CHAPTER I
ROGER'S IDEA
For the fortieth time that afternoon, it seemed to Ethel Brown Morton and her cousin, Ethel Blue, they untangled the hopelessly mixed garlands of the maypole and started the weavers once more to lacing and interlacing them properly.
"Under, over; under, over," they directed, each girl escorting a small child in and out among the gay bands of pink and white which streamed from the top of the pole.
May Day in New Jersey is never a certain quality; it may be reminiscent of the North Pole or the Equator. This happened to be the hottest day of the year so far, and both Ethels had wiped their foreheads until their handkerchiefs were small balls too soaked to be of any further use. But they kept on, for this was the first Community Maypole that Rosemont ever had had, and the United Service Club, to which the girls belonged, was doing its part to make the afternoon successful. Helen, Ethel Brown's sister, and Margaret Hancock, another member of the Club, were teaching the younger children a folk dance on the side of the lawn; Roger Morton, James Hancock and Tom Watkins were marshalling a group of boys and marching them back and forth across the end of the grass plot nearest the schoolhouse. Delia Watkins, Tom's sister, and Dorothy Smith, a cousin of the Mortons, were going about among the mothers and urging them to let the little ones take part in the games. Everybody was busy until dusk sent the small children home and the caretaker came to uproot the pole and to shake his head ruefully over the condition of the lawn whose smoothness had been roughened by the tread of scores of dancing feet.
It was while the Club members were sitting on the Mortons' veranda, resting, that Helen, who was president of the Club, called them to order.
"Saturday afternoon is our usual time of meeting," she began, "and no one can say that we haven't put in a solid afternoon of service."
Groans as one and another shifted a cramped position to another more restful for weary feet confirmed her statement.
"What I want to say now is that it's time for us to be thinking up some more service work. We are all studying pretty hard so we don't want to undertake anything that will use up our out-of-door time too much, but we haven't anything in prospect except helping with the town Fourth of July celebration, over two months away, so we might as well be planning something else."
"Do I understand, Madam President," asked Roger, "that the chief officer of this distinguished Club hasn't any ideas to suggest?"
"The chief officer is so tired that not even another glass of lemonade--thank you, Tom--can stir her gray matter."
"Hasn't anybody else any ideas?"
Silence greeted the question.
"I seem to remember boasts that ideas never would fail this brilliant group," jeered Roger.
"There were some such remarks," James recalled meditatively; "and I remember that you prophesied that the day would come when we'd call on you for information about some stupendous scheme of yours that was literally as big as a house. Let's have it now."
"Do I understand that you're really appealing to me to learn my scheme?" inquired Roger, swelling with amusement.
"If it's any satisfaction to you--yes," replied his sister.
Roger burst into a peal of laughter.
"Shoot off the answers, old man," urged James. "We're waiting."
"Breathlessly," added Margaret.
Roger settled himself comfortably on the top step of the piazza and leaned his head against the post.
"It certainly does me good to see you all at my feet begging like this," he declared.
"Bosh! You're at ours and I can prove it," asserted Tom, stretching out a foot of goodly size.
"Peace! Withdraw that battering ram!" pleaded Roger. "I'll tell you all about it. Tom's really responsible for this idea, anyway."
"Ideas, real fresh ones, aren't much in my line," admitted practical Tom, "but I'm glad to have helped for once."
"I don't suppose you remember that time last autumn when I went in to New York to see you and you took me down to the chapel where your father preaches on Sunday afternoons?"
"I remember it; we found Father there talking with a lot of mothers and children."
"That's the time. Well, those women and children got on my nerves like anything. You see, out here in Rosemont we haven't any real suffering like that. There are poor people, and Mother always does what she can for them, and there's a Charitable Society, as you know, because you all helped with the Donnybrook Fair they had on St. Patrick's Day. But the people they help out here are regular Rockefellers compared with those poor creatures that your father had in his office that day."
"Father says he could spend a million dollars a year on those people, and not have a misspent cent," said Delia.
"What hit me hardest was the thin little children. Elisabeth hadn't come to us yet," Roger went on, referring to a Belgian baby that had been sent to the Club to take care of, "and I wasn't so accustomed to thinness as I've grown to be since, and it made me--well, it just made me sick."
"I don't wonder," agreed Delia seriously. "That's the way they make me feel."
"I know what you thought of," exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was so imaginative and sympathetic that she sometimes had an almost uncanny way of reading peoples' thoughts. "You wanted to bring some of those poor women out into the country so that the children could get well, and you told your grandfather about it and he offered you a house somewhere."
"That's about it, kidlet. I heard one of the women say that she'd had a week in the country--some sort of Fresh Air business--and that the baby got a lot better, and then she had to go back to the city and the little creature was literally dying on her hands."
"You want to give them a whole summer," guessed Ethel Brown.
"That's the idea. Since I've seen what proper care and good food and fresh air have done for that wretched little skeleton, Elisabeth, I'm more than ever convinced that if we can give some of those mothers and babies a whole month or perhaps two months of Rosemont air we'll be saving lives, actually saving lives."
Roger looked about earnestly from one grave face to another. All were in sympathy with him and all waited for the development of his plan, for they knew he would not have laid so much stress upon it if he had not thought out the details.
"I've talked it over with Grandfather and he rose to it right off. Here's where the house comes in. He said he was going to build a new cottage for his farm superintendent this spring--you know it's almost done now--and that we could have the old farm house if we wanted to fix it up for a Fresh Air scheme."
"Mr. Emerson is a brick. I pull my forelock to him," and Tom illustrated his remark.
"Where's the money to come from?" asked James, who was both of Scottish descent and the Club treasurer, and so was not only shrewd but accustomed to look after details.
"Grandfather said he'd help in this way; if the Club would study the old house and decide on the best way to make it answer the purpose he would provide two carpenters for a fortnight to help us. That will mean that if we want to do any whitewashing or papering or matters of that kind we'll have to do it ourselves, but the carpenters will put the house in repair and put up any partitions that we want and so on."
"Is it furnished?"
"There's another problem. The superintendent has had his own furniture there and what will be left when he goes is almost nothing. There are some old things in the garret, but we'll have to use our ingenuity and invent furniture."
"The way I did for our attic." Dorothy reminded them of the room where the Club had been meeting ever since its members returned from Chautauqua where it had been formed the summer before.
"Just so. We'll have to make a raid on our mothers' attics and also on the stores in town that have their goods come in big boxes, and I imagine we shall be able to concoct things that will 'do,' though they may be remarkable to look upon."
"The mothers and children will be out of doors all the time, so they won't sit around and examine the furniture," laughed Delia.
"It will be scanty, probably, but if we can get beds enough and a chair apiece, or a substitute for a chair, and a few tables, we can get along."
"There's your house provided and furnished after a fashion--how are you going to run it?" inquired Helen. "It takes shekels to buy even very plain food in these days of the 'high cost of living," and we've got to give these women and children nourishing food; they can't live on fresh air alone."
"Praise be, fresh air costs nothing!"
"That's one thing we'll get free," laughed Roger. "Grandfather told me to investigate and see what I could find out about finances and then let him know. So I went in to see Mr. Watkins."
"And never told me," said Tom reproachfully.
"Of course not. All of you people were too sniffy. I told your father what the plan was and what Grandfather had said. He thought it was great. He's a corker, your father is."
Delia and Tom looked somewhat startled at this epithet describing their parent, but Roger meant it to be complimentary, so they made no remonstrance.
"He said right off that he could provide the women and children in any numbers and that he'd select the ones that needed the change most and would be most benefited by it."
"It's not hard to find those," murmured Delia.
"Then he said that he had certain funds that he could draw on for such cases and that he'd be just as willing to pay the board for these women and children at Rosemont as anywhere else, so that we could depend on a small sum for each one of them from the treasurer of the chapel."
"That ought to cover the expense of their food," said Helen, "but we'll have to have a housekeeper and a cook."
"That's what Aunt Louise said."
"Oho, you've been talking with Mother about it!" exclaimed Dorothy.
"I knew the Club would come to me sooner or later, it was only a matter of time, so I made ready to answer some of the questions you'd be asking me."
They laughed at Roger's preparedness, but nodded approvingly.
"Aunt Louise said she'd pay the wages of the cook, and then I toddled off to Grandmother Emerson and told her I was planning to raid her attic for old furniture, and asked her incidentally if she thought we could run the thing without a housekeeper."
"I hope she said 'yes'," exclaimed Margaret, who liked to administer a household.
"Grandmother was very polite; she said she thought the U. S. C. could do anything it set out to do, but that there would be countless odds and ends that would occupy us all summer long--"
"Like making a continuous stream of furniture!"
"And going marketing and doing errands."
"And mowing the grass."
"And playing games with the kids."
"O, a thousand things would crop up; we never could be idle; and so she thought we'd better have a responsible woman as housekeeper. What's more she said she'd pay her."
"It wouldn't be polite for me to say about a lady what you said about Mr. Watkins," said James--
"For which I apologize," declared Roger parenthetically.
"--but I'd like to remark that she's one of the most reliable grandmothers I ever had anything to do with!"
They all laughed again.
"Where we'll get these two women I don't know," said Roger. "My researches stopped there. But I suppose it wouldn't be difficult."
"I've heard Mother say that the 'responsible woman' was the hardest person on earth to find," said Helen, thoughtfully. "But we can all hunt."
"I know some one who might do if she'd be willing--and I don't know why she wouldn't," said Ethel Brown.
"Who? Who? Some one in Rosemont?"
"Right here in Rosemont. Mrs. Schuler."
"Mrs. Schuler?"
There was a cry of wonder, for Mrs. Schuler was the teacher of German in the high school. She had been engaged to Mr. Schuler, who taught singing in the Rosemont schools, before the war broke out. Mr. Schuler was called to the colors and lost a leg in the early part of the war. Since he could no longer be useful as a fighter he had been allowed to return to America, and his betrothed had married him at once so that she and her mother, Mrs. Hindenburg, might nurse him back to health. He had been slowly regaining his strength through the winter, and was now fairly well and as cheerful as his crippled state would permit.
"You know I've been to see Mrs. Hindenburg a good deal ever since we got her to go to the Home to teach the old ladies how to knit," said Ethel Brown. "I know her pretty well now. The other day she told me she had had an application from a family who wanted to board with her this summer, and she was so sorry to have to turn them away because she didn't have enough rooms for them."
"I don't see how that helps us any."
"You know Mr. Schuler hasn't been able to take many pupils this winter and I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Schuler would be glad to have something to do this summer when school is closed. Now if they would go to our Fresh Air house and take charge there for the summer it would leave Mrs. Hindenburg with enough space to take in her boarders. She'd be glad, and I should think the Schulers would be glad."
"And we'd be glad! Why, Fraulein is the grandest housekeeper," cried Helen, using the name that Mrs. Schuler's old pupils never remembered to change to "Frau." "German housekeepers are thrifty and neat and careful--why, she's exactly the person we want. How great of you to think of her, Ethel Brown!"
"You know she wanted to adopt our Belgian baby, so I guess she's interested in poor children," volunteered Ethel Blue.
"Are our plans far enough along for us to ask her?" inquired Margaret.
"We ought to ask her as soon as we can, because Mrs. Hindenburg's plans will be affected by the Schulers' decision," Helen reminded them.
"I think we are far enough along," decided Roger. "You see, the idea is new to you, but I've been working at it for a good many months now, and if we all pull together to do our share I know we can depend on the grown-ups to do theirs."
"Shall we appoint Ethel Brown to call on Mrs. Schuler and talk it over with her? She knows her better than the rest of us because she's seen her at home oftener."
"Madam President, I move that Ethel Brown be appointed a committee of one to see our Teutonic friends and work up their sympathies over the women and children we want to help so that they just can't resist helping too. Is your eloquence equal to that strain, Ethel?"
Ethel thought it was, and promised to go the very next afternoon. The discussion turned to the next step to take.
"Grandfather's superintendent is going to move into the new cottage next week," was Roger's news, "so then we can go over the old house and see how it is arranged and decide how we'd like to change it."
"And also find out just what furniture is left and draw up a list of what furniture we shall need."
"Had we better appoint committees for making the different investigations?" inquired Tom, who was accustomed to the methods of a city church.
"Later, perhaps," decided Helen. "At first I think we all want to know the whole situation and then we can make our plans to fit, and special people can volunteer for special work if we think it can be done best that way." "It's a great old plan you have there, Roger," cried Tom, thumping his friend affectionately on the shoulder. "I bow to your giant intellect. We'll do our best to make it a success."