your doing so splendidly with your baskets."
"But this summer you're all right, aren't you?"
"This summer I am meeting our expenses, but I'm not laying by a penny, and when the season ends here I don't know where we shall go or what I can do. So you see that every cent you are able to make is a great help."
"If I prepare these things all right for Ethel's grandfather I won't be scared if I have a chance to do it again."
"Certainly you won't. Every success gives confidence."
"We might start a kitchen somewhere in an especially unhealthy neighborhood and I could make invalids' stuff all the time at a hundred dollars a tray."
Mrs. Smith laughed.
"That's not such a bad idea," she agreed. "At any rate we must always have faith that work of some sort will be given to us. It hasn't failed as yet, even when things looked pretty bad."
"There was a postcard in the picture booth in the pergola the other day that said,Have Faith and Hustle."
"That's good advice.Prudencewithout worry andenergywithout scatteration of mind andfaithwoven into it all; that's my gospel."
After her mother had gone, Dorothy took out a pad and pencil and made a list of broths and dishes which she already knew how to make andanother that she meant to ask her cooking teacher about. She knew that she had only to tell her teacher that she was putting her information into actual practice and she would have all the help that she needed. She wanted to rely on herself as much as she could, however.
If there was just a shade of doubt in the back of her mind about the success of her cooking it was gone when she went in to Mr. Emerson's room to take away the tray after he had finished his first meal of her preparation.
"Perfectly delicious, child," he whispered hoarsely, for his throat was still sore. "I shall want to be a king and engage you for my personal cook even after I get well. I think I can tackle another of those excellent combinations of yours in about four hours."
Dorothy was delighted and for the whole of the busiest week of her life she worked hard not only to have her cooking delicious, but to have the trays attractive. She never used the same cup and saucer twice in succession; at the shop in the business block she found funny little jelly molds for a few cents apiece, and Mr. Emerson never failed to notice that to-day he had a miniature jelly rabbit and the next day a tiny jelly watermelon.
Mrs. Hancock let her forage in her china closet and she found there bowls of many patterns, the odds and ends of the home china sent here for summer use.
"They're exactly what I want," Dorothy cried and went off with them in triumph. There was alwaysa bit of parsley or watercress or a tender leaf of lettuce with the first part of the meal and a posy with the dessert.
"I want especially to thank you for one care you've taken," said Mr. Emerson on the day when he regretfully dismissed his cook with a roll of crisp bills in her capable hand. "I want to thank you for always having the hot thingsreally hotand the cold thingsreally cold."
THE SPELLING MATCH
THE evening of the Annual Spelling Match was one of those when the whole Emerson-Morton family down to Dicky went to the Amphitheatre. Usually Mary or one of the older members of the family stayed at home with the children. On this occasion, however, Mr. Emerson had announced that he intended to take part in the match so everybody was eager to be present to encourage him.
The Amphitheatre was fuller than they had seen it yet when they reached it and made their way as far forward as possible so that they might hear all that was said.
"Evidently this is popular," remarked Mr. Emerson to his daughter as he took his seat next to her, placing himself at the end of the bench so that he could get into the aisle quickly when the time came. There seemed to be an unusual spirit of gayety in the audience, they thought, for many people were being playfully urged by their friends to go up on to the stage, and others who had made up their minds to go were being coached by their companions who were giving out words from the C.L.S.C. books for them to practice on.
A short flight of steps had been arranged at the front of the platform on which two rows of chairswere placed ready for the contestants. At the back a large table was loaded with heavy dictionaries for the use of the judges who were to decide any questions of doubt.
A burst of applause greeted the Director of the Institution as he walked forward and introduced the announcer of words, a college president. After giving a short history of the Annual Spelling Match, which dated back to the early days of the Assembly, he announced that the contest of the evening was to be between representatives of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio on one side and the Rest of the World on the other.
Amid the laughter that followed the announcement Helen whispered to Margaret who sat next to her—
"Why New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio?"
"They send more people here than any of the other states. You ought to see them stand up on Old First Night! There are hordes of them."
The Director went on to state the rules that were to govern the contestants. They must be over fifteen years old. They might ask to have a word pronounced again but they could have only one chance to spell it. A spelling was to be accepted as correct if it were confirmed by any of the dictionaries on the stage—Worcester, Webster, the Standard, and the Century. The judges were professors from the faculty of the Summer Schools and their decision was to be final. No one who had taken a prize in previous years might enter. Lastly,a ten dollar gold piece was to add an extra inducement to enter the contest and to give an extra pleasure to the winner.
"Now," he concluded, "will the gladiators come forward, stating as they step on the platform on which side they are to fight."
There was a moment's pause until a courageous few advanced to the front. The Director announced their partisanship. They were all, as it happened, from New York, Pennsylvania, or Ohio and they sat down on the chairs at the right of the audience.
The next detachment added two to their number and half a dozen to the other side. Mr. Emerson was in the next group to go forward.
"There's my mother behind your grandfather," whispered Dorothy, who was between the two Ethels. They saw a slender woman with a mass of snow-white hair piled above a fresh face.
"It's the lady who took care of Dicky and me the day of the fire," cried Ethel Blue.
Bursts of applause greeted people who were well known. The editor of a newspaper in a near-by town was one of these favored ones and a teacher of stenography was another. Between the detachments the Director cheered on the laggards with humorous remarks, and after each joke there was sure to be heard from one part of the Amphitheatre or another a loudly whispered "You go" followed by a shrinking, "Oh, no, you go!"
At last all the Tri-state chairs were filled while there remained two vacant places on the side of the Rest of the World.
"It looks as if the Rest of the World was afraid to stand up against New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio," exclaimed the Director. "This can't be true!"
There was another pause and then two women rose at the same time. They were received by a hearty round of clapping.
"Do you see who it is? Roger, Roger, do you see?" cried Helen, leaning across Margaret to touch her brother's knee.
"Good for her. Isn't she the spunky mother!" answered Roger, while at the same moment Margaret and James were exclaiming, "Why, there's our mother, too, going up with yours!"
So the two brave little ladies took the last two seats for the defence of the Rest of the World and the announcer began to give out the words to the waiting fifty.
It took only a minute to bring trouble, for a Tri-state woman went down on "typographical." Others followed in rapid succession, every failure being as heartily applauded as every success. By the time that a girl misspelled "ebullitions" only seven representatives of the Rest of the World were left. A Kentuckian who had overpowered some giants was beaten by "centripetal"; Grandfather Emerson's omission of a "p" in "handicapped," Mrs. Morton's desperate but unavailing struggle with the "l's" in "unparalleled," and Mrs. Hancock'sinsertion of an undesirable "e" in "judgment" reduced the ranks of both sides to a brave pair of Tri-states faced by a solitary cosmopolitan.
"It's Mother, it's Mother," whispered Dorothy, clapping frantically, while the two Ethels told everybody near them, "It's Dorothy's mother. Isn't she splendid!"
"Correlation" and "exhilaration" were the bombs whose explosion swept away the last of the Tri-state forces, and Dorothy's mother stood alone, the winner of the prize.
"That was Dorothy's mother who took the prize," repeated Ethel Brown in high spirits to her grandmother as she took her arm to pilot her home.
"Dorothy's mother! Why, that is the Mrs. Smith who is my embroidery teacher at the art store."
"It is! How lovely for you to know Dorothy's mother. Ethel, Granny knows Dorothy's mother. She teaches her embroidery," called Ethel to her cousin.
"Don't you know Dorothy said her mother was teaching embroidery in an art store in Illinois last winter? Oh, I almost want to learn from her myself."
"Stick to your stenciling, child," said Mrs. Morton. "Does Dorothy embroider?"
"We don't know; we'll ask her," cried the two girls in chorus, and Ethel Brown added; "she makes ten kinds of baskets, and this year she's doing stenciling in my class, and her mother says that if she does it as well as she did the baskets, she can studynext year at the Arts and Crafts Shops with the grown people."
"She must have inherited her mother's clever fingers," commented Mrs. Morton.
Roger and Helen, who had been walking with James and Margaret, stopped at their house and sat on the porch to round out this privileged evening until ten o'clock. The moonlight shone brilliantly on the lake and at its upper end, two or three miles away, the lights of Mayville twinkled through the trees. Boats and canoes were drawing in toward the shore, for Chautauqua custom demands that every one be at home by ten o'clock, and that quiet reign so that the people who have studying to do or are obliged to rise early for their classes and so must go to bed early may not be disturbed.
Some of the boats landed at the dock just below the Hancocks' house and their occupants stepped on the wet planks with happy shrieks of laughter; others went on to the lower dock in front of the hotel.
"It always says in books that moonlight is romantic," said Roger. "I don't see where the romance comes in; it's just easier to see your way round."
There were cries of protest from the two girls.
"Girls always howl when you say a thing like that," went on Roger, "as if a fellow was a hard-hearted fool, but I'd like to have you tell me where there is any romance in real life—any outside of books, I mean."
He stared challengingly at James as if he expectedhim either to support him or to contradict him, but James was a slow thinker and said nothing. Helen rushed in breathlessly.
"It's just the way you put things together. If you want to look at it that way there are things happening all the time that would look romantic in a story."
"What, I'd like to know," demanded Roger. "Tell just one thing."
"Why—why—" Helen hesitated, trying to put her feelings into words; "why, take to-night when Grandmother found out that it was Dorothy's mother she had been taking embroidery lessons from. Somehow that seems to me romantic—to know one person and to know another person and then to find that they are relations."
Helen ended rather lamely, for Roger was shouting with laughter.
"That sounds mighty commonplace to me," he roared.
"It would sound all right if a writer worked it up in a book." James suddenly came to Helen's rescue to her great gratification. "We've got a romance in our family," he went on.
"We have!" cried Margaret. "What is it?"
"Perhaps it wouldn't seem like one to Roger," went on James, "but it always seemed to me it was romantic because it was different from the way things happen every day, and there was a chance for a surprise in it."
"I know what you mean," cried Margaret. "Great-uncle George."
"Yes," acknowledged James. "He was our father's uncle and he was a young man at the time of the Civil War. Fathers were sterner then than they are now and Uncle George's father—Dad's grandfather—insisted that he should go into a certain kind of business that he didn't like. They had some fierce quarrels and Uncle George ran off to the war and they never heard from him again."
"Didn't he ever write home?"
"They never got any letter from him," said Margaret. "His mother always blamed herself that she didn't write to him over and over again, even if she didn't get any answer, so that he would know that somebody kept on loving him and looking for him to come back. But Great-grandfather forbade her to, and I guess she must have been meeker than women are now, just as Great-grandfather was stricter."
"Father says," went on James, "that all through his boyhood he used to hope that his uncle would turn up, perhaps awfully rich or perhaps with adventures to tell about. Now I call that romantic, don't you, old man?" ended James defiantly.
"Seems to me it would have been if he had turned up, but he didn't," retorted Roger, determined not to yield.
"We have a disappearance story in our family, too," said Helen. "I'd forgotten it. It's nearer than yours; it's our own aunt. Don't you remember, Roger? Mother told us about it, once."
"That's so; so we have. Now thatisromantic," asserted Roger.
"Let's hear it and see if it beats ours," said James.
"It was our Aunt Louise, Father's and Uncle Richard's sister. She was older than they. She fell in love with a man her father didn't like."
"Ho," grunted James; "that's why you think your story is romantic—because there's some love in it."
"It does make it more romantic, of course," declared Margaret, going over to the other side.
"He was a musician and Grandfather Morton didn't think music was a man's business. People used to be funny about things like that you know."
"That was because musicians and painters used to go round with long hair looking like jays." So James summed up the causes of the previous generation's dislike of the masters of the arts.
"I don't know whether Aunt Louise's musician was long on hair or not, but he was short on cash all right," Roger took up the story. "Grandfather said he couldn't support a wife and Aunt Louise said she'd take the chance, and so they ran away."
"She had more sand than sense, seems to me—if you'll excuse my commenting on your aunt," said James.
"She had plenty of sand. She must have found out pretty soon that Grandfather was right, but she wouldn't ask for help or come home again, and after a while they didn't hear from her any more and now nobody knows where she is."
"I'm like your father, James," said Helen; "I always feel that some time she may turn up and tell us her adventures."
"She must have been very brave and very loyal," murmured Margaret. "What did she look like? Was she pretty?"
"I haven't any idea. Mother never saw her. She left home before Mother and Father were married."
"Father spoke to me about her once," said Roger gravely.
"Did he really?" cried Helen. "Mother told me he hadn't mentioned her for years, it hurt him so to lose her."
"He told me she was the finest girl he ever knew except Mother, and he thought Grandfather made a mistake in not helping the fellow along and then letting Aunt Louise marry him. You see he sort of drove her into it by opposing her."
"Wouldn't it be great if both our relatives should turn up," cried Helen. "I suppose your uncle is too old now, even if he's alive, but our aunt really may."
"Then Roger'll have to admit that there's romance in real life."
"There are the chimes; we must go," said Roger as "Annie Laurie" pealed out on the fresh evening air, and the Morton brother and sister said "Good-night" to the Hancock sister and brother and went down the path to their own cottage where Roger left Helen and then went on up the hill to his room in the Hall of Pedagogy.
GRANDFATHER ARRANGES HIS TIME
The Mortons breakfasted rather later than most people at Chautauqua. This was on Roger's account. He had to put his building into perfect order before the classes began to assemble at eight in the morning. He always did some of his sweeping the afternoon before after the students had left the Hall, but there was plenty of work for him in the early hour after he had reluctantly rolled off his cot. He had grown up with the Navy and Army ideals of extreme neatness, and experience was teaching him now that if he expected to have the rooms as tidy as his father would want to see them he must go to bed early and rise not long after the sun poked his rosy head over the edge of the lake.
"Nix on sitting up to hear the chimes," he confided to the family at breakfast the morning after the Spelling Match. "Last night's the first time I've heard them in a week. That room is worth a lot to me just for the feeling it's giving me that I'm earning it, and I'm going to pay good honest work for it if it busts me."
"'Bust' means, I suppose, if you have to go to bed early and work till almost eight in the morning to do it," translated his mother. "You're quite right, my dear; that's what your father would wantyou to do. And none of us here have eight o'clock classes so we can just as well as not have our breakfast at eight and have the pleasure of seeing you here opposite me."
Ever since he was a little boy Roger had sat in his father's seat when Lieutenant Morton was on duty. He felt that it was a privilege and that because of it he represented the head of the family and must shoulder some of his father's responsibilities. It made his behavior toward his mother and sisters and Ethel Blue and Dicky far more grown-up than that of most boys of his age, and his mother depended on him as few mothers except those in similar positions depend on sons of Roger's age.
Every time that Helen heard Roger mention his room she was stirred again with the desire that had filled her on the first day when Jo Sampson had offered it to him. She told herself over and over that she was doing as much as Roger, for since they only had one maid and Mary was busy all the time with the work necessary for so large a family, Helen waited on the table. She earned her meals by doing that just as much as if she were doing it in one of the boarding houses. Yet it did not seem to her just the same. She did not really want to wait on table in one of the boarding houses; she would have been frightened to death to do it, she thought, although she had been long enough at Chautauqua to see many nice young teachers and college girls in the boarding cottages and at the hotel and in the restaurant, and if they were not frightened, whyshould she be? Perhaps they were and didn't show it. Perhaps it was because it would take courage for her to attempt it that she wanted to so much. Whatever the reason, she could not seem to rid her mind of the idea that it would be delightful to earn money or its equivalent. This morning Roger's talk about his room roused her again.
"Mother," she said, "Margaret Hancock is going to take sewing from the teacher in the Hall of Pedagogy. Do you think I might, too?"
"What kind of sewing, dear? Embroidery?"
"No, Mother dear; it's the purely domestic variety; plain sewing and buttonholes and shirtwaists and middy blouses and how to hang a skirt, if I get so far along. Don't you think I'd be a more useful girl if I knew how to do some of those things?"
"You're a useful daughter now, dear; but I think it would be a splendid thing for you to learn just the kind of sewing that we need in the family."
"That every family needs," corrected Helen.
The mother looked closely at her daughter.
"Yes," she assented.
Helen had a plan in her mind and she had not meant to tell her mother until the sewing class had proved a success and she had learned to do all the things she had mentioned, but she was straightforward and she could not resist sharing her secret with Mrs. Morton.
"I meet so many girls here who are doing something to pay for their holiday, just the way those porters who brought our things down the first morningare, that I'm just crazy to do something, too," she explained breathlessly. "It seemed to me that if I learned how to do the kind of sewing that everybody must have I could get some work to do here and make some money."
Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Emerson looked at each other in amazement. Neither spoke for a moment.
"Why do you need more money, dear? You have your allowance."
"I have plenty of money for all I need; what I want is to feel independent. I don't like to feel that I am a drag on Father and not a help."
"But Father is glad to pay for your living, dear. Just the fact that he has a big, loving daughter is enough return for him."
"I know, Father's a darling. I know he's glad to pay for Roger's education, too, but when Roger earns his room you think it's perfectly fine and when I want to do the same thing you seem to think I'm wanting to do something horrid."
Helen was nearly in tears and the fact that her mother made no reply did not calm her. Mr. Emerson shook his head slowly.
"It's in the air, my dear," he said to Mrs. Morton.
"You're partly right, Helen," said Mrs. Morton at last. "Since Roger is a boy we expect him to earn his living as soon as he is prepared to do so. We should not want him to do it now because his duty now is to secure his education and to make himself strong and well so that he'll be a vigorous and intelligent man. We had not thought of your earningyour living outside your home, but if you want to prepare yourself to do so you may. I'm sure your father would have no objection if you selected a definite occupation of which he and I approved and fitted yourself to fill it well. But he would object to your taxing your strength by working now just as he would object to Roger's doing the same thing."
"But you're pleased when Roger earns his room and you seem to think it funny when I want to," repeated Helen.
"Perhaps you are right, dear. It must be because Roger is a boy and so we like to see him turning naturally to being useful and busy just as he must be all the time in a few years."
"But why can't I?"
"I have no objection to your learning how to sew this summer, certainly, if that will satisfy you; and if you'll learn how to make the Ethels' middy blouses and Dicky's little suits and rompers, I'll be glad to pay you for them just as I pay a sewing woman at home for making them."
"Oh, Mother," almost sobbed Helen, "that will be good; only," she nodded after a pause, "it won't help Father a bit. The money ought to come out of somebody else's pocket, not his."
"That's true," admitted Mrs. Morton, "but I should have to pay some one to do the work, so why not you? Unless, of course, you wanted to help Father by contributing your work."
"That sounds as if I didn't want to help Father or I'd do it for nothing," exclaimed Helen. "I doreally want to help Father, but I want to do it by relieving Father of spending money for me. I'd like to pay my board!"
"This generation doesn't seem to understand family co-operation," said Grandfather Emerson.
"I do want to co-operate," insisted Helen. "I just said I'd like to pay my board and co-operate by contributing to the family expenses in that way. What I don't want is to have any work I do taken for granted just as if we were still pioneers in the wilderness when every member of the family had to give the labor of his hands. I'm willing to work—I'm trying to induce Mother to let me work—but I want a definite value put on it just as there will be a definite value put on Roger's work when he gets started. I'd like to make the middy blouses for the Ethels and have Mother pay me what they were worth, and then pay Mother for my board. Then I should feel that I was really earning my living. That's the way Roger will do when he's earning a salary. Why shouldn't I do it?"
Helen stopped, breathless. She was too young to realize it, but it was the cry of her time that she was trying to express—the cry of the woman to be considered as separate as the man, to be an individual.
"I understand," said Mrs. Morton soothingly; "but suppose you begin in the way I suggest; and meanwhile we'll put our minds on what you will do after you leave college. There are a good many years yet before you need actually to go out into the world."
"Then I may go this morning and arrange for my lessons?"
"Certainly you may."
"And—and I'm sorry I've done all the talking this morning," apologized Helen. "I'm afraid it hasn't been a very pleasant breakfast."
"A very interesting one," said Mr. Emerson. "It shows that every generation has to be handled differently from the last one," he nodded to his daughter.
"Nobody has ever been up on the hill to see my room—if Helen will excuse my mentioning it," said Roger.
Helen flushed.
"Don't make fun of me, Roger. You do what you want to and it's all right and I want to do the same thing and it's all wrong," burst out Helen once more.
"There, dear, we don't want to hear it all again. Go and arrange for your lessons and as soon as you can make good blouses I'd like to have a dozen for the Ethels."
"You're a duck, Mother," and Helen ran out of the room, smiling, though with a feeling that she did not quite understand it all. And well she might be puzzled, for what she was struggling with has puzzled wiser heads than hers, and is one of the new problems that has been brought us by the twentieth century.
"I'll walk up with you to see your room, Roger," offered Mr. Emerson, "if you're sure I can go without blundering into some class."
"I'll steer you O.K. Come on, sir," cried Roger and he and his grandfather left the cottage as Mrs. Emerson started for her nine o'clock class in the Hall of Christ to be followed by the ten o'clock Devotional Hour and the eleven o'clock lecture in the Amphitheatre. There she would be joined by Mrs. Morton, who went every morning at nine to the Woman's Club in the Hall of Philosophy, and then to a ten o'clock French class. Up to the time of the fire the Ethels had escorted Dicky to the kindergarten and had then run on to the Girls' Club.
Roger and his grandfather strolled northward along the shore of the lake talking about Helen.
"I understand exactly how she feels," said Roger, "because I should feel exactly the same way if you people expected me to do what you expect her to do."
"But she's a girl," remonstrated Mr. Emerson.
"I guess girls nowadays are different from girls in your day, Grandfather," said Roger wisely. "We were talking last night at the Hancocks' about fathers one or two generations ago—how savage they were compared with fathers to-day."
"Savage!" repeated Mr. Emerson under his breath.
"Wasn't your father more severe to his children than you ever were to yours?" persisted Roger.
"Perhaps he was," admitted the old gentleman slowly.
"And I'm sure Father is much easier on me than his father was on him although Father expects asort of service discipline from me," continued Roger.
"May be so," agreed his hearer.
"Just in the same way I believe girls are changing. They used to be content to think what the rest of the family thought on most things. If they ever 'bucked' at all it was when they fell in love with some man the stern parent didn't approve of, and then they were doing something frightful if they insisted on having their own way, like Aunt Louise Morton."
"Surely you don't think she did right to run off!"
"I'm sorry she did it, but I believe if she had been reasoned with instead of ordered, and if Grandfather Morton had tried to see the best in the man she was in love with instead of booting him out as if he were a burglar, it might have come out differently."
"Perhaps it might. Personally I believe in every one's exercising his own judgment."
"And I tell you the girls nowadays have plenty of it," asserted Roger. "I know lots of girls; there are twenty of them in my class at the high school and I don't see but they're just as sensible as we boys and most of them are a heap smarter in their lessons."
"Helen seems to think as you do, at any rate."
"I'm going to stand up for Helen," declared Roger. "I'll be out of college a couple of years before she is and if she wants to study anything special or do anything special I'll surely help her to it."
"Your father's not likely to object to anything that she will want to do."
"Probably not, only," returned Roger hesitating, "perhaps dear old Dad will need a little education himself after being in Mexico andsuchlikeforeign parts for so long."
The path which they were following ran along the top of a bank that rose abruptly from the water. On the other side of the roadway were pretty cottages rather larger than most of those at Chautauqua.
"In this house we're passing," said Roger, "there lives the grandest sight in Chautauqua. I see him almost every time I go by. Look, there he is now."
Hewas a bull dog of enormous head and fiercest visage, his nose pushed back, his teeth protruding, his legs bowed. Belying his war-like aspect he was harnessed to a child's express wagon which was loaded with milk cans and baskets.
"Isn't that a great old outfit!" exclaimed Roger. "He goes to market every morning as solemn as a judge. His name is Cupid."
"Ha, ha! Cupid!" laughed Mr. Emerson.
The dog's master held a leash fastened to his harness and the strong creature tugged him along so fast that he almost had to run to keep up.
"You see 'everybody works' at Chautauqua, even the dogs."
"And I must say they all seem to like it, even Cupid," added Mr. Emerson.
Turning away from the lake they walked up thehill to a grove behind which rose the walls of a hall and of several school buildings.
"Over to the right is the Hall of Pedagogy where your affectionate grandson wields the broom and smears the dustrag, and the building beyond is the College. They aren't especially handsome either inside or out but they are as busy as beehives. Listen to that hum? I tell you they just naturally hustle for culture up at this end of the grounds!"
"What's this we're coming out on?"
"The Arts and Crafts Studios. Not bad, are they? Sort of California Mission effect with those low white pillars. This place beats the others in the busy bee business. They hum in the mornings but the Arts and Crafts people are at it all day long. Come along and look in; they keep the windows open on purpose."
Nothing loath, Mr. Emerson went up the ascending path and on to the brick walk behind the pillars. First they peered into a room devoted to the making of lace, but neither of them felt drawn to this essentially feminine occupation. Then they passed drawing and painting studios where teachers of drawing and painting were taught how to teach better. In a hall in the centre they found a blackboard drawing that was as well done as many a painting, but Mr. Emerson's interest began really to grow when they came to the next departments. Here they found looms, some of them old-fashioned and some of them new, but all worked by hand and foot power. Several young women and two men were threading them or weaving new patterns. It looked difficultyet fascinating. Beyond there was a detachment learning how to put rush bottoms into chairs, twisting wet cat-tail leaves and wrapping them about the edges of frames.
"Look, they're just like the chairs in your dining-room," whispered Roger. "I've half a mind to learn how to do it so that I can mend them for Grandmother."
A near-by squad was making baskets, using a variety of materials. In another room the leather workers were stretching and cutting and wetting and dyeing and tooling bits of leather which were to be converted into purses and card cases and mats, and at another table the bookbinders were exercising the most scrupulous care in the use of their tools upon the delicate designs which they had transferred to their valuable material.
Around the bend in the wall were the noisy crafts, put by themselves so that they might not interfere with the comfort of the quieter toilers. Here the metal workers pounded their sheets of brass and copper, building up handsome patterns upon future trays and waste baskets and lanterns. Here, too, the jewelry makers ran their little furnaces and thumped and welded until silver cups and chains grew under their fingers and settings of unique design held semi-precious stones of alluring colors.
Every student in the whole place seemed alive with eagerness to do his work well and swiftly; they bent over it, smiling, the teachers were calm and helpful; gayety and happiness were in the air.
"I'd really like to spend my mornings up here,"murmured Mr. Emerson, "if I only knew what I could do."
"We didn't see the wood-carving room; perhaps you'd like that."
They turned into a door they had passed. A man of Grandfather's age was drawing his design on a board which was destined to become a book rack. Another man was chipping out his background, making the flowers of his pattern stand forth in bold relief. A young woman had a fireboard nearly finished.
"I believe I will come up here," exclaimed Mr. Emerson.
And so it happened that Grandfather's mornings were taken up as much as those of the rest of the family, and it was not long before he was so interested in his work and so eager to get on with his appointed tasks that he spent not only the mornings but almost all day drawing and carving and oiling in the midst of sweet-smelling shavings.
On the way back they stopped for a minute to see Roger's cell in the Hall of Pedagogy, and the boy showed his grandfather with pride his neat array of brooms and rags. As they passed through Higgins Grove and out on to the green in front of the Post Office a great clattering attracted their attention. Men ran, boys shouted, and over and above all rose a fierce and persistent barking.
"It's Cupid! As sure as you're born, it's Cupid!" cried Roger.
Sure enough it was Cupid. He had been trotting gently down one of the side streets, his wagon ladenwith full milk cans and with sundry bundles. A dog passing across the square at the end of the street attracted his attention, and he started off at full gallop. The cans rolled out of the cart and spurted their milky contents on the ground. A bag of eggs smashed disastrously as it struck the pavement. Tins—of corned beef, lentils, sardines—bounced on the floor of the wagon until they jounced over the side into the road. On, on ran Cupid, his harness holding strongly and the front wheels banging his hind paws at every jump. The uproar that he created drew the attention of the dog which had caused all the commotion by his mere presence on the plaza. Casting a startled glance at Cupid, he clapped his tail between his legs and fled—fled with great bounds, his ears flapping in a breeze of his own creation. Unencumbered as he was he had the advantage of Cupid, who was unable to rid himself of the equipment that marked him as man's slave. Seeing his quarry disappear in the distance the bull dog came to a standstill just as Roger seized the strap that dangled from his harness.
"Yours, I believe," he laughed as he handed the leash to the young man who came running up.
"Mine. Thank you. My name is Watkins and I'd be glad to know you better. I've noticed you passing the house every day."
"Thank you. My name is Morton," and the two young fellows shook hands over Cupid's head, while he sat down between the shafts and let slip a careless tongue from out his heated mouth.