“You cut each squab in halves and put one-half in a mold and then you pour on the aspic.”
“Dorothy, you talk as if you’d been doing birds in aspic all your life. Did you ever cook them?”
“Once,” dimpled Dorothy. “At cooking school.”
“I know how to make aspic,” declared Ethel Brown proudly.
“Let’s have it.”
“Soak a quarter of an ounce of vegetable gelatine in a pint of water for two hours; then add the strained juice of a lemon, pepper and salt and cayenne, two tablespoonfuls of Tarragon vinegar and another pint of water. Let it cook for a few minutes over a slow fire and then boil it for two or three minutes and strain it through a jelly bag over your birdies.”
“O, you can’t do that that way,” cried Ethel Blue. “Their elbows will show through when they’re turned out of their molds. You have to put in a layer of jelly and when it is stiffened a little put in your bird, and then pour the rest of the jelly over it.”
“Correct,” approved Dorothy. “We must be sure to have enough for each person to have a half bird in a mold. They are turned out at the last minute and a sprig of parsley is laid on top of each one.”
“Help! Help!” came a faint cry from Roger. “I am swooning with joy at the sound of this delicious food. I’m so glad Aunt Louise is giving this party and not one of the chicken salad ladies of Rosemont.”
“Aspic is good to know about for hot weather use,” said Ethel Blue. “I’ve been meaning all summer to tell Della how to make it—she feels the heat so awfully.”
“You can put all sorts of meats in it, I suppose.”
“And vegetables; peas and beets and carrots very tender and cut very fine. Tomato jelly makes a good salad, too.”
“You could make pretty little individual molds of that.”
“What are we going to have for salad after these birds?” inquired Roger.
“Let’s have alligator pear salad. It’s as easy as fiddle. You just have to pare the alligators and take out their cores—”
“With a butcher’s knife?” inquired Roger.
“—and cut them in halves lengthwise. Then you put the pieces on a pale yellow-green lettuce leaf, and pour French dressing over it, and there you are!”
“I like it all except the name,” objected Roger.
“Christen it something else, and be happy,” urged Helen.
“What for sweeties?” Roger demanded. “I’m going through this feast systematically.”
“Don’t go on to the sweeties until we’ve settled on the bread, then,” insisted Ethel Brown, “I say Parker House rolls.”
“Or pocket book rolls—the same thing, only smaller,” said Ethel Blue.
“I haven’t made any since we were at Chautauqua; I shall have to look them up again,” confessed Dorothy.
“I remember,” said Ethel Brown. “You scald two cups of milk and then put into it three tablespoonfuls of butter, two teaspoonfuls of sugar and a teaspoonful and a half of salt. When it has cooled off a little add a dissolved yeast cake and three cups of flour and beat it like everything.”
“Command me on the day of the party,” offered Roger politely.
“We will,” giggled the girls, and they said it so earnestly that Roger gazed at them suspiciously.
“Cover it up and let it rise; then cut it through and through and knead in two and a half cups more flour. Let it rise again. Put it on a floured board, knead it, and roll it out to half an inch in thickness. Then cut out the rolls with a floured biscuit cutter. Brush one-half of each roll with melted butter and fold the round in halves.”
“Won’t they slide open?”
“Not if you pinch the edges together. Arrange them in your pan and cover them over so they can rise in comfort. Then bake them in a hot oven for from twelve to fifteen minutes,” ended Ethel Brown.
“They aren’t as easy as Della’s lightning biscuits, but they’re so good when they’re done that you don’t mind having taken the trouble about them.”
“Now for the sweeties,” insisted Roger. “I’m afraid you’ll forget them and my tooth is as sweet as ever it was.”
“Are frozen things absolutely forbidden?” inquired Dorothy.
“O, no, let’s have one frozen thing. We’re going to have some of the Rosemont people who aren’t relatives, you know, and I hate to think of what they’d say about Aunt Louise if she didn’t give them something frozen!” laughed Helen.
“Let’s have frozen peaches, then. Make them in the proportion of two quarts of peaches to two cups of sugar, a quart of water, and the juice of a lemon and a half. You peel the peaches and take out the stones and rub the fruit through a colander. Put the peach pulp and the lemon juice into a syrup made by boiling the sugar and water together for five minutes and letting it cool. Pour it all into the freezer and grind it until it is firm.”
“Command me,” murmured Roger again.
“Poor old Roger! You shan’t be worked to death! Patrick will do the grinding.”
“For small mercies I’m thankful,” returned Roger, a beaming smile breaking over his face.
“I speak for chopped preserved ginger with whipped cream, served in those lovely ramequins of Aunt Louise’s,” cried Ethel Blue.
“Why can’t we have maple marguerites to go with everything?”
“New to me, but let’s have ’em,” urged Roger.
“Boil together a cup and a half of brown sugar and a half a cup of water until it makes a soft ball when it’s dropped into cold water. Let it cool for a few minutes and then put in half a teaspoonful of maple flavoring and beat it all together. Have ready a quarter of a cup of finely chopped nut meats. Add half of this amount and drop this perfectlydee-licious stuff on to crackers. While it’s still warm enough to be sticky sprinkle over the crackers the remainder of the nut meats.”
“I’ll grind the nut meats,” offered Roger.
“And ask for heavy pay in marguerites!” laughed Ethel Brown.
“I scorn your aspersions of my character,” returned her brother solemnly. “What are you going to have to drink?”
“Coffee—grape-juice—lemonade—the usual things.”
“I think that’s a pretty good list. Write it down and let’s see what Aunt Louise thinks of it,” recommended Helen.
Ethel Blue, as Columbus Day approached, was filled with many strange feelings, some of them far from pleasant. When she read a letter from her father a few days before the twelfth she felt as if dread had brought upon her exactly what she had dreaded. The letter was filled with loving expressions but it told her that her father was to be married very soon.
“I know that you will love the dear lady who has honored me by saying that she will relieve my loneliness,” he wrote.
“Iwould have relieved his loneliness if he had given me a chance,” Ethel sobbed to herself as she lay on her bed and read the tear-blotted lines for the tenth time.
“It will be a sorrow to you to leave Aunt Marion and your cousins, but perhaps the thought that now you will belong in a home of your own will make up for it, in part, at any rate. I don’t see how we can all help being happy together, and we must all try to make each other happy.”
Ethel Blue thought of a great many things to say in reply to her father. They sounded very smart and very convincing as she said them over to herself in a whisper, but just as she was wiping her eyes and getting up to sit at her desk and put them on paper her Aunt Marion’s suggestion that she would be selfish if she did anything that would hurt her father or prevent him from making a belated happiness for himself cut her to the heart.
“He doesn’t love me or he wouldn’t do it,” she repeated, and then she remembered that all her life she had had a home and a loving family of cousins who were as good as brothers and sisters, while her father had spent the same time without the thought, even, of home-making.
“I suppose it’s some old Fort Myer woman who’s as cross as two sticks,” she murmured again and again; and then an inner voice seemed to speak in her ear and tell her that there was no reason why she should not imagine that it was some really lovely person who was as sweet as she was pretty.
“Everybody says my mother was pretty,” thought poor Ethel Blue, who had been making herself very miserable by her old habit of “pretending” without any basis of fact, and who now was trying to get a scrap of comfort from the thought that her father had had good taste once and might be trusted to exercise it again.
Whether or not to show the letter to her Aunt Marion she did not know. Her father had not said whether he had informed her or not. Usually Ethel told her aunt everything promptly, but now she did not feel as if she could speak of the thing that had appeared dreadful when it was only a possibility. The reality was so much worse that it did not seem as if she could trust herself to mention it.
“Aunt Louise has asked him to come on to the housewarming,” she said. “I’ll wait and see if he comes. Then he can tell her and Aunt Marion himself; and if he doesn’t come it won’t be any worse for me to tell them a few days from now than right off this minute.”
It was so forlorn an Ethel Blue who dragged herself through the preparations for the Columbus Day entertainment, that Ethel Brown could not help noticing the melancholy air that hung over her usually smiling face. Ethel Blue would make no explanation to her cousin, nor would she tell her aunt anything more than the reassuring words that she was perfectly well. They gave up trying to make her talk about herself, trusting to time to bring its own healing.
No letter came from her father announcing his acceptance of his sister Louise’s invitation, nor did another letter reach Ethel Blue. She was inclined to make a grievance of this until it occurred to her that she was not likely to hear until she replied to her father’s announcement of his proposed marriage.
“It’s a serious thing and I ought to answer his letter right off,” her conscience told her, “but I can’t say I’m glad and I don’t want to say I’m not glad. I’ll wait until after the twelfth, any way.”
Her feelings of selfishness and uncertainty made her a miserable girl during the interval.
On the morning of Columbus Day the Mortons and Hancocks went into New York to the Watkinses. Della’s and Tom’s father was a clergyman who worked among the foreigners of the East Side. This was an advantage to the Club members when they watched the procession that wound its way from the lower part of the city northward to Columbus Circle at 59th Street.
“These people must come from all over Europe,” exclaimed Ethel Brown as bits of conversation in languages that she never had heard drifted to her ears.
“New York is called one of the largest foreign cities in the world,” laughed Roger, whose spirits had risen although he was having difficulties again with his camera and its persistent desire to take everything that came within its range, “whether the girls are pretty or not!” he complained.
“They say that New York is the second largest German city in the world, and that there are more Hebrews of different nationalities gathered here than anywhere else,” said Tom.
“Here are a lot of people wearing peasant costumes that I never saw in any geography,” cried Dorothy.
“When otherwise not accounted for you can generally put them among the Balkan states,” laughed Della.
“Look at that girl over there in peasant costume and right side of her is a girl in the latest New York style! That’s a tremendous contrast.”
“I suppose the American-dressed girl thinks she is very fashionable, but the other looks much more sensibly dressed and more attractive, too,” said James gravely.
“She’s a great deal prettier girl for one reason,” smiled his sister. “She would look better whatever she wore.”
They all laughed at James who insisted that he preferred peasant dress, but they all exclaimed with delight at the gorgeous costumes worn by a group of Hungarian men. Some of them were riding in carriages and they seemed very self-conscious but greatly pleased at the attention they attracted.
“This is a great day for the Italians,” said Helen as band after band, and society after society, bearing the Italian red, white and green passed them.
“Well, Columbus was an Italian. They ought to feel comfortable about it. He discovered us.”
They all shouted at James’s way of putting his defense of Columbus’s countrymen.
“If we’re going to hear any of the speeches at Columbus Circle we’d better hop into the subway and speed to 59th Street,” urged Tom.
They were in plenty of time, and watched the placing around the Columbus monument of numberless wreaths and emblems which the societies brought with them, chiefly at the ends of tall poles and deposited at the feet of the statue of the great explorer.
As soon as they reached home the Mortons all went over to Sweetbrier Lodge to help with the final decorations. The attic they had set in order the day before. This was necessary for they had to have a curtain and they wanted to put it through a rehearsal as well as themselves. Extra chairs had been brought in for the occasion and they were now unfolded so that the little audience room was ready for its opening performance.
Below stairs all was ready in the kitchen department, the Ethels learned when they offered their services there. What was not completed was the arrangement of flowers and branches throughout the rooms. At the end of an hour during which the Ethels and Dorothy and Helen arranged and Roger carried, the house looked really lovely.
The color scheme of the lower floor was so autumnal that it was not hard to follow it out in leaves and blossoms. Chrysanthemums were ready to emphasize the yellow tones, and bronze leaves from oaks and chestnuts carried on the darker hues. Here and there one of Dorothy’s Japanese gardens gave an air of quaintness to a corner, or stood in relief against a screen.
Upstairs the nursery was a bower of white cosmos; Dorothy’s room was feathery with pink blossoms of the same delicate flower; against Mrs. Smith’s primrose walls trailed the yellow leaves of a grapevine; purple asters nodded in the violet chamber, and the gray guest room wore fluffs of clematis.
It was not a large party that gathered at Mrs. Smith’s for the housewarming. The family connection was not small, however, and the newcomers had made some warm friends during the year that they had lived in Rosemont. The older Watkinses and Hancocks had come, and about fifty people filled the drawing room comfortably, admiring its beauty as they waited for the signal to go upstairs to the attic to see one of the entertainments which Rosemonters had learned to expect from the United Service Club.
“It’s very charming,” murmured Mrs. Hancock to her sister. “I see your hand here.”
“Not very much,” demurred Miss Graham. “I merely made an occasional suggestion or told them how to work out some good idea of their own. The color scheme is Mrs. Smith’s.”
“It is charming,” repeated Mrs. Hancock, her eyes moving from the yellow-white wood-work to the natural pongee walls and then on to the next shade of yellow, found in the draperies of the windows, made of a heavy linen dyed to strike the next note in the color scale. The furniture was upholstered in three or four shades of brown; a bit of gold flashed sombrely from the shadows, and an occasional touch of dull blue brought out the blue tones of the handsome rugs.
Every one took a peek into the upper rooms as they passed upstairs to the attic. Ayleesabet’s nursery received much praise, and the delicate tones of the bed-rooms won immediate approval. In the attic they found comfortable wicker chairs arranged about the room facing a small stage before which hung a tan linen curtain.
“What are the children going to do?” asked Mr. Emerson of his hostess.
“I really don’t know,” returned Mrs. Smith. “Dorothy said it would be appropriate for Columbus Day, so I entrusted it all to the young people.”
When the curtain was drawn the Club was disclosed grouped on the stage. They sang Miss Bates’s “America the Beautiful,” Mrs. Smith accompanying them on the piano.
“That’s all I have to do with the program,” she said to Mr. Emerson when it was over and she had again taken her seat beside him.
Then Tom told the story of Columbus—how he was born at Genoa and became a sailor and when he was about thirty-four years old went with a brother to live in Lisbon. Tom was seated on the stage at a table and two or three of the others sat about as if they were in a library listening to the talk. They entered quite naturally into the conversation.
“Four years later,” continued Tom, “somebody gave Columbus a map that put the Orient directly west of Spain, and Columbus became filled with a desire to search out the East by sailing west.”
“I’ve read that he died thinking he had discovered the East,” responded Helen.
“He laid his plans before the Portuguese king, but he found he couldn’t trust him, so he went to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain. They summoned their wisest men to pass on the subject at a council held at Salamanca. For three years they kept him waiting about in uncertainty before they reported to the king that his idea was absurd. Columbus was furious—”
“I should think he might have been.”
“—and he started at once for Paris to try to get the king of France, Charles VIII, to help him. He took his little son with him and one night they slept at a monastery. The prior became interested in Columbus’s story and believed in him and didn’t want the glory of his achievement to go to another country. So he managed to secure for him another interview with Ferdinand and Isabella, and we’re going to see now,” said Tom, turning to the audience, “what happened at the convent.”
With that the curtain fell. When it parted once more a dark curtain across the stage represented the outside of the convent. Ethel Brown recited Trowbridge’s “Columbus at the Convent,” while James acted the part of the Prior; Roger, Columbus; and Dicky, little Diego.
“Those children have a real feeling for costume,” whispered Miss Graham to her neighbor, and then started as she found that it was not her brother-in-law, Dr. Hancock, as she supposed, but Ethel Blue’s father, Captain Morton, who had come in in the darkness.
“How do you do?” he said, smiling at her startled air. “I suppose they made these things themselves.”
“The boys are wearing their sisters’ long stockings and the girls made the short, puffy trunks and short, full coats.”
Ethel Brown’s voice sounded clearly through the darkness though her hearers could not see her.
“Dreary and brown the night comes down,Gloomy without a star.On Palos town the night comes down;The day departs with a stormy frown;The sad sea moans afar.
“Dreary and brown the night comes down,
Gloomy without a star.
On Palos town the night comes down;
The day departs with a stormy frown;
The sad sea moans afar.
“A convent-gate is near; ’tis late;Ting-ling! the bell they ring.They ring the bell, they ask for bread—‘Just for my child,’ the father said.Kind hands the bread will bring.
“A convent-gate is near; ’tis late;
Ting-ling! the bell they ring.
They ring the bell, they ask for bread—
‘Just for my child,’ the father said.
Kind hands the bread will bring.
“White was his hair, his mien was fair,His look was calm and great.The porter ran and called a friar;The friar made haste and told the prior;The prior came to the gate.”
“White was his hair, his mien was fair,
His look was calm and great.
The porter ran and called a friar;
The friar made haste and told the prior;
The prior came to the gate.”
Here the dark curtain was drawn and a room was disclosed with a table at which the men sat and a small bed in which Dicky was put to sleep.
“He took them in, he gave them food;The traveller’s dreams he heard;And fast the midnight moments flew,And fast the good man’s wonder grew,And all his heart was stirred.
“He took them in, he gave them food;
The traveller’s dreams he heard;
And fast the midnight moments flew,
And fast the good man’s wonder grew,
And all his heart was stirred.
“The child the while, with soft, sweet smile,Forgetful of all sorrow,Lay soundly sleeping in his bed.The good man kissed him then and said:‘You leave us not to-morrow!’
“The child the while, with soft, sweet smile,
Forgetful of all sorrow,
Lay soundly sleeping in his bed.
The good man kissed him then and said:
‘You leave us not to-morrow!’
“‘I pray you rest the convent’s guest;The child shall be our own—A precious care, while you prepareYour business with the court, and bearYour message to the throne.’
“‘I pray you rest the convent’s guest;
The child shall be our own—
A precious care, while you prepare
Your business with the court, and bear
Your message to the throne.’
“And so his guest he comforted.O, wise, good prior, to you,Who cheered the stranger’s darkest days,And helped him on his way, what praiseAnd gratitude are due!”
“And so his guest he comforted.
O, wise, good prior, to you,
Who cheered the stranger’s darkest days,
And helped him on his way, what praise
And gratitude are due!”
The pantomime followed the lines closely.
“Wasn’t Dicky cunning!” exclaimed Dicky’s adoring grandmother.
“Dicky was a duck!” exclaimed Helen, who had slipped out to see the pantomime. “We told him what he was supposed to be—a little boy travelling with his father, and that they had to stop and ask for food and that a kind man took them in and gave him a comfy bed. He seemed to understand it all, and he took hold of James’s hand and looked up in his face as seriously as if he were the real thing. He was splendid.”
“All the same I’m always relieved when Dicky’s part is over and he hasn’t done anything awful!” confessed Dorothy, who had come out also. “It would be just like him to say to James, ‘You needn’t give me any bread; I want cookieth!’”
“We tried to impress on him that he wasn’t to say anything—that nobody but Ethel Brown was to say anything; that was the game. I dare say if James had spoken Dicky would have ordered his meal to suit his fancy.”
Tom went on with Columbus’s story at this point, but he spoke from the floor because tableaux were being arranged behind the curtains. He told how the interview with the king and queen that the prior had arranged, all went wrong and how Columbus started again for France but was called back by the queen whose imagination had been excited by what he told her, and who promised to pledge her jewels to raise money for his expedition.
Here the curtains swung open and showed a brilliant scene, Della representing the queen, James the king, and all the other Club members, courtiers. Columbus was arguing his case before the court and he was shown in the act of knocking off the end of an egg to convince the men who had said that they would believe the world was round when they saw the impossible happen—when an egg should stand upright.
“I hope Roger’s hand won’t slip,” murmured Roger’s mother; “that’s a real egg!”
It was while she was standing beside the queen as one of her ladies in waiting that Ethel Blue’s eyes happened to fall on her father out in the audience. The light from the stage illuminated his face and she thought that she never had seen him so happy as he looked at that moment.
“He’s so dear and he’s going away from me,” she groaned inwardly. “Now if it were only dear Miss Daisy he’s going to marry,” she wished with all her heart as she noticed that Miss Graham sat in the next chair; “but it isn’t; it’s some old Fort Myer woman.”
The curtain fell on her misery and Tom again took up his tale. He told about the three tiny ships that Columbus managed to secure, and their setting sail and how frightened the sailors became when day after day passed and they saw no chance of ever reaching new land or ever returning home, and how they threatened to mutiny if he did not turn back.
Then came another pantomime with Roger as Columbus and James as the mate of theSanta Maria, while Ethel Brown recited Joaquin Miller’s poem:
“Behind him lay the gray Azores,Behind the Gates of Hercules;Before him not the ghost of shores,Before him only shoreless seas.The good mate said: ‘Now must we pray,For lo, the very stars are gone.Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?’‘Why, say, “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”’
“Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: ‘Now must we pray,
For lo, the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?’
‘Why, say, “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”’
“‘My men grow mutinous day by day;My men grow ghastly wan and weak.’The stout mate thought of home; a sprayOf salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.‘What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,If we sight naught but seas at dawn?’‘Why, you shall say at break of day,“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”’
“‘My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak.’
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
‘What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?’
‘Why, you shall say at break of day,
“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”’
“They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,Until at last the blanched mate said:‘Why, now not even God would knowShould I and all my men fall dead.These very winds forget their way,For God from these dread seas is gone.Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say’—He said: ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’
“They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
‘Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say’—
He said: ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’
“They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:‘This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.He lifts his lip, he lies in wait,With lifted teeth as if to bite;Brave Admiral, say but one good word:What shall we do when hope is gone?’The words leapt like a leaping sword:‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’
“They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
‘This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.
He lifts his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth as if to bite;
Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?’
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’
“Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,And peered through darkness. Ah, that nightOf all dark nights! And then a speck—A light! a light! a light! a light!It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.He gained a world; he gave that worldIts grandest lesson: ‘On! sail on!’”
“Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! a light! a light! a light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: ‘On! sail on!’”
The last picture was Columbus gazing joyfully at the land he had discovered through his perseverance. It was supposed to be the early morning of October 12, 1492, and Roger, surrounded by his sailors, stood with a foot on the rail of his boat, shielding his eyes from the rising sun, while the others crowded behind him, whispering with delight.
When the curtains fell together for the last time the lights flashed out upon the audience and disclosed Captain Morton greeting his sister and sister-in-law and his nieces and nephews.
“Where’s my girl?” he inquired in his cordial, hearty voice. “Where’s Ethel Blue?”
Some one gave her a friendly push forward so her father did not notice the reluctance with which she had been almost creeping toward him. He threw his arm around her shoulders regardless of possible damage to the elegancies of her court costume, and kissed her heartily. The tears shone in her eyes as she forced herself to meet his searching gaze.
“Not crying!” he whispered in her ear, and she felt her heart give a real pang as the happiness left his face and was replaced by his old look of sorrow and endurance. “Not crying!” he repeated in her ear. “Why, I thought you loved her! You’ve done nothing but write to me about Miss Daisy all summer!”
“About Miss Daisy? Do you mean—? Is it Miss Daisy?”
“It certainly is Miss Daisy. Here, come behind the curtain,” and he swept his daughter and hisfiancéeout of sight of the retiring audience. “It is Daisy Graham who is to be your dear mother, my little Ethel Blue. Are you satisfied now?”
“O, Father! O, Miss Daisy!” cried Ethel Blue, sobbing now from relief and joy and clinging to both of them; “I never guessed it! It’s too wonderful to be true!”
Ethel Blue’s change of mind about stepmothers was so complete that her cousins would have joked her about it except that her Aunt Marion advised them to say nothing to her on a subject that had once been so sore a theme.
“Don’t recall those painful thoughts,” she advised. “Ethel Blue will be happier and certainly Miss Daisy will be if the present mood continues.”
“I thought you couldn’t help loving her when you knew her,” Captain Morton had said to Ethel Blue. “That’s why I was willing to postpone the wedding all summer so that you and she might have a chance to become really well acquainted.”
“It was a good way,” answered Ethel frankly. “If I had known about it I should have thought everything Miss Daisy did was done for its effect on me. I should have been suspicious of her all the time.”
“You have come to know a very dear woman in a natural way and it crowns my happiness that you should care so much for each other.”
Since he had waited so patiently for so many months Captain Morton begged that the wedding should take place at once. Mrs. Hancock urged her sister to have it in Glen Point.
“If you go to Washington you’ll have many acquaintances there but not any more loving friends than you’ve made here and in Rosemont,” she said cordially. “It will give the Doctor and me the greatest happiness to have you married from our house, and it will be such a delight to all the U. S. C. if they know that they can all be at the wedding of their dear ‘Miss Daisy.’”
“It will be easier for all the Rosemont people—and it would be very sweet to go to Richard from your house,” murmured Daisy thoughtfully. “I believe I’ll do it.”
“It will be easier to bring Aunt Mary on here than for all the New Jersey clans to go to Washington,” insisted Mrs. Hancock, referring to the aunt with whom her sister had lived in Washington.
“I’ll do it,” decided Daisy. “Richard’s furlough is almost over so it will have to be very soon,” she continued. “I’ll have to begin my preparations at once.”
So all the plans were made for a quiet wedding for just the two families and their intimate friends. It was to be ten days after the housewarming. The ceremony was to be in the church at Glen Point, with Ethel Blue as maid of honor, and Margaret and Helen, Ethel Brown and Della as the bridesmaids.
Even this very first decision gave the Ethels a twinge of pain, because it prophesied their coming separation. Never before had they been separated at any such function, yet now Ethel Blue was to be in one position and her twin cousin in another. They both sighed when it was talked over, and they glanced at each other a trifle sadly. They did not need to put the meaning of their glances into words.
Dr. Hancock was to give the bride away. To everybody’s regret Lieutenant Morton could not be present to act as his brother’s best man.
“I’m more sorry than I can tell you, old fellow,” he wrote. “Roger will have to take my place and give you all my good wishes with his own. You may congratulate me, too, for I’ve just got word that my step has come. I can now sign myself,“Your affectionate brother,“Roger Morton,“Capt. U.S.N.”
There was great rejoicing in the Morton family when they learned this news, and telegrams poured in on them all day long after the announcement was publicly made.
“It gives one more touch of happiness,” smiled Richard Morton, who went about beaming. He had to content himself with the companionship of his daughter, for his betrothed was too busy to give him much time. Probably this was a good thing, for it made her father’s visit much as it always had been to Ethel Blue, and did not impress on her too abruptly the idea of their new relation.
It was at the meeting of the U. S. C. held very soon after the housewarming that the members decided to give a breakfast in celebration of the wedding and of Ethel Blue’s departure from Rosemont.
“We’ll call it a breakfast, but we’ll have it rather late,” said Helen.
“Why?” growled Roger hungrily. “I like my morning nourishment early.”
“It’s going to be out on our terrace, and it’s getting to be late in the season and if it’s too cold we can’t have it there,” said Dorothy.
“Put in your glass windows and have it at a civilized hour,” implored Roger.
Dorothy looked at Helen.
“I’ll ask Mother if she won’t do that,” she said. “Then we can have a fire in the open fireplace out there if it should be really frosty. I forgot we had all those comforts!”
“We must give the Glen Point people time to get over, if Roger can restrain his appetite a trifle,” urged Ethel Brown.
“We’d better have Della and Tom stay all night so they’ll be here on time,” urged Ethel Blue. “I can’t get over New Haven being near enough for Tom to go back and forth so easily. I always thought it was as far off as Boston.”
“I declare I almost weep every time I think of Ethel Blue’s leaving the club,” sobbed Tom with loud groans.
Ethel Blue tossed a pillow at him.
“Stop making fun of me,” she said with her pretended severity.
“Ethel Blue was the founder of this club. Don’t forget that,” said James gravely.
“Don’t be so solemn, people; you’ll make me bawl,” and Ethel Blue looked around her wildly, as Ethel Brown made a dive into her pocket for her handkerchief, and Della sniffed.
“Stop your nonsense, children,” urged Helen. “Let’s make a list of what we are going to do at our breakfast. First, what shall we eat?”
The discussion waxed absorbing, but when it came to the arrangement of a program it was found that there seemed to be fewer ideas than was customary among them.
“What’s the matter?” asked Helen. “Usually we’re tumbling over ourselves suggesting things.”
“I’ve got an idea, but it’s sort of a joke and I don’t want to take the edge off it by telling it now,” admitted James.
It proved that all of them were in the same predicament.
“I’ll tell you—let’s have Helen and Roger the committee to arrange this program,” suggested Tom. “Then we can each one tell the committee what our particular idea is, and they’ll be the only ones who will know all the jokes.”
They decided that this would be the best way, and the committee withdrew to a corner where it was visited by one after the other of the rest of the members, while the unoccupied people drew around the piano on which Ethel Blue was playing popular songs.
“When do you go?” Tom asked her as she stopped for a few minutes to hunt up a new piece of music.
“The wedding is the day after our breakfast; then they go off on a week’s trip and when they come back they’ll pick me up here and take me on to Fort Myer with them.”
“That means that you’ll only be here about ten days longer?”
Ethel Blue nodded, her eyes filling.
“I wish you’d give us your idea now, Tom,” called Helen, seeing from across the room that her little cousin was not far from tears, and Tom went away, leaving her to let her fingers slip softly through a simple tune that her Aunt Marion had taught her to play in the dusk without her notes. She wondered if she would ever do it again; if her new mother and her father would want her to play it to them; if she should be happy, the only young person in the household when she had been accustomed to a large family; if she could ever get along without Dicky to tease her and to be teased.
“Aunt Marion says that every change in life has its good points and its bad ones,” she thought. “I must make the most out of the good points and try not to notice the bad ones or to change them into good ones.”
The tune rang out with a gayer lilt.
“Any way, there are so many good points now that I ought not to think about the others. I’ve all my life wanted to live with Father. Here’s my chance, and I must see only that my wish has come true.”
“You sound very gay over here by yourself,” said James’s voice behind her. “You don’t sound as if you were sorry at all about leaving us.”
“I’m trying to balance things,” Ethel Blue answered. “I lose Ethel Brown and all of you, but I gain Father.”
“You’ll be coming north for your holidays next summer, I suppose. That will be a great old time for the U. S. C.,” he said hopefully.
“It would be simply too fine for words if the U. S. C. could go to Washington for Washington’s Birthday next winter the way it did this winter,” returned Ethel Blue, beaming at him.
“There certainly is every inducement to get up an excursion there now,” said James. “You know we’ve decided on a round robin, don’t you?”
“A round robin? How does it work?”
“Helen and Ethel Brown and the Honorary Member and Dorothy will be here in Rosemont, Margaret will be in Glen Point, Della in New York, you at Fort Myer and we boys at Harvard and Yale and the Boston Tech. Helen is going to start a letter on the first day of each month. She’ll tell us what she’s been doing. Ethel Brown will add on a bit; so will Dicky and Dorothy. It will go to Margaret. She’ll put in a big batch of Glen Point news and send it in town to Della. When she has finished she’ll send it on to Tom at New Haven, and in course of time it will reach Roger and me in Boston and Cambridge and we’ll send it on to you in Washington.”
“That will be perfectly great!” exclaimed Ethel. “You can illustrate it with kodaks, and we’ll all know what every one of us is doing all the time.”
“That was Aunt Daisy’s idea. She thought we’d all like to keep together in some way even if we couldn’t have our Saturday meetings.”
“Isn’t she splendid!” ejaculated Ethel Blue, and at that instant she felt that she was far richer than ever before in her life.
The morning of the breakfast proved to be clear and not too frost-filled for comfort.
“We really hardly need the glass,” Mrs. Smith said as she and Dorothy examined the terrace at an early hour.
“It was safer to have it, though,” answered Dorothy. “It might have rained and it never would have done to have the bride take cold. Now we can have the sashes open and the fire will take off the chill. It’s a great combination.”
Mrs. Smith agreed that it was, and went on with her scrutiny of the table.
When the guests arrived at nine o’clock, which was the very latest moment permitted them by Roger, they found the sun shining merrily on silver and glass and china, twinkling as if it were in the secret of the jokes that Helen and Roger had up their sleeves. Mr. Emerson had sent over his car for the Hancocks, for the Doctor’s car was too small to convey the entire family.
“It does my heart good to see Richard so radiant,” said Mrs. Morton to her sister-in-law as Captain Morton ran down the steps to help hisfiancée.
“I believe the best part of his life is before him,” Mrs. Smith answered softly, a smile on her lips.
The hostess sat at one end of the table and Dorothy at the other. In the middle of one side was Helen, the president of the United Service Club, and in the middle of the other, Ethel Blue, the secretary and departing member. Mingled with the other club members were Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, who had contributed so greatly to the Club’s pleasure during the preceding year, and Dr. and Mrs. Hancock, relatives of to-morrow’s bride. The hour was too early for Mr. and Mrs. Watkins to come out from New York, but they telephoned their good wishes and congratulations while the meal was in progress.
It was a simple breakfast but everything was good both to eat and to look at. It began with fruit, of which there were several kinds, and continued with a well-cooked cereal.
“None of your five minute cereals for me,” smiled Mrs. Smith. “I always have even the short-time ones cooked at least twice as long as they are reputed to need. It brings out their flavor better.”
After the cereal with its rich cream came chops for the meat eaters and individualomelettes soufflés, as light as a feather, for the egg eaters. The coffee was clear and turned to a warm gold when the cream worked its magic upon it. Broiled fresh mushrooms with bacon brought it all to an end.
“Just the kind of muffins I like best,” Ethel Brown said in a undertone to Dorothy.