CHAPTER IX
A NEW KIND OF GRASS SEED
"Your grand-father told me once about a field he had that was filled with daisies," said Ethel Blue. "It looked awfully pretty, but it spoiled the field for a pasture; the cows wouldn't touch them."
"I remember that field. We used to make daisy chains and trim Mother's room with them," said Ethel Brown.
"Mr. Emerson tried ploughing up the field and he had men working over it for two seasons, but on the third, up they grew again as gay as you please. They acted as if he had just been stirring up the soil so they would grow better than ever."
"Poor Grandfather; he had a hard time with that field."
"He said he really needed it for a pasture, so he made up his mind that if he couldn't root out the bad plants, he'd crowd them out. So he bought some seed of a kind of grass that has large, strong roots, and he sowed it in the field. As soon as it began to grow he could see that there certainly were not so many daisies there. He kept on another year and the cows began to look over the fence as if they'd like to get in. The third year there were so few daisies that they didn't count."
"I remember all that," said Ethel Brown, "but what does it have to do with Mrs. Paterno?"
"Why, if we--or Edward--could make her get a grip on herself and control herself that would be like Mr. Emerson's digging up the daisies. It would be hard work and an awfully slow process. But if we also could fill her mind with thoughts about working for her children and trying to make other people happy and with making embroidery which she loves to do, why wouldn't it help? These new things she's thinking about would be like the strong, new grass seed that didn't give the weeds a chance to grow."
Dorothy stared seriously at Ethel Blue.
"She does perfectly beautiful embroidery," she said slowly, as she tried to think out a way to put Ethel Blue's suggestion into effect. "Do you suppose she'd be willing to teach us how to do it? That beautiful Italian cut work, you know. If we should call ourselves a class and ask her to teach us it might give her something quite new to think about."
"I'd like to learn, too," agreed Ethel Blue. "I heard Mother say once that there was a school in New York for Italian lace work. Let's get Delia to find out about it, and when Mrs. Paterno grows stronger and goes back to the city she might go there. They have a shop uptown where they sell the pupils' work. The class here and the prospect of having regular employment when she went back--"
"Work she likes."
"What are you youngsters plotting?" asked the cheerful voice of Grandfather Emerson, who came around the big oak from the grass grown lane so quietly that they did not hear him coming.
They told him their plan, and he listened intently. "The poor little woman has had such a shock that it will be a long time before she can control herself, I'm afraid," he responded sympathetically, "but I believe you've hit on the right way."
"Then we'll get Edward Watkins to ask her whether she'll be willing to teach a class, and we'll all join it."
"The other women might like to learn, too."
"Perhaps they could teach. Bulgarian embroidery has been fashionable lately, you know, and the peasant women do it."
"Your grandmother and I went through a Peasant's Bazar when we were in Petrograd and there were mounds of embroidery there that the peasant women had made."
"The Swedes do beautiful work. Why don't we have a class for international embroidery?" laughed Dorothy. "I think Mother would like to learn the Russian; she's crazy about Russian music and everything Russian."
"We'll ask Mother and Grandmother, too, and perhaps the Miss Clarks would come and the women could charge a fee and make a little money teaching us and be amused themselves."
"I dare say it will do the others good as well as the little Italian. You've hit on something that will benefit all of them while you were trying to help Mrs. Paterno," surmised Mr. Emerson. "What I came over here this morning to see you about was this," he went on in a business-like tone that made them look at him attentively. "Grandmother and I think that Mrs. Paterno has been a trifle too exciting for you young people the last few days. We think you need a change of thought as well as that young woman herself."
They all sat and waited for what was coming, quite unable to guess what proposition he was going to make.
"Helen and Roger are somewhat older and stand such upheavals a little better than you girls, so my plan doesn't include them."
"Just us three?" asked Ethel Brown.
"Just you three. Here's my scheme; see if you like it. I have to go over to Boston to-morrow on a matter of business and it occurred to me that it would be a pleasant sail on the Sound and that you'd be interested in seeing the city--"
"O--o!" gasped Dorothy; "Cambridge and Longfellow's house."
"Concord and Lexington!" cried Ethel Brown.
"The Art Museum!" murmured Ethel Blue.
"And Bunker Hill Monument, and, of course, the Navy Yard especially for this daughter of a sailor," and he nodded gayly at his granddaughter.
"Grandmother will go, to take you around when I have to attend to my business, and we can stay a day or two and come back fresh to attend to Mrs. Paterno's affairs. How does it strike you?"
Without any preliminary conference, the three girls flung their arms around his neck and hugged him heartily.
"Have you talked about it with Mother and Aunt Louise?" asked Ethel Brown.
"I'm armed with their permission."
"I guess we were all worrying about Mrs. Paterno," admitted Ethel Blue. "This will be the strong grass seed that will clear up our minds so that we can help her better after we come back."
"I think you're the most magnificent Grandfather that ever was born!" exclaimed Ethel Brown, standing back and gazing admiringly at her ancestor.
"Thank you," returned Mr. Emerson, bowing low, his hand on his heart, "I am quite overcome by such a wholesale tribute!"
"Had we better tell Mrs. Schuler about the embroidery class plan?" asked Dorothy.
"Run up to Rose House now and explain it to her and ask her to talk to the women about it while you are gone, and then when you get back she'll have it all ready to start," Mr. Emerson suggested.
The next twenty-four hours were full of excitement. Each of the girls had only a small handbag to pack, but the selection of what should go into each bag seemed a matter of infinite importance. The Ethels filled their bags twice before they were satisfied that they had not left out anything that would be wanted, and Dorothy confessed that she had first put in too much and then had gone to the other extreme, and that it had not been until after she had had a consultation with her mother that she had decided on just the number and kind of garments that she would need for a two-day trip to the Hub of the Universe.
"Why is it called that?" she asked of Ethel Brown.
"I asked Mother and she said that people from New York and other cities used to say that Bostonians thought that their town was the centre of civilization. So they guyed it by calling it the 'Hub'."
Roger and Helen went into New York with the travellers and Delia and Margaret were on the pier to see the steamer leave.
It was a glorious afternoon and the boat slipped around the end of the Battery while the westering sun was still shining brilliantly on the water, touching it with sparkles on the tip of each tiny wave. The Statue of Liberty, with the sun behind it, towered darkly against the gold. The huge buildings of the lower city stretched skywards, the new Equitable, the latest addition to the mammoth group, shutting off almost entirely the view of the Singer Tower from the harbor, just as the Woolworth Tower hides it from observers on the north.
Between them Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson were able to point out nearly all of the sights of the East River--several parks and playgrounds, Bellevue Hospital, the Vanderbilt model tenements for people threatened with tuberculosis, the Junior League Hotel for self-supporting women, the old dwelling where Dorothy's friend, the "box furniture lady," had established a school to teach the folk of the neighborhood how to use tools for the advantage of their house-furnishings.
The boat was one of those which steams around Cape Cod instead of stopping at Fall River, Rhode Island, and sending its passengers to Boston by train. Early morning found them all on deck watching the waters of Massachusetts Bay and trying to place on a map that Mr. Emerson produced from his pocket the towns whose church spires they could see pointing skyward far off on their left. Twin lighthouses they decided, marked Gurnet Point, the entrance to Plymouth Bay, and they strained their eyes to see the town that was the oldest settlement in Massachusetts, and imagined they were watching the bulky little Mayflower making her way landward between the headlands.
Mr. Emerson convoyed his party to a hotel on Copley Square and left them there while he went out at once to meet his business friends.
"How far away Rosemont seems, and poor Mrs. Paterno with her troubles," she said an hour later as they stood before Sargent's panel of the Prophets in the Public Library.