Ethel Morton at Sweetbrier Lodge

by Mabell S. C. Smith

“BETSY’S BATTLE FLAG

“From dusk till dawn the livelong night

She kept the tallow dips alight,

And fast her nimble fingers flew

To sew the stars upon the blue.

With weary eyes and aching head

She stitched the stripes of white and red,

And when the day came up the stair

Complete across a carven chair

Hung Betsy’s battle flag.

“Like the shadows in the evening gray

The Continentals filed away,

With broken boots and ragged coats,

But hoarse defiance in their throats;

They bore the marks of want and cold,

And some were lame and some were old,

And some with wounds untended bled,

But floating bravely overhead

Was Betsy’s battle flag.

“When fell the battle’s leaden rain,

The soldier hushed his moan of pain

And raised his dying head to see

King George’s troopers turn and flee.

Their charging column reeled and broke,

And vanished in the rolling smoke,

Before the glory of the stars,

The snowy stripes, and scarlet bars

Of Betsy’s battle flag.

“The simple stone of Betsy Ross

Is covered now with mold and moss,

But still her deathless banner flies,

And keeps the color of the skies,

A nation thrills, a nation bleeds,

A nation follows where it leads,

And every man is proud to yield

His life upon a crimson field

For Betsy’s battle flag.”

“When was it that Washington made his historic visit to Betsy?” asked Roger of Helen.

“That was in June of 1776. A year later, on the fourteenth of June, 1777, Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as our flag.”

“That’s why June 14th is celebrated as Flag Day, I suppose,” said Ethel Blue.

“I think our flag has more meaning to it than any other flag in the world,” declared Roger. “The thirteen stripes mean the thirteen original colonies, don’t they?”

“There were thirteen stars at the beginning. They’ve added a star for every new state that has joined the Union.”

“It certainly does make your heart beat to look at it, especially when you happen to come on it suddenly as Miss Bates said in those verses of hers that we had in our Peace Day Program on Lincoln’s Birthday.”

“A Russian sea-captain once told me it looked to him like a mosaic,” Mrs. Morton said.

“But every piece of the mosaic is full of meaning,” said Ethel Blue, “and mosaics make beautiful pictures any way.”

“There was a sad time ahead for Philadelphia in spite of Washington’s successes at Trenton and Princeton,” said Helen, taking up her story once more. “The Americans were successful in Vermont and northern New York, but in September, 1777, they were defeated at Brandywine Creek, and the British marched into Philadelphia a fortnight later and took possession of the town.”

“Wasn’t it about that time that the American army spent the winter at Valley Forge?” asked Margaret. “I seem to remember something about their living in a great deal of distress, such as the soldiers in Europe are enduring now.”

“This was the time,” confirmed Helen. “Grandfather has a few lines of Reed’s here telling about it.”

“Such was the winter’s awful sight,

For many a dreary day and night,

What time our country’s hope forlorn,

Of every needed comfort shorn,

Lay housed within a buried tent,

Where every keen blast found a rent,

And oft the snow was seen to sift

Along the floor its piling drift,

Or, mocking the scant blanket’s fold,

Across the night-couch frequent rolled;

Where every path by a soldier beat,

Or every track where a sentinel stood,

Still held the print of naked feet,

And oft the crimson stains of blood;

Where Famine held her spectral court,

And joined by all her fierce allies;

She ever loved a camp or fort

Beleaguered by the wintry skies,—

But chiefly when Disease is by,

To sink frame and dim the eye,

Until, with seeking forehead bent,

In martial garments cold and damp,

Pale Death patrols from tent to tent,

To count the charnels of the camp.

Such was the winter that prevailed

Within the crowded, frozen gorge;

Such were the horrors that assailed

The patriot band at Valley Forge.”

“How long did the British hold the city?” asked Tom, after he had shaken his head over the Americans’ troubles.

“Six or eight months,” said Helen, “and you can imagine what a thrilling time it was for American girls like Sweet P. I can fancy them walking daintily along the street turning their heads aside when a British officer passed them, as if he were too far beneath their notice for them even to glance at.”

They all laughed at the picture that Helen’s words drew.

“When Sir Henry Clinton evacuated Philadelphia in the middle of June, he started for New York. Washington followed him but did not win in the skirmish which they fought at Monmouth, New Jersey. The Indians on the western frontier had joined the British, and there was some terrible fighting there. Our fleet, as a general thing, was successful on the ocean. Clinton stayed for more than a year in New York City. Washington established himself just above the city where he could keep an eye on him.”

“Wasn’t that the time when my old friend, Anthony Wayne, stirred up a little excitement up the Hudson?” asked Roger.

“Yes, it was then he took Stony Point, which we saw when we went up the river to West Point. There was fighting in New Jersey and in the South, and the British seemed to be getting tired out.”

“It was at the end of several sharply fought fields that Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in Virginia, wasn’t it?” inquired Roger.

Tom looked at him with exaggerated respect.

“It certainly is a great thing to be related to the Army and Navy. Here’s Helen, a walking ‘History of the Revolution,’ and old Roger actually remembering something about Cornwallis’s surrender!”

“Bah!” acknowledged Roger.

“They tell a story about the way that Philadelphia heard the news of the surrender,” interposed the caretaker of the Betsy Ross house, who had been listening to the conversation. “There was an old German watchman walking the streets, and calling the hours through the night, as was the custom then. He cried out; ‘Bast dree o’clock and Cornvallis ist daken.’ People who had turned over in bed growling when they had been awakened by him before, were only too thankful to hear his hoarse voice croaking out the good news.”

“That was in October, 1781,” went on Helen, after nodding her thanks to the caretaker for his addition to the story. “It took a good many months for the British to leave the country, for transportation was a difficult matter at that time.”

“I’ll bet you the Americans were thankful to have peace,” exclaimed James.

“It sounds to me very much as if the British were, too,” said Roger. “Any country must be grateful for a rest from such long distress.”

“Grandfather’s poetry is by Freneau this time,” said Helen. “I’m going to read you only two stanzas of it.”

“The great unequal conflict past,

The Britons banished from our shore,

Peace, heaven-descended, comes at last,

And hostile nations rage no more;

From fields of death the weary swain

Returning, seeks his native plain.

In every vale she smiles serene,

Freedom’s bright stars more radiant rise,

New charms she adds to every scene,

Her brighter sun illumes our skies.

Remotest realms admiring stand,

And hail the HERO of our Land.”

“Who is the Hero?” inquired Tom. “Washington, I suppose.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Helen. “These verses were written when he was traveling through Philadelphia on his way to Mt. Vernon.”

“I know enough American history to tell you that he didn’t stay there long,” said Tom, proud of being able to bring forward one sure piece of information. “He was made President on his war record. That I do know.”

They all applauded this contribution. The care-taker of the house again could not resist joining the conversation.

“The five years after the signing of the Treaty of Peace in 1783 were very critical years,” he said. “The new country had almost no money and no definite policy, now that they had cut themselves free from England. Somebody proposed a Federal Convention and it met here in Philadelphia in 1787.”

“What did they want to do this time?” asked Margaret.

“Now they had to draw up some sort of Constitution for the new country. Washington was chosen President of the Convention and they worked from May until September in planning the Constitution, which they nick-named the ‘New Roof.’”

“Yes, I know about that,” cried Helen. “Grandfather gave me a poem about that. He thought we’d be especially interested in it on account of Dorothy knowing so much about the building of a house,”—and she read them the old poem called ‘The New Roof,’ by Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Come muster, my lads, your mechanical tools,

Your saws and your axes, your hammers and rules;

Bring your mallets and planes, your level and line,

And plenty of pins of American pine:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be,

Our government firm, and our citizens free.

Come, up with the plates, lay them firm on the wall,

Like the people at large, they’re the ground-work of all;

Examine them well, and see that they’re sound,

Let no rotten part in our building be found:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be

A government firm, and our citizens free.

Now hand up the girders, lay each in its place,

Between them the joists, must divide all the space;

Like assemblymen these should lie level along,

Like girders, our senate prove loyal and strong:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be

A government firm over citizens free.

The rafters now frame; your king-posts and braces,

And drive your pins home, to keep all in their places;

Let wisdom and strength in the fabric combine,

And your pins be all made of American pine:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be

A government firm over citizens free.

Our king-posts are judges: how upright they stand,

Supporting the braces; the laws of the land:

The laws of the land, which divide right from wrong,

And strengthen the weak, by weak’ning the strong:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be

Laws equal and just, for a people that’s free.

Up! up with the rafters; each frame is a state:

How nobly they rise! their span, too, how great!

From the north to the south, o’er the whole they extend,

And rest on the walls, whilst the walls they defend:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be

Combine in strength, yet as citizens free.

Now enter the purlins, and drive your pins through;

And see that your joints are drawn home and all true.

The purlins will bind all the rafters together:

The strength of the whole shall defy wind and weather:

For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be

United as states, but as citizens free.

Come, raise up the turret; our glory and pride;

In the center it stands, o’er the whole to preside:

The sons of Columbia shall view with delight

Its pillars, and arches, and towering height:

Our roof is now rais’d, and our song still shall be,

A federal head o’er a people that’s free.

Huzza! my brave boys, our work is complete;

The world shall admire Columbia’s fair seat;

Its strength against tempest and time shall be proof,

And thousands shall come to dwell under our roof:

Whilst we drain the deep bowl, our toast still shall be,

Our government firm, and our citizens free.

“Now that we have put the United States on a good running foundation, I think we might finish up our Revolutionary history by whirling out to Valley Forge,” said Mrs. Morton. “It’s a delightful ride, and I think we could do it comfortably in what is left of the afternoon.”

“I shall be glad,” said Helen, pretending extreme fatigue, “for these ignorant people have made me work so hard remembering dates and things, that I’m quite exhausted, and I’d like to sit still and view the scenery for a while.”

The chauffeur said that he could manage the ride and even give them time for a walk when they reached their destination, if they were not in a hurry to return.

“I think it would be fun to come back in the evening,” said Margaret, and they started off with great satisfaction.

As they passed Fairmount Park they promised themselves to see it in detail in the morning, but now there was only time to notice that much of it had been left in a natural condition, which was far more beautiful than any results that Art could have brought about.

The road lay through a rolling country with pleasant suburban towns and comfortable-looking farm houses. At Valley Forge they felt like real pilgrims at a shrine, for they remembered the bitter suffering of the American soldiers and the even greater mental anguish of their leader, who sometimes felt that he had led his brave men into this distress, and might not be able to lead them to the victory which he must have, if the colonies were to become independent of the land they had sprung from.

Across the surrounding hills they walked, reading with utmost interest the monuments and markers which commemorate events and places and people connected with this fateful winter. Below swept the Schuylkill River, between peaceful banks, far different from those that hem it in farther down, as it runs through the great city.

CHAPTER X
THE LAND OF “CAT-FISH AND WAFFLES”

It was a tired party that tumbled into bed that night but the long ride in the fresh air made them sleep like tops and they awoke the next morning entirely refreshed, and ready to start out again on their investigations of the City of Brotherly Love.

“To-day I am not going to open my mouth,” said Helen. “I talked altogether too much yesterday.”

“You were a wonder,” said Tom, admiringly. “I wish I could remember dates the way you do.”

“Hush,” said Helen, with a finger on her lip. “My energetic grandfather blocked out the whole history of Philadelphia in the revolutionary days for me, so it was not my unaided memory that reeled off all that information. Any way, I’m going to sit back and have the rest of you inform me to-day about the places we shall see.”

“What are we going to see?” inquired Roger. “Mother, you know this village; can’t you make out a list for us?”

Mrs. Morton said that she had some suggestions to make and Roger jotted them down in a book.

“There are one or two churches,” she said, “which have an interest because they are old, or have connection with some important person or because there is some strangeness about the way they are built.”

“I shall like those,” said Ethel Blue. “I’m going to try to draw some of the doorways for Miss Graham. She asked me to draw any little thing about buildings that I thought would interest her.”

“You’ll see some old-timey doorways in Rittenhouse Square,” said Mrs. Morton. “That is like Washington Square in New York, only here the whole square has been preserved in its former beauty. You’ll find more than one doorway, and which will be worth putting into your sketch book.”

“Would it take too much time to see the Mint?” asked James. “I shouldn’t want to suggest it if it will take too long, but it would be awfully interesting.”

“I had the Mint on my list,” said Mrs. Morton, tapping her forehead.

“I’ll transfer it from that spot to paper,” laughed Roger.

“I hope we can get the same chauffeur we had yesterday,” said Ethel Brown; “he knew a lot about things.”

“I suppose he’s accustomed to driving tourists,” replied her mother.

As good fortune would have it they were able to secure the same car, and the good-natured driver beamed at them, as they stowed themselves away as they had the day before. Mrs. Morton told him the chief “sights” which they wanted to see, and directed him to point out anything that they passed which would have some interest for the young people.

First they went over to the old part of the town along the Delaware, to find one of the churches of which Mrs. Morton had spoken. On the way they stopped at Christ Church. Its high box pews seemed to them full of dignity, and they imagined the elaborately arranged head-dresses of the ladies and powdered wigs of the gentlemen, rising above the old-fashioned seats. The pulpit was high up on one side of the chancel.

“This is the church that was presided over by Bishop White, the first Episcopal bishop of Pennsylvania,” said Mrs. Morton. “He was influential in organizing the Episcopal Church in this country.”

Out in the graveyard, whose quiet seemed strangely out of place amid the hurry of the city, they found many stones bearing well-known names, among them that of Benjamin Franklin.

“He died in 1790,” read Delia, from the stone. “Wasn’t that just about the time Washington was elected President?”

“One year after,” said Helen, who could not resist giving historical information. “The first real American Congress after the separation of the country from England met here in Philadelphia in 1789, and elected Washington as President.”

“You can’t escape a little history as long as Sister Helen is around,” murmured Roger.

“It wasn’t I who started it,” retorted Helen.

“Now, children, be quiet. You may thank your stars that your sister knows so much about history,” said Mrs. Morton; “it would be an excellent thing, Roger, if you stowed away some of it in your brain, too.”

“Yes’m,” answered Roger meekly.

It was while the car was on its way to the second old church of their search that the chauffeur asked James, who was sitting beside him, if he knew that “Hail Columbia” was written in Philadelphia.

“I certainly didn’t,” said James. “Helen, did you know that ‘Hail Columbia’ was written in Philadelphia?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Helen. “Tell me about it.”

With his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel the chauffeur told James, who repeated the story over his shoulder to those in the back of the car, that while John Adams was president, there was a war scare, because French vessels were supposed to be off the coast ready to attack American merchant vessels. A man named John Hopkinson wrote the poem, which was sung one night at the Chestnut Street Theatre.

“You mean our ‘Hail Columbia’—the regular ‘Hail Columbia’?” asked Ethel Brown.

The chauffeur nodded at Ethel Brown. Her memory for verses was always good and she repeated the first stanza of the stirring song.

“Hail Columbia, happy land!

Hail! Ye Heroes, heaven-born band,

Who fought and bled in freedom’s cause,

Who fought and bled in freedom’s cause,

And when the storm of war was gone,

Enjoyed the peace your valor won;

Let independence be your boast,

Ever mindful what it cost,

Ever grateful for the prize,

Let its altar reach the skies.”

They all joined in the chorus.

“Firm united let us be,

Rallying round our liberty,

As a band of brothers joined,

Peace and safety we shall find.”

Almost on the river, toward the southern end of the town, was the church which the chauffeur called “Old Swedes Church,” and whose correct name, Mrs. Morton said, was “Gloria Dei.”

“How old is it?” asked Dicky who was beginning to understand that they were on a historical pilgrimage. They all laughed at his seriousness, and his mother answered.

“This building is only a little over two centuries old—but it’s on the site of an old wooden church that was built in 1646. It was a Swedish church, originally, and then the whole congregation turned Episcopal.”

“It doesn’t look as if they lived around the church in any great numbers,” said Tom, gazing about him.

“Most of the parishioners live now a long way from here,” said the chauffeur, “but they love the church because they are the descendants of the original founders, and they come from great distances to the morning services and stay to Sunday School, old people and young ones, too, and cook their dinner in the Parish House.”

“That sounds like a New England village church to which all the farmers from around about come for the day,” said Margaret Hancock. “I used to see them when I was a little girl and we went to New Hampshire for the summer. They bring their lunch and eat it under the trees between services.”

“Since we seem to be doing churches, we ought to go to a Quaker Meeting House,” suggested Mrs. Morton, turning to the chauffeur for information.

“There is one up on 12th Street, madam,” he responded. “There’s a boys’ school connected with it that is very well known—the Penn Charter School. Lots of the old Quaker families send their boys there still.”

“I don’t suppose there would be a meeting to-day,” inquired Helen.

The chauffeur shook his head.

“You wouldn’t like it, any way,” he said. “I’m a Quaker myself, and I know when I was your age it was awfully hard work to keep still so long.”

“Is it worse than any other kind of church?” asked Dicky.

The driver nodded again, dexterously avoiding a big truck as he answered.

“The congregation just sits there until the Spirit moves someone to speak. I’ve been there many a time when they sat for two hours and nothing happened at all.”

“Dear me,” exclaimed Ethel Blue, shaking her head gravely; “I don’t believe I could keep still as long as that.”

“I dare say it’s just as well that there is no meeting to-day,” said Mrs. Morton. “Any way, I don’t know that I should approve of your going to a religious service out of curiosity.”

Tom nodded in agreement with Mrs. Morton.

“I’m sure Father wouldn’t like it,” he said.

Tom’s father was a clergyman in New York.

“He doesn’t object to our going to other churches,” he went on, “but he has seen so much of tourists who come to New York and go around the city, taking in three or four churches on Sunday morning merely to hear the music or some celebrated speaker, that he has always warned us children against being ‘religious rubber-necks.’”

They all laughed and contented themselves with looking at the outside of the severely plain meeting-house.

The tour over the Mint was filled with interest for all of them.

“This is the oldest Mint in the United States,” the guide explained to them.

“What’s the date?” Helen could not resist asking, although Roger shook his head at her and Tom visibly smothered a smile.

“1792” the man replied. “We turn out gold and silver and copper here and we’ve done a great deal of minting for South America, and, of late years, for the Philippines.”

The boys were most interested in the processes by which the discs were cut out of plain sheets of metal and were then fed into tubes of just the right size to hold them, until they reached the stamping machine which gave them the impress they were to wear through life.

“Those new gold pieces are certainly beauties,” said Roger, looking at the eagle flying through the air on one coin and then at the same majestic bird standing with dignity on another.

“I don’t think this Indian has a very handsome nose,” said Ethel Blue, critically, as she examined a five-cent piece.

“But think how appropriate it is,—the noble red-man on one side of the nickel, and the buffalo of the plains on the other,” returned James.

The girls were more interested in the coin collection in the Mint’s museum. Here they saw not only American coins, from the earliest to the most recent, but coins of other countries. One of them was the tiny bit of metal known as the “Widow’s Mite.”

“The Widow didn’t have to be very muscular to carry that around,” commented Roger.

“But she must have had a separate bag to put it in or it would have been lost,” returned practical Ethel Brown.

“There’s nothing doing in the Academy of Fine Arts now, ma’am,” the chauffeur told Mrs. Morton, when she got into the car again. “It has a grand exhibition every winter but it’s closed for the summer. Would you like to see the collections?”

The question was put to the party and they agreed that they would prefer to stay out of doors in this brilliant summer weather.

“We’ll make an expedition to the Metropolitan Museum some day before long,” promised Mrs. Morton.

“I wish we might do it soon,” said Dorothy. “Miss Graham said she’d go with us, and I think we should learn a lot from her because she’s half an artist.”

“Let’s ask her to take us as soon as we get back,” said Ethel Blue. “I’m crazy about her, and this would be a good chance for us to be with her for almost all day.”

“I’ll see that you have your opportunity soon,” her Aunt Marion promised her.

“We have time to run out to Mt. Airy this morning,” suggested the chauffeur. “Then after luncheon, you could go to the Park and the Zoo in the afternoon.”

“What is Mt. Airy?” asked Della.

“One of the finest deaf and dumb asylums in America,” replied the young man proudly.

Della shook her head and the rest of them pulled such long faces Mrs. Morton could not resist smiling.

“I rather think these young people care more for human beings who can talk and hear,” she said to the chauffeur. “At any rate,” she went on, looking at her watch, “I must meet my business appointment now, so I suggest, Roger, that you take our party to Wanamaker’s. You can see a lot of interesting things there, and can have your luncheon, and I’ll meet you there when I am through with my business.”

So it was arranged, and the chauffeur was ordered for three o’clock to take them to Fairmount Park.

At the appointed hour his cheerful face greeted them once again. Because of the Mortons’ interest in the Navy, they first ran south to the League Island Navy Yard. Even their familiarity with many Navy Yards did not lessen their interest in this one, with its rows of officers’ houses and its barracks and mess-room. Just because they were so familiar with similar places, however, they did not stay long, and the car was soon whirling northwards to the opposite end of the city. They went through miles and miles of streets lined with small houses.

“These are the houses which have given Philadelphia the nick-name of the ‘City of Homes,’” exclaimed Mrs. Morton. “You see, in New York people are crowded on to a small tongue of land, between two rivers. Here there are two rivers also, but the space between them is wider. There’s nothing to prevent the city’s crossing the Schuylkill and running westward, as it began to do many long years ago.”

“These houses aren’t very beautiful,” commented Ethel Blue.

“They are very neat,” said Ethel Brown. “But don’t you get tired of these red bricks and white shutters, and the little flights of white marble steps, all alike? I don’t see how anybody knows when he has come home. I should think people would all the time be getting into their neighbors’ houses by mistake.”

“It is much more wholesome for a family to have a house to itself, than for many families to be crowded into one building,” said Mrs. Morton.

“I don’t see why,” objected Tom, who had been born and reared in New York. “The large buildings are wonderfully constructed now-a-days for ventilation and sanitation. They couldn’t be better in that respect.”

“That’s true,” said Mrs. Morton, “but a family loses something of its privacy when it lives in a building with other people. The householder is responsible for his own heating, his own side-walk, and so on, for all matters whose good care makes for the happiness of his family. The apartment dweller loses that work for the well-being of his family, when he lets go its responsibility.”

“I dare say you are right, Mrs. Morton,” said Tom, “but in these days of co-operation, it seems to me you gain something by uniting, as apartment house people practically do, to hire some one to take the responsibility of the heating arrangements, the side-walks, the ashes, and so on.”

“It all depends on the conditions,” returned Mrs. Morton. “In New York, especially on Manhattan Island, where land is so valuable that buildings must go up in the air, such co-operation has become desirable, but where there is plenty of space, it seems better for every household to be separate as far as possible.”

The chauffeur called their attention, as they passed through Logan Square, to the fact that this was the fourth city square they had seen since they had been in his care.

“On our way south from the Penn Treaty Park, we went through Franklin Square, and then you saw Washington Square when you were down by Independence Hall. This morning you saw Rittenhouse Square. Logan is the fourth. These four squares were laid out by William Penn as a part of the original design of the city.”

Not far from Logan Square they were enabled to reach the bank of the Schuylkill, and the rest of the afternoon they spent in the lovely Park through which flows this river and the picturesque little Wissahickon.

Their first visit was to the Zoo, which the chauffeur told them was one of the finest in the United States. They invested in peanuts and small cakes and made themselves popular with the animals whose cages they passed.

Then they drove on, gliding swiftly in and out among the stately trees which the engineers of the Park had had the good sense to leave as they found them. Along the Wissahickon they noticed many small inns, all of which showed signs, inviting passers-by to come in and partake of “Cat-fish and Waffles.”

“I can understand the waffle supply being limited only by the energy of the cooks,” exclaimed Roger, as he read one of the numerous summonses, “but if they catch the cat-fish in the Wissahickon they must keep an army of fishermen out in the boats all day long!”

“I wish we could go out on the river,” murmured Helen, as they whirled along the banks of the Schuylkill. “It looks so refreshing there.”

“I think we can get a barge at one of these boat houses and go up the river a little way,” suggested Mrs. Morton, turning inquiringly to the chauffeur.

“It’s a pretty bit from about here up to a place called ‘The Lilacs,’” he answered. “It’s a pretty little club house.”

“Oh, do lets do it,” cried Ethel Blue excitedly. “It would be lovely.”

So they went to a near-by boat house and made the arrangements. The boats were large, with seats for four rowers besides the seats in the stern and bow.

The Ethels had learned to row at Chautauqua the summer before, so they occupied one seat.

The three boys each took one of the other seats, each rowing a single oar. Helen sat on the seat with Tom, Margaret with Roger, and Dorothy with James.

Mrs. Morton and Dicky sat in the stern, and Della played look-out in the bow.

It was a charming pull between shores beautiful by nature and gay with boat houses from which merry parties were establishing themselves in boats and barges and canoes. The rowers found the trip not too hard upon the muscles, even the Ethels saying that they were not at all tired, when The Lilacs came in sight.

The car met them at the Club House because they had to go back to the hotel and pack their bags in order to catch the train for home. The chauffeur had brought up with him a man from the boat house, to take the barge back where it belonged.

They returned over different streets to the city so that they felt that they had a good idea of the geography of the town.

“I’ve had a perfectly stunning time, Mrs. Morton,” said Tom, as he bade her “Good-bye” on the train and thanked her for her care. “It has been splendid fun, and my only grief is that I am afraid Helen may have fatigued her brain, remembering all that history!”

Helen wrinkled her nose at him, but she laughed good-naturedly and agreed with him that the trip had been great fun.

CHAPTER XI
LIGHTS AND A FALL

It was not often that Ethel Blue took a violent fancy to any one. Although she had something of the temperament that artists claim to have, she also had great reserve, and she found the companionship of her cousins, Ethel Brown and Dorothy, quite sufficient for her.

Now, however, she was filled with admiration for Margaret’s aunt, Miss Graham. Miss Graham suited her in so many ways. She was good to look at, and Ethel found herself gazing at her wholesome, amiable face, filled with life and earnestness and fun, and enjoyed it quite as much as if she had great beauty.

Then, Miss Graham, because of her occupation as an interior decorator, knew something about art, and Ethel Blue wanted to know how to draw and paint, and how to appreciate pictures. She found that she never met Miss Graham without realizing afterwards that she had learned something from her. Perhaps it was only the meaning of a new phrase, or perhaps Miss Daisy called her attention to the light on the group of figures in some picture, or to the harmonies of color in the landscape. Whatever it was, it was not brought out in any preachy way and yet Ethel Blue found herself with quite a store of information that had come from her new friend.

Miss Graham did not seem to single out Ethel Blue for particular attention. They naturally drifted together when there was a large party, because their tastes were similar.

“I think your aunt Daisy is nicer than any aunt in the world except my aunt Marion,” Ethel Blue confided to Margaret one day.

“That’s just about what James and I think,” said Margaret.

“Has she finished her Englewood house?” inquired Ethel.

“Yes, that was done some time ago. That’s why she has been able to go to see Mrs. Smith so many times recently. She has spent several afternoons at Sweetbrier Lodge, you know.”

Remembering this, Ethel Blue went to the new house one afternoon especially to see if Miss Graham was there. She had no definite reason for doing so—she merely thought she would like to see her. By good luck Miss Graham was there, as she had brought out some samples of hangings to show to Mrs. Smith, and she was waiting on the terrace for her to come, and resting as she waited.

“I’m glad to see you, child,” she called to Ethel Blue, and Ethel did not resent being called a child, for she realized that it was merely an endearing word coming from Miss Daisy’s lips.

“Bring one of those canvas chairs over here beside me,” she urged, “and we’ll look at the view and talk a while.”

“Isn’t it going to be lovely when the real furniture is on the terrace here?” said Ethel Blue eagerly.

“The view is lovely, no matter what the chairs are,” returned Miss Graham, smiling at her affectionately. “When do you think your aunt is coming?”

“I don’t know. Did she expect you? Shall I run back to the house and tell her you are here?”

“No, probably I’m a little early and I shall enjoy sitting here and talking with you until she comes.”

Ethel felt much complimented by this desire on Miss Graham’s part and placed her chair beside her.

Their eyes looked out across the field with its brook and the trees that sheltered Mr. Emerson’s house. Across the street the meadows, rich with the field flowers of late summer, stretched away towards the distant river, and beyond that were more trees rearing their heights across the sky.

As they looked a shadow fell on the meadow and moved swiftly across it.

“It looks as if some huge birds were flying between the earth and the sun,” smiled Miss Daisy.

“Doesn’t it go fast!” returned Ethel Blue.

“Notice the change in the color of the meadow, when the sunlight is hidden for a minute and then falls again on the vegetation.”

Ethel Blue nodded, for she saw that the change was almost as if a sheet of colored glass had been held over a strong electric light.

“Sometimes during a thunder shower,” she said, “I’ve seen awfully queer colors over in that meadow.”

“The air is charged with electric particles sometimes,” explained Miss Daisy, “and you are looking through them. You get different color effects during an ordinary rain storm, too.”

“I think rain over that meadow is going to be one of the prettiest things Dorothy will see from this terrace,” said Ethel Blue.

“She will have a long sweep to watch and a shower moves sometimes fast and sometimes slowly, so there will be opportunity to notice many changes,” suggested Miss Graham.

“I wonder if Aunt Louise is going to have electric lights out here on the porch,” said Ethel Blue. “They will draw the mosquitoes like everything.”

“But she won’t mind that because she can stay inside of her wire cage,” answered Miss Daisy. “Surely she’s going to have electric lights. Don’t you see the wires already put in?”

“Of course,” answered Ethel Blue. “How stupid of me! Those black ends are poking out all over the house and somehow I never thought what they were for.”

“Then you haven’t noticed the lighting scheme that your Aunt and Dorothy have worked out. Let’s walk through the house now, and see just how she has arranged it.”

They went through the door of the screen into the enclosed portion and then into the dining room.

“Most people have one of those hang-down lights over the dining table,” said Ethel Blue. “I don’t see any wire for one here. I’m glad Aunt Louise isn’t going to have one. They never are the right height. You always have to be dodging under them to see the person across from you and the light shines on the table so brilliantly that you’re almost afraid to eat anything it falls on.”

Miss Graham laughed at Ethel’s vigorous protest, but she said that she, too, did not like a central light over the dining table.

“There is no need of a very brilliant light in a dining room,” she said. “You can see the people about the table without any difficulty in a subdued light and the general effect is far more beautiful than when people are sitting in a glare.”

“I think candle light is prettiest for the dining room,” said Ethel Blue.

“It is prettiest for the table,” replied Miss Graham. “The place where you really want a strong light is over the serving table behind the screen. You don’t want the maid to make any mistakes just because she can’t see clearly the dishes she is handling. There you need a strong light, but it can be placed so low that the screen shields it for the room and it will not interfere with the dimmer light of the rest of the room.”

“I suppose there ought to be other lights in the room,” said Ethel Blue. “You might find that there weren’t any candles in the house some evening and then it would be awful to have only this light over the serving table and none of them in other parts of the room.”

Miss Graham laughed at the possibility of such a disaster.

“There can be side-lights over the mantel-place,” she said, “electric lights that look like candles, with pretty candle shades, and one or two similar arrangements on the other side of the room.”

“Don’t you ever put a central light in the dining rooms you decorate?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Sometimes I let the light flow out from a dull, golden globe set into the ceiling over the table. The glass of the bowl is so thick that only a gentle radiance comes from it and yet it ekes out the light from the candles.”

“Ethel Brown is particularly pleased with the switch out in the vestibule,” said Ethel Blue. “You see you can come home when the house is all dark, and light the electricity in the hall by turning on the switch outside of the front door. Wouldn’t it be a good joke on a burglar, if he did it by accident some night when he was trying to get in,” laughed the young girl.

“It’s a capital invention,” said Miss Graham. “You notice your aunt has side lights here in the hall. Have you ever happened to be in a house where they were moving the furniture about and every piece that passed the hall chandelier gave it a rap?”

“That’s the way it is in the house we’re in now,” said Ethel. “Every time any one goes away and the express man brings down a trunk, he hits the light in the hall. I don’t know how many globes Aunt Marion has had broken that way.”

Upstairs they found the same side-lighting in all the bed rooms.

“The theory of it is,” said Miss Graham, “that when you want to see anything very clearly, you put in a light close to the place where you need to work. If you are going to arrange your hair before your dressing table, you want a light directly over your dressing glass. If you are going to read you turn on a light beside your reading stand. An upper light is usually for general illumination and a side light for real service.”

“A combination of the two lights makes a room ready for anything,” said Ethel Blue.

“I want you to notice particularly the fixtures that your Aunt Louise has selected for indirect lighting,” said Miss Graham. “She has chosen beautiful bowls that look like alabaster. They turn upwards and the bulbs are hidden in them. The strong glare is against the ceiling so that the people get only the reflected light. There is to be one of those bowls on a high standard in the front hall, and one at the turn of the stair-case. They look like ancient Roman urns, giving forth a marvelous radiance.”

“I think that will be prettier than some clear, engraved glass covers, that I saw the other day,” said Ethel Blue. “They showed the bulbs right through.”

“Far prettier,” agreed Miss Graham. “The whole object of this indirect light is to make your room seem to be lighted by a glow whose real origin you hardly know. Of course your intelligence tells you that there are electric bulbs up there, but you don’t want really to see them.”

“It seems to me that people must be thinking more about how to make things pretty than they used to,” said Ethel Blue. “When Ethel Brown’s grandfather built his house, Aunt Marion says it was thought very handsome by everybody in Rosemont. It has lots of convenient things in it, and plenty of brilliant lights, but the fixtures aren’t pretty and the idea seems to be to make just as big a shine as possible.”

“Nowadays,” said Miss Graham, “people try to make the useful things beautiful also whenever they can.”

“I’m glad to learn all about a house,” said Ethel Blue, “because some time I may have to keep house for my father and I want to know everything there is to know. Of course army people have to live in Uncle Sam’s houses, but still there are always different arrangements you can introduce, even in a government house.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to make useful everything you learn,” said Miss Graham, “and your father will be pleased with whatever makes the house lovelier and more comfortable.”

“I’ve always meant to ask whether you didn’t know my father,” said Ethel Blue. “He is at Fort Myer, near Washington.”

“Captain Richard Morton,” said Miss Daisy. “Yes, indeed. I know a great many of the officers and their families at Fort Myer. I’ve met your father and I know him well.”

“Isn’t he the dearest old darling that ever walked?” said Ethel Blue, bouncing with enthusiasm.

“He certainly is a very nice person,” agreed Miss Graham, smiling, “and he thinks he has one of the finest daughters who ever walked.”

“Does he really?” cried Ethel Blue. “I’m so glad he does! You see, I so seldom see him that sometimes I’m afraid he’ll forget all about me. Once when he came to Rosemont, I passed him in the street when he was walking up from the station, and he didn’t know me and I didn’t know him. Wasn’t that perfectly frightful?”

“That was too bad,” agreed Miss Graham.

“Somehow I’ve never thought of being able to live with him,” said Ethel Blue. “You know I’ve always lived with Aunt Marion, because my mother died when I was a little bit of a baby, but the other day somebody said something about my going to Father later on, and I haven’t been able to think of anything else since.”

“I know he wants you,” said Miss Graham.

“Has he spoken to you about it?”

“Yes, often.”

“I suppose I’ll have to be a million times older than I am now, before he thinks I’m able to take care of him,” said Ethel Blue.

“I don’t believe it will be a whole million years,” smiled Miss Graham.

“I shall feel dreadfully to leave Aunt Marion and Ethel Brown. I’ve never been away from Ethel Brown more than three or four days in my whole life,” said Ethel Brown’s twin cousin, “but if my father needs me, why of course, I must go.”

“Indeed you must,” returned Miss Graham, “and I’m sure he wants you just as soon as he can send for you.”

Ethel Blue was so overjoyed at this opinion, that she jumped up on the ledge on the top of the parapet running around the terrace, and danced with delight the fancy step—“One, two, three, back; one, two, three, back”—with which she and Ethel Brown were accustomed to express great satisfaction with the way in which life was treating them.

To Miss Graham’s horror, Ethel Blue’s enthusiasm blinded her eyes and her third back step took her off the parapet. She fell to the ground and rolled down the hill, her slender little body bouncing from rock to rock with cruel force and increasing speed.

Miss Graham gave a cry of distress and vaulted over the parapet with the ease which she had acquired in the gymnasium in her college days. Running the risk of rolling down hill herself, she bounded down the steep slope, and reached the foot almost as soon as did the body of the young girl, which lay very still, its head against the stone which had brought unconsciousness.

Miss Graham turned over the limp little form, shuddering as she saw the bruise on the forehead. She tried to lift it but found she could make no progress up the steep knoll. Again and again she called to the workmen in the house, and finally two of them appeared at an upper window and made gestures of understanding when she beckoned to them. They leaped down the hill with long strides, and soon were carrying Ethel Blue up to the terrace.

They laid her gently on the floor and ran to get water from the hydrant, while Miss Graham slipped off the young girl’s shoes, raised her feet upon a block of wood that happened to be near by, so that the blood might flow towards her heart, and gently chafed her wrists. When the water came, she dashed a shower of it from the tips of her fingers on the pale little face lying so quietly against the bricks.

“Will I run to de nex’ house an’ telephone for de doctor?” asked one of the men, and Miss Graham nodded an assent and added a direction to summon Mrs. Morton.

Before either her aunt or the doctor came, however, Ethel Blue returned to consciousness. Before she opened her eyes, she heard a soft, affectionate voice crooning over her, “My dear little girl, my poor little girl.”

She kept her eyes closed for a minute or two, so pleasant was this sound from the lips of Miss Graham whom she had grown to love so fondly. When at last she opened her eyes and saw Miss Daisy’s anxious face change its expression to one of delight, she almost felt that it was worth while to fall off a precipice to bring about such a result.

CHAPTER XII
IN THE FAMILY HOSPITAL

Mrs. Morton was acting as head nurse in the home hospital. Ethel Blue’s injuries from her fall were not serious, but besides the bruises on her forehead, she had numerous large black and blue spots all over her body and she had been so shaken that the doctor thought it was well for her to stay in bed for a day or two.

In addition to Ethel Blue, Dicky was laid low for the time being. He had gone over to his grandfather’s and as he was accustomed to run about the farm by himself, and as he usually stayed near some of the workmen, nobody paid any attention to him. This time, however, he went up into the pasture, where he found most of the cows lying down in the shade of the trees and meditatively chewing their cuds after their morning meal.

Dicky was not in the least afraid of cows, having been familiar with them from his babyhood. He therefore walked up to one of the prostrate creatures and sat down comfortably upon her neck, steadying himself by her nearest horn.

Nothing happened for a minute of two, for either his weight was so slight that the cow hardly noticed it, or else his position did not interfere with her comfort. After a time, however, he began to pull at her horns in time with the motion of her jaws, and this measured movement seemed to annoy her. Shaking her head, she rose, first behind, throwing her rider even farther forward than he was, and then in front, tossing him off altogether.

The distance to the ground was not great, but it was far enough for Dicky to be peppered with bumps and pretty well shaken. The cow paid no farther attention to him but walked off to a spot where she might be free from annoyance, and the little boy lay for some time on the ground before he could pull himself together and go to his grandfather’s. By the time he reached there, his bruises were already turning black and he was interesting both to himself and to his relatives, although he was manfully keeping back his tears. The doctor ordered him to bed for a day or two, and now he lay on a cot at one side of the large room which served as the family hospital, and Ethel Blue at the other, comparing their wounds, and receiving the attention of Mrs. Morton. She had finished reading one of the Br’er Rabbit stories to them when Ethel Blue introduced the subject that was so constantly in her mind.

“Did I tell you how I happened to fall off the terrace wall?” she asked her aunt.

“I wondered how you did it; you are usually so sure-footed.”

“I was talking with Miss Daisy about my going to live with Father by-and-by. You know I never thought of it until the other night when we were all together on the porch and Helen,—wasn’t it?—said something about it. I wish I didn’t have to wait to finish school before I can go to him.”

“Are you in such a hurry to leave us?” said Mrs. Morton, with a little sigh for the many years of loving care she had spent over this child, who was to her like one of her own.

Ethel Blue was conscience-stricken.

“You know, Aunt Marion, I love all of you just like my own people. Only it seems so wonderful to think about being with Father all the time that I can’t get it out of my mind—now it’s in my mind.”

“There are a good many things to be considered,” answered Mrs. Morton. “You know that an officer often has to be away from home and your father wouldn’t like to leave you alone.”

Ethel Blue’s face fell.

“If I only had somebody like Dicky’s Mary to stay with me,” she said, referring to the nurse who had always taken care of Dicky, and who had lived on with the family after he was too old to need a nurse.

“Perhaps your father might marry again and then there would be no difficulty about your being with him all the time.”

Mrs. Morton made the suggestion gently but Ethel Blue flushed angrily at once.

“I think that’s a perfectly horrible idea, Aunt Marion. That means a stepmother for me, and I think a stepmother is detestable.”

“Have you ever known one,” inquired Mrs. Morton coolly.

“No, I never have, but I’ve read a great deal about them and they’re always cross and mean and their stepchildren hate them.”

“Don’t you suppose that a great many stepchildren work up a dislike beforehand just because they read the same kind of stories that you seem to have been reading?” asked Mrs. Morton.

Ethel Blue was a reasonable girl, and she thought this over before she answered.

“Perhaps they do,” she said, although slowly, as if she disliked to admit it.

“I have happened to know several stepmothers,” said Mrs. Morton, “and I never have known one who was not quite as kind or even kinder to her stepchildren, than to her own children. A mother feels that she can do as her judgment dictates with her own children, but with her stepchildren she weighs everything with even greater care, because she feels an added responsibility toward them.”

“But she can’t love them as she does her own children,” said Ethel Blue.

“I think there is very little difference,” said her Aunt Marion. “I am not your stepmother but at the same time I am not your own mother, and I am not conscious of loving you any less than I love Ethel Brown. You are both my dear girls.”

“I love Father but I do think Father would be mean if he gave me a stepmother,” said Ethel Blue.

“But, wouldn’t you be mean if you objected to his having the happiness of a household of his own, after all these years when he has not had one?” returned Mrs. Morton promptly. “Your father has lived a lonely life for many years, and if such a thing should happen as his deciding to marry again, I can’t think that my little Ethel Blue would be so selfish as to make him unhappy—or even uncomfortable—about it.”

This was a new idea for Ethel Blue and she snuggled down under her covers and turned her head away to think about it.

Her aunt left her alone and the room was quiet except for the noise made by Dicky’s little hands, as he turned the pages of a picture book.

It was almost dark when Mrs. Morton came back with Mary, each of them bearing a tray with the supper for one of the invalids.

“I must say,” laughed Mrs. Morton, as she entered the hospital, “these are pretty hearty meals for people who call themselves ill.”

“My mind isn’t ill,” said Ethel Blue; “it’s just these bruises that hurt me,” and Dicky understood what she meant, for he told Mary, who was arranging his pillows, that his “black and blue thspotth were awful thore,” but that he was going to get up in the morning.

As Mrs. Morton leaned over Ethel Blue’s bed, the young girl put an arm around her aunt’s neck and drew her down to her.

“I’ve made up my mind not to be piggy if anything like that does happen,” she said, hesitatingly. “Do you know that it is going to happen?”

“No, I do not,” answered Mrs. Morton, “but I saw that you were in a frame of mind to make your father very unhappy if it should come to pass. You ought not to allow yourself to have such thoughts, even about an indefinite stepmother. They might easily turn into thoughts of real hatred for an actual stepmother.”

“But do you think there might be a stepmother some time or other?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Yes, dear, I do. Your father probably seems old to you, but he really is not very old and, as I said before, he has lived a lonely life for many years. You know it was fourteen years ago that your mother died, and since then he has had no home of his own and no loving companionship. He has not even had the delight of helping to bring up his little daughter. If he can make happiness for himself now, after all these years, don’t you think that his little daughter ought to help him?”

Ethel Blue nodded silently and ate her supper thoughtfully.

“While you two were taking your nap, I went to Sweetbrier Lodge,” said Mrs. Morton, by way of entertaining the invalids. “I am so much interested in the way that Aunt Louise has arranged for the maids. You know so many people have only a servant’s workroom, the kitchen; and the maids have no room to sit in after their work is done. Aunt Louise has been very thoughtful in all her plans. The laundry and the kitchen and the pantry between the kitchen and the dining room, all have the most convenient arrangements possible. Every shelf and cupboard is placed so that the number of footsteps that the kitchen worker must take will be reduced as greatly as possible. Then there are all sorts of labor saving arrangements. You saw those in the kitchen and the cellar. The electrician has been there daily fitting up an electric range and dish-washing machine. The wires in the kitchen are placed just where they will be most serviceable, and there are plenty of windows so that the room is bright in the day-time. Then just off the kitchen, there is a delightful little sitting room, with a porch opening from it. It has a view toward the garden and FitzJames’s woods, and it is to be prettily furnished.”

“There are two bed-rooms and a bath for the maids in the attic story,” said Ethel Blue. “They are going to be prettily furnished too.”

“Will they have a garden?” asked Dicky from his corner.

“Do you know?” Mrs. Morton turned to Ethel for an answer.

“I do understand now,” she replied, “why Dorothy insisted on having the herb garden down by the house. I thought it was just because it would be convenient to have the herbs near the kitchen, but she planted flowers there too, and now I see that it will be a pretty flower garden for the maids to enjoy and to cut for their own rooms.”

“There are two things about Aunt Louise that are interesting,” said Ethel Blue. “One is the way she always tries to make other people happy and comfortable.”

“She is naturally thoughtful and considerate,” said Mrs. Morton, “and she has had much unhappiness in her life and has happened to meet many people who are unhappy, so it has taught her to do all she can to brighten other people’s lives and to make them easier.”

“I don’t believe many people who are building a house would let a lot of children say what they thought would be nice about it,” said Ethel Blue.

“She wants Dorothy and all of you to learn about the new ways of building and fitting up a house,” returned Mrs. Morton, “and she knows how much fun it is to talk over such matters in a general pow-wow. Haven’t all of you had a good deal of fun out of it?”

“We certainly have,” replied Ethel Blue. “I liked fixing up Ayleesabet’s room particularly, because I suggested the idea, but we have all made suggestions for every room in the house. Aunt Louise has not agreed with all of them, but she always told us why she didn’t agree or why she didn’t like our ideas. She never was snippy about it, just because we were children. The other thing that is interesting in Aunt Louise, is the way she wants to have all sorts of new arrangements in a house.”

“Almost everybody does that,” answered Mrs. Morton.

“I don’t know anybody in Rosemont who has all the things that Aunt Louise has put in. People have vacuum cleaners now-a-days, that they move around from one room to another, but she has hers built in, so the dirt is drawn right down into the cellar. She has every kind of electric thing she has ever heard of, I do believe.”

“The electrician was there to-day as I told you, arranging wires in the kitchen.”

“I was trying to count up as I was lying here, all the things in the house that go by electricity. Of course there’s the door bell to begin with. Then there are all the lighting switches—the one in the vestibule and all the regular ones in the halls and rooms and a lot of them in the different closets, so that she never will have to struggle around in the dark for anything she is hunting for.”

“I saw a man putting in a little pilot light for the oven, to-day,” said Mrs. Morton.

“What’s that for?”

“So the cook can investigate the state of affairs in the oven. Sometimes it’s hard to say how far along a dish at the back of the oven is. This light enables you to make out whether it is browning properly or not.”

“The man who put in the summer water-heater called the little light that burns all the time in that, a ‘pilot,’” said Ethel Blue.

“The dumb-waiter that runs from the cellar up through the house to take up kindling or whatever needs to be taken up stairs, runs at the touch of an electric button,” said Mrs. Morton.

“I wish there had been an elevator for people,” said Ethel Blue.

“The house isn’t large enough to call for that,” said her aunt, laughing. “Dorothy and her mother are able to go up one or two flights of stairs without much suffering!”

Ethel laughed at the suggestion, and went on with her enumeration of the uses of electricity.

“The city water runs into the house, but do you know that Aunt Louise has had an extra pump fitted into a deep well at the back of the house, and that is to work by electricity? She was afraid the house was so high up that the power of the town water might be weak sometimes.”

“She’s prepared for anything, isn’t she? She’ll be quite independent if any accident should happen to the Rosemont reservoir.”

“You know the fittings of the laundry are electric.”

“And the electrician to-day was going to put in an electric hair dryer in the bath-room, so that a shampoo will require only a few minutes’ time.”

“I see where all of us girls visit Dorothy on shampoo day,” giggled Ethel Blue.

“She’ll be as popular as I used to be when our cherries were ripe,” her Aunt Marion smiled in return. “I never seemed to have so many friends as during the June days when I always entertained my guests by inviting them up into the cherry tree.”

“Was that the cherry tree on the right thide of Chrandfather’th houthe?” asked Dicky suddenly from the corner where he had been supposed to be dozing.

“The very same cherry tree, young man. I dare say you know it.”

“It’th too fat for me to thin up,” he said, “but nektht year I’m going up on a ladder the minute I see a robin flying off with the first ripe cherry.”

CHAPTER XIII
A GOLDEN COLOR SCHEME

When the time came for having the interior decorating done in Sweetbrier Lodge and for getting the furniture, the U. S. C. felt that they were really in the very midst of a delightful experience. The attic was furnished with brown wicker, as Miss Graham had suggested. A small upright piano was brought up through a window, and this pleasant, quiet room at the top of the house, served to give Dorothy a spot for practising where she would disturb no one. Up here, too, she could keep any work that she was doing and merely put it into a chest that she had prepared for the purpose, whenever she wanted to leave it, or, if it was something that could not easily be moved, it might even be kept out upon the table and there would be no one to be annoyed by an appearance of untidiness.

The piano was to be a pleasure at the club meetings, for all the U. S. C. members liked to sing, and Helen was planning that they should wind up every meeting during the coming winter with a good stirring chorus before they separated for the afternoon.

On the bedroom floor, the furnishings were carried out as they had been planned, Elisabeth’s room in blue, Dorothy’s in pink, and Mrs. Smith’s in primrose yellow, and the two guest chambers in violet and a delicate, misty grey. The wood-work was painted ivory white and the floors were all of hard wood. Rugs in harmonious tints gave the desirable depths of tone to the color plan.

On this floor Mrs. Smith had a sewing room and also a small sitting room, where she could write business letters and be quite undisturbed. With the floor below came the really serious work of furnishing, the girls thought. The drawing room was the important feature of this floor.

“Here is the family hearth,” said Mrs. Smith to Dorothy, “and we want to make this room beautiful—one that people will like to come into and to stay in.”

“It must not be cold in color, then,” said Dorothy. “Nobody likes to stay in a chilly looking room.”

“And it ought not to be too warm in color,” said plump little Della, who suffered terribly from the heat in summer. “It just makes me perspire to think of some of the thick, heavy-looking rooms I’ve been in. They are only suitable for zero weather and we don’t seem to have any more zero weather nowadays.”

Mrs. Smith had allowed Dorothy to ask the club members to have cocoa with her on the afternoon when the final decisions were to be made. They had brought down from up-stairs some of the chairs and a table which had already been put into the bed-rooms. Dorothy and the Ethels had made cocoa and had baked some cocoanut cakes on the new electric oven, and they were all gathered in the drawing room, sipping their cocoa and looking about them at the possibilities of the room.

“Before we begin, tell me how you made these cakes,” said Margaret, who was always adding a new receipt to her cook book.

“We took half a pound of dried cocoanut and two ounces of sugar and three ounces of ground rice, and mixed them all up together. Then we beat the whites of three eggs perfectly stiff and stirred the froth thoroughly into the other things,” said Ethel Brown.

“Then we dipped out a tablespoonful at a time and put it on to a buttered baking tin, and baked it all in a quick oven for five minutes,” said Ethel Blue, “but we didn’t take the tin out, right off. We let the oven cool and the little cakes cook slowly for half an hour longer.”

“They do be marvellous good,” murmured James, and all the others agreed with him.

Miss Graham had come over with Margaret and James, but she said that she was not going to give her professional advice until it was asked for.

“I may as well tell you first of all,” said Mrs. Smith, “what my color scheme is for this room, and then you can help me with the details. I want the whole thing to be in tones of brown, lightened by yellow, and contrasted with that dull blue you see in Oriental rugs. Now, keep that scheme of color in your mind and work it out for me.”

“I think you must have told the painter about it before he did the wood-work,” guessed Margaret. “This wood-work is white, but a yellowish white that will be quite in harmony with your brown and gold scheme.”

“You’ve caught me,” smiled Mrs. Smith. “It had to be done, so I told him what I wanted. It’s successful, don’t you think so?” she asked, looking toward Miss Graham.

“Entirely,” approved Miss Daisy.

“The floors are hard wood, but I suppose you’re going to have a big brown and gold and blue rug,” said Helen.

“Certainly those colors, if I can find just the right thing,” said her aunt.

“I was with Mother the other day in a rug shop,” said Della, “and I saw beautiful Chinese rugs, with dull blue backgrounds and figures of brown and tan.”

“I’ve noticed,” said Helen, “that Oriental rugs have a great deal of red and green in them. I should think it might be hard to find rugs with just brown and blue.”

“I have discovered that it is,” said Mrs. Smith, “for I’ve already been on one or two searching trips. Still, those Chinese rugs that Della mentioned are always available, and if you hunt far enough you can get others with the brown note uppermost. What do you think about size?” she asked.

“Oh,” said Helen. “I seem to see in my mind’s eye a huge, great, splendid one in the middle of the room.”

“It would be a beautiful rug probably,” said Ethel Brown, “but I don’t know that I should like one big fellow as much as two smaller ones.”

“Why not?” asked Miss Graham.

“I don’t know that I can tell you,” answered Ethel Brown, blushing. “Perhaps it’s because it makes the room seem too big and grand, and the arrangement of smaller ones would break it up into smaller sections, and make it seem more home-like.”

Miss Daisy nodded as if she were satisfied, but made no comment.

“How do all of you feel about the size of the rugs?” inquired Mrs. Smith, and Helen put the question to vote.

They decided that they liked the idea of two or more rugs of medium size with little ones where they were needed instead of a very large one in the centre of the room.

“I think you’re right,” said Mrs. Smith, “and I think that it will be easier to find the smaller ones than the very large ones—and less expensive into the bargain,” she said, laughing.

“What is the furniture to be?” inquired Tom.

“Dorothy and I had a few antiques that have been kept for us all these years from my father’s house, and they have given us the note for the rest. They are mahogany, colonial in style, so we think that we must make the rest of the furniture harmonize with them.”

“Aunt Marion told me she saw some lovely reproductions of truly old chairs and tables and things,” said Ethel Blue. “I suppose you can make the room look as if every piece in it was a truly old one.”

“If I had money enough, I could undoubtedly find truly old pieces,” said Mrs. Smith, “but I think I shall content myself with the modern pieces in the old style.”

“At any rate, they will be stronger,” said Margaret. “We have some very old furniture, and since we put steam heat in our house, they’ve been falling to pieces as fast as they could fall.”

“How are the walls of this room to be treated?” asked James.

“There I want your help,” said Mrs. Smith.

“I saw a dark brown paper dashed with gold the other day, on the library wall at Mrs. Schermerhorn’s,” said Roger.

“Too dark,” cried the Ethels in chorus. “Mrs. Schermerhorn’s wood-work is dark and Aunt Louise’s is almost white.”

“There’s a kind of Japanese paper that looks like metal burlap,” said Margaret. “It has a little glint of gold in it.”

“That’s too dark, too, I think,” said Dorothy. “It ought to be something that will connect the yellow-white of the wood-work with the gold, which is the lightest tone in Mother’s color scheme.”

Again Miss Graham nodded her approval, although she said nothing.

“I saw a very wide pongee silk the other day that would be just about the right shade, if it could be put on like wall-paper,” said Ethel Blue. “It would be a little darker than this paint, and it would tie on to the gold in the rug or in any piece of furniture covering.”

Again Miss Graham nodded.

“And I don’t see why it couldn’t be stenciled,” said Ethel Brown. “Something like the walls upstairs in the apple-blossom room, only of course something that would be appropriate for this room. But even if you didn’t like that idea,” she went on, “I think the pongee silk alone would be beautiful.”

Mrs. Smith liked that idea, too, but she hesitated to give her final decision until she had examined a certain homespun linen which she had had recommended to her as a possible success from the point of view of color.

“Now that you have finished your cocoa, I want you to move your chairs over here, where you can look into the dining room,” she said. “You see, I’ve had the dining room separated from this room by folding doors; there will be door curtains also, but I want to be able to shut off the room entirely from this room if I choose. Now, while we talk about the furniture here, look into the dining room and get the shape of it into your minds, so that you can regard it as a sort of outgrowth of this room. Are you comfortable now?”

They said they were and went on to discuss the furniture.

“Will all of the pieces be upholstered with the same material?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Oh, no,” cried Ethel Brown. “Let’s have two or three different shades of brown, and one in the right shade of yellow and one or two in the same dull blue of the rug.”

Again Miss Graham nodded.

“You want to repeat in the furniture the colors of the rug,” she said. “They give you a wide range of tones because these Oriental rugs may have as many as twenty-five shades of blue, so finely graduated that you can hardly tell them apart, except with a reading glass. The brown and gold of the furniture will bring out the brown and gold of the floor covering and you must be careful that the yellow of the furniture is not so brilliant as to overpower the more delicate yellow of your walls. There should be a sort of scale from the yellowish white wood-work which is your highest note, down to the darkest shade of brown.”

“Now, that we’ve decided about the furniture, tell me what general idea you have for the dining room,” said Mrs. Smith. “I’m all excitement to hear what you have to say about the dining room, because it isn’t quite clear in my own mind, and I want to work it out with you.”

“You want it to be an outgrowth of this room,” said Helen, “and you don’t want it treated like an entirely separate room.”

“Since it is connected with this room by so wide an opening, when the doors are drawn back,” said her aunt, “it seems to me as if it ought to be in harmony with the coloring here.”

They all agreed with this idea.

“I suggest,” said Margaret, “that the whole room might be a little darker than this room, although decorated with the same colors.”

Miss Graham again approved this.

“It has the morning sun,” said Dorothy, “and at night through most of the year the gas is lighted at dinner time so it isn’t necessary to have it so bright as the other room.”

“Then why not have everything the same, except just a little deeper in tone,” said Ethel Blue. “Have the wood-work a trifle darker and find some material for the walls or have them color-washed a few shades darker than the pongee. The floor is a little darker than this anyway and one of the darker blue Chinese rugs will be lovely on it.”

“Mother’s china is blue Canton,” said Dorothy. “That will give blue touch that will harmonize with the rugs.”

They were all pleased with their decisions and were greatly pleased when Miss Graham approved their wisdom.

The electricians had put in the electric fixtures and they noticed that the dining room side lights of both the dining room and drawing room looked like sconces; that there was a glowing bowl of light in the ceiling above the dinner table; and that the half concealed lights were to give a pleasant radiance in the larger room, while plugs around the wall permitted the use of electric lamps for reading or sewing at many different points.

“How is this little reception room to be done, Mrs. Smith?” asked James as he roamed into a small room just beside the front door.

“This whole floor, all in all, is to have the same color scheme,” said Mrs. Smith. “I think this and the hall will be done like the dining room.”

“Come out now, and see the maid’s sitting room,” cried Dorothy. “It is the cunningest thing and so pretty.”

The wicker furniture had already come for this room and the attic, and they all exclaimed at the delicate shade of gray rattan which made a charming back-ground for cushions of flowered chintz.

“I think it’s a dear duck of a room!” said Ethel Brown.

“And see the roses on the walls!” exclaimed Dorothy. “And it opens on to a little porch that is going to be covered with rambler roses all summer, if I can possibly make them grow and blossom.”

“How many of you people can go to the Metropolitan Museum with me on Saturday?” asked Miss Graham. “I know you younger ones are all busy in school now, and the boys are getting ready to go to college, so that is your only day, for we want plenty of time.”

There was not one of them who could not go, so they arranged about trains and where they should pick up the Watkinses in New York, and separated with pleasant expectations of the very good time ahead of them.

CHAPTER XIV
AT THE METROPOLITAN

Dicky, the Honorary Member of the United Service Club, had been considered too young to become a member of the party to visit the Metropolitan Museum. He had, however, begged so hard not to be left behind, that Helen and Roger had relented, and had promised to take him if he, in his turn, would agree not to bother Miss Graham by asking more than a million questions every ten minutes. He was also under bond not to stray away from the party.

As it turned out, however, the Honorary Member did not go to New York on the appointed day. He had planned an expedition of his own for purposes of investigation, and the results were such that he was not able to meet his other engagement later on.

Underneath his bobbed hair Dicky kept a sharp pair of ears and there was very little of the talk about his aunt’s new house that had escaped his attention. Among other things he had listened while his sisters and cousins had commented upon the manner in which the kitchen was equipped. The floor was concrete, the walls were of white tile, the shelves were of glass, and the cupboard doors of enameled metal.

He had heard his mother say to his Aunt Louise: “Why, you could turn the hose on it to clean it, couldn’t you?”

The idea had inflamed his imagination and he determined to see how it would work. Detaching the hose and spray from the bath-room he trotted off immediately after breakfast, intent on putting into effect his mother’s idea. It seemed to him that it would be a delight to live in a house where one might enter into the kitchen at any moment and find the cook spraying the walls with a hose. If the reality proved to be as charming as the anticipation, he was going to beg his mother to have their own kitchen made over promptly.

The workmen were all upstairs at Sweetbrier Lodge but the lower doors were open so that there was no difficulty in achieving an entrance. He knew how to attach the spray to the faucet and a twist of the fingers turned on the water.

It seemed to him as the first dash struck him full in the face, he having been a little careless about the nozzle, that his Aunt Louise need not have worried about the pressure of the town water. He shook his head like a pussy cat in the rain, but manfully restrained the ejaculation that leaped to his lips. He was glad that he did, because nobody interrupted and the succeeding moments were filled with ecstasy. He sprayed the floor, the electric range, the shiny white table, the glistening cupboards, and, best of all, the gleaming tiles of the walls down which the drops chased each other in a joyous race for the floor.

The moments sped in this entrancing pursuit.

At home a cry for Dicky had arisen as the time came to dress him for his trip to New York. Nobody knew where he had gone. It was not until Ethel Brown telephoned to Dorothy that they learned that he had been seen passing her house.

“He must have gone to Sweetbrier Lodge for some reason or other,” said Ethel Brown. “What on earth possessed him on this morning of all mornings!”

She called to Roger, and he dashed off on the run to see if he could find his wandering brother. None of the workmen at the new house had any knowledge of his whereabouts, and it was not until Roger opened one of the carefully closed doors and was greeted by a dash of water, straight in his waistcoat, that he found the wanderer.

Roger was a boy of even temper but he confessed to his mother afterwards that his fingers ached as never before to impress on Dicky his disapproval of his occupation.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he demanded, snatching the hose from Dicky’s reluctant fingers, and turning off the water.

“Washing down the walls,” replied Dicky truthfully.

“Incidentally you’ve given yourself a good soaking,” said Roger, looking at the thoroughly drenched little figure before him. “Here, slip into this coat, and I hope I haven’t got to carry you home the whole way, you big, heavy creature.”

“I think I’d be warmer if I trotted myself,” suggested Dicky, a little apprehensive of what might happen to him in the way of a bear hug, in his brother’s strong arms.

“I guess you’re right,” said Roger. “We’ll have to run like deer, for it’s almost time for the car to come for us. This puts an end to your going into town, I suppose you understand, young man.”

Dicky had not thought of losing his other joy while he was realizing his first delight, and he puckered his face for a howl, but before the sound could come out, Roger said: “You brought it on to yourself, so don’t yell. This is the natural result of what you’ve been doing. You can’t expect ten people to wait for you to be thoroughly dried and got ready to go into town, can you?”

Dicky was an uncommonly reasonable child and he swallowed his sobs as he shook his head. There was no farther conversation, for both boys were running as fast as Roger’s legs could set the pace. Dicky’s strides were assisted by his brother, who seized his arm and helped him over the ground with giant steps.

Mrs. Morton’s view of the situation seemed to be painfully like Roger’s, and Dicky found himself put into the care of Mary and an unnaturally rough bath towel, his only part in the expedition that had promised such happiness to him, being the sight of his relatives climbing into his grandfather’s automobile and dashing off toward Glen Point, where they were to pick up Miss Graham and the Hancocks.

When the party reached New York they made up their minds that they might as well approach the Museum containing many beautiful objects by the prettiest way possible, so at 59th Street the car swept into Central Park. As they entered, Miss Graham called their attention to the golden statue of General Sherman, made by the famous sculptor, Saint-Gaudens. As they neared the Museum, she pointed out Cleopatra’s needle, an Egyptian shaft covered with hieroglyphics.

“The poor old stone has had a hard time in this climate,” said Roger. “It has scaled off terribly, hasn’t it?”

“They are trying to preserve it by a preparation of parafine,” said Miss Graham.

“I should think it would have to be repeated every winter,” said Helen. “It doesn’t seem as if parafine was much of a protection against heavy frost.”

Just inside the entrance of the building they found Della and Tom awaiting them. Miss Graham called their attention first to the tapestries hanging in the entrance hall, and told them something of the patient work that went into the production of one of these great sheets of painstaking embroidery.

“Are they making them anywhere, nowadays?” asked Ethel Blue.

“When the war is over and you go to Paris, you can see the tapestry workers in the Gobelins factory,” said Miss Daisy. “Every machine has hung upon it the picture which the worker is copying. It may take a man six or seven years to complete one piece.”

“Shouldn’t you think he would be sick to death of it!” exclaimed Dorothy.

“I suppose the first year he tells himself he must be pleasant, so that he will see the picture get started. In the second year perhaps he’ll be ready to put in the feet of his figures. Then all the middle years must be comparatively exciting because he’s doing the central part of the picture; and the last year he has a sort of a thrill because it’s almost done, even though the work may be all in the clouds.”

“I judge that they make landscapes with figures, chiefly,” guessed James.

“Many of them are landscapes with figures,” replied Miss Daisy. “They have a wide variety of objects. The factory belongs to the government and the pieces are used as decorations for government buildings, and as gifts to people of other countries. The French Government gave Miss Alice Roosevelt a piece of Gobelin when she was married. I’ve seen it on exhibition in the Art Museum at Cincinnati.”

“I suppose all the workmen now have gone to the war, and the factory is closed,” said Tom.

“Probably. The men who work there now are descendants, sometimes in the third or fourth generation, of the early workers. They hold their positions for life and although their pay is not large they also have each a cottage and piece of land on the grounds of the factory.”

As the U. S. C. ascended the great stair-way they passed numerous impressive busts and stopped to look at all of them. Most of the men were famous Americans, whose names were already familiar to the young people.

“Now,” said Miss Graham, as they reached the head of the stairs, “later on we can choose the kind of thing we would like especially to see, but first I want to show you two or three pictures and we can talk a little about them. Then perhaps we will enjoy better the pictures we see afterwards.”

“I am sure we shall,” answered Roger, politely, although his heart was yearning for the Riggs collection of armor.

Miss Daisy read his mind.

“I know you want to see the Riggs armor most of all,” she said, “and Margaret and James have been talking a lot about the Morgan collection and the Ethels told me on the way in that they had seen in the Sunday papers reproductions of some of the pictures in the Altman collections and they want to see the originals. We can see all those later on, but first we will look for a minute at a very famous picture by a Frenchwoman, Rosa Bonheur.”

“Oh, I remember about her,” said Helen. “She used to wear men’s clothes when she was working in her studio. She said skirts bothered her.”

“I should think they would,” said James. “I remember about her, too. She made a specialty of animals and sometimes she had lions and other wild animals from some Zoo, and let them wander about. She needed to be dressed so she could skip lively if they made any demonstration!”

“Those are huge horses, aren’t they,” said Ethel Blue, as they stood before the “Horse Fair.”

“They look as if they were ‘feeling gayly,’ as the North Carolina mountaineers say,” quoted Dorothy.

“What is it all about?” asked Miss Graham.

“Why, I don’t know,” answered Ethel Blue slowly. “Is it about anything in particular? Isn’t it just a lot of horses being taken to a Horse Fair for exhibition?”

Miss Graham nodded and said that that was probably all there was to it. Then she led them to a picture by a French artist, Meissonier.

“I spot Napoleon,” said Tom promptly, as they took up their position.

“This is called ‘Friedland, 1807,’” said Miss Graham.

Before she could ask any question or make any suggestion about the picture, Helen had explained “Friedland.”

“That was one of Napoleon’s famous battles. Here he defeated the Russians and Prussians.”

“Eighteen hundred and seven?” repeated James. “Why, Napoleon was at the very height of his power then, wasn’t he?”

“He looks it,” said Margaret. “Doesn’t he look as if he were the lord of the world? And how those men around him gaze at him with adoration! He certainly had a wonderful ability for making himself beloved by his soldiers!”

Miss Graham had been listening to these comments with the greatest interest.

“What difference do you see between this picture and the ‘Horse Fair’?” she asked.

They looked carefully at the picture before them and Ethel Blue scampered back to refresh her memory on the “Horse Fair.”

“There isn’t any more action in one than the other,” said James, “though, of course, it’s different.”

“But this one makes me think a lot about a great man,” added his sister.

“And you want to know what it’s all about,” exclaimed Ethel Brown.

“You feel as if there must be some story about this one,” said Ethel Blue, returning from her expedition to the “Horse Fair.”

“That’s just the point,” said Miss Graham, patting her shoulder, “There’s no especial appeal to the imagination in the ‘Horse Fair.’ You just see horses going to any horse fair in northern France, and there’s nothing to tell you that one horse has won a ploughing match and that another is a candidate for a blue ribbon because of his great weight. But here you realize at once that Napoleon was a man to command attention. You want to know what he has been doing. You feel that there is some good reason for the evident admiration of his soldiers. Those two pictures are examples of two different classes of pictures. The ‘Horse Fair’ you might call a sketch in a traveller’s note book. The Napoleon picture is an illustration in a story.”

The young people thought over all this and nodded their agreement.

“Now come with me and see this picture of a pretty girl.”

Miss Graham led the way to the Morgan collection and they looked into the winning face of “Miss Farren.” She seemed to be moving swiftly across the canvas, her dress and cloak streaming behind her from the speed of her motion.

“She’s a pretty girl,” said Roger, with his hand on his heart. Tom nodded in agreement, but James shook his head.

“She looks silly,” he said sternly.

“There isn’t any story to her picture, I’m sure,” said Helen. “That’s just a portrait.”

“But may not a portrait indicate something of the character of the sitter?” asked Miss Graham.

“It ought to,” returned Margaret, “and I should think there was something of this girl’s character in the portrait, but there’s nothing to show that this might be the illustration of a story.”

“Unless it were the frontispiece, showing the picture of the heroine,” said Roger.

“But the heroine doing nothing that is told about in the story,” insisted Helen.

Miss Graham made no comment on these criticisms but led the way to another picture, also of a girl, but this time of a girl in the dress of a peasant and not handsomely arrayed as was Miss Farren.

“There is a bigger difference than clothes between these two,” said Della, “but I don’t know just what it is. This girl isn’t pretty like Miss Farren.”

“Do you know who this is?” asked Miss Daisy.

“Somebody who is thinking a lot,” said Ethel Brown.

“She is seeing things in her mind,” said Ethel Blue.

“Who is the most famous girl in history, who did that?” asked Miss Graham.

“Jeanne d’Arc,” said Helen. “She saw visions that inspired her to be a leader of men in the army and she brought about the coronation of her king when he was kept from his throne by the English who held Paris and a large part of France.”

“She is seeing visions now,” whispered Ethel Blue, clinging to Miss Graham’s arm.

Miss Graham gently smoothed the fingers that were tensely closed over the sleeve of her jacket.

“Why do you suppose Helen told us about Jeanne d’Arc just now?” she asked.

“Because Helen just naturally knows all the history there is to be known,” said Roger, joking his sister in brotherly fashion.

Helen flushed and murmured something that sounded like, “I thought you’d like to know why she looked like that.”

“There is something more than just her character and her disposition in that picture,” said Margaret.

“If a single picture can be a story picture, I should think this was a story picture as much as the Napoleon one,” said Tom.

Again Miss Daisy nodded her approval.

“I call it a story picture,” she said. “Helen felt that it was, immediately, and that is why she told us something of the story of Jeanne d’Arc.”

“Most landscapes must be just note book pictures, then,” guessed Ethel Brown.

“Unless the landscape should be a background for some story,” said Della. “There might be gypsies kidnapping a child, for instance.”

“Of course there are other divisions,” said Miss Graham, “but roughly speaking, almost every picture is either a record of fact or of imagination, or else it tells a story.”

“It’s going to be interesting to think about that, when we look at the other pictures we shall see later on,” said Tom, and even Roger nodded assent, although his heart was still set upon the armor.

“Now, let’s go back for a moment to look at the ‘Horse Fair,’” said Miss Graham. “What do you think a picture ought to have in it to be a real picture?” she asked as they went along the gallery.

“It seems to me that a picture that is nothing but a record, as you said a few minutes ago, can’t be much of a picture,” said Roger. “I should want something more in a picture, something that would stir me up. Why, even Miss Farren’s there isn’t exactly a record, because you have something more than just eyes and nose and hair. She looks as if she would be fun to talk to, and as for the ‘Horse Fair,’ which was the other picture that we decided was a record, why that has in it more than just a lot of horses.”

“If Rosa Bonheur had wanted merely to draw some horses, she might have strung them along in a row so that we could get an idea of their size and color and could make a guess at their weight, but here we see them in action and we know that they are in good spirits and we feel some sympathy with the men who have a hard time to hold them.”

“Yes, that picture stirs me a little, too.”

“That is because both ‘Miss Farren’ and the ‘Horse Fair’ are real pictures. Any picture that tries to be more than merely a photographic reproduction must stir your emotions in one way or another,” said Miss Daisy. “Now as we look at this picture, do you think the artist put into it everything that she saw on the road that morning when she passed this group of men and horses?”

“I dare say not,” said Della, “because there would be likely to be dogs and boys with the men, and perhaps some ugly houses in the background.”

“Why do you suppose she didn’t put everything in?”

“Why, a picture ought to try to be beautiful, oughtn’t it, and some of those things might be ugly, or there might be so many of them that it would be confusing.”

“Those are both good reasons,” said Miss Daisy. “They both show that the artist has to select the things that he thinks will be of the greatest interest to the people who look at his pictures.”

“Now when he has picked them out, what should you say the next step was?”

They were all rather blank at this question but after a while Roger said slowly, “Evidently she picked out just so many as being the best looking ones to put in the picture; and she didn’t like them all facing the audience, ready to bob their heads at you as you look at them; she made them trot along the road in a natural way.”

“Certainly,” approved Miss Graham. “She arranged what she had selected so that they would be natural and—”

“And so that the colors would show well?” asked Ethel Brown.

“Yes, so that there would be contrasts of color that would be pleasing to the eye. Then there should be balance. Have you any idea what that means?”

Nobody had.

“I wonder if you haven’t all noticed a Japanese print that Margaret has?”

“You mean the one with big green leaves up in one corner and the grasshopper clinging to a tendril?” asked Helen.

“That’s the one,” returned Miss Daisy. “Did it ever occur to you that those leaves were all crowded off into one corner of the picture?”

“I never thought of it,” said Margaret, “and I have looked at it every day for a year. They are, aren’t they?”

“But it didn’t affect you unpleasantly, did it?”

“Why, no. I think it’s a pretty picture,” said Ethel Brown.

“It is,” agreed Miss Graham; “but what device did the artist use to make you feel comfortable about it, and to make you forget that he had put a bunch of foliage up in one corner and had left more than one-half of his sheet blank?”

Nobody could answer this question and Miss Graham had to give the explanation herself.

“It’s all a question of balance,” she said. “The great mass of white paper in the lower right hand part of the picture balances the mass of green leaves in the upper left hand corner. The green is a heavier looking color than the white, and it therefore takes a larger amount of white to balance the green. The Japanese who made this painting understood that, and he has so arranged his leaves and his grasshopper, that the eye is entirely pleased by the balance that results. If Rosa Bonheur has managed wisely there should be masses of light and dark, balancing each other, and there should be spaces and solids, balancing each other.”

“Has she done it? It doesn’t worry me any,” said Roger. “I think she must have succeeded.”

Keeping Miss Graham’s explanation in mind they took another look at the Napoleon picture and concluded that Meissonier also knew what he was about.

“‘Composition’ means the putting together of a picture, doesn’t it?” asked Helen. “I should think that the composition of a picture that has so many figures, must be extremely difficult.”

“Far more difficult, of course, than one for which the artist has selected fewer objects.”

“And of two artists producing complicated pictures like these, he is the better who gives an effect of simplicity.”

“Suppose that Rosa Bonheur had noticed that one of the men struggling with the horses had his face bound up with a cloth; does that have anything to do with the picture?”

They all agreed that it had not.

“Then she was perfectly right to leave out any object that would distract the observer’s mind. She put into this picture of horses going to the horse fair only such things as would make the onlooker think of the beauty and spirit of the horses as shown by their handsome coats and by the difficulty which the men had in controlling them, and his imagination would be stirred to wonder as to which of these fine animals was to win a prize. Everything which might compete with these simple ideas the artist left out of the picture.”

“It must have been awfully hard to do such a lot of legs,” said Ethel Blue, who knew a little about drawing.

“An artist has to know a good deal about anatomy,” returned Miss Graham. “He must know how the human body is made, and the horse’s body, too, if he is to do a picture like this, and he even must know something about the under-structure of the earth. He must make the lines of those legs all move harmoniously. Look at this Napoleon picture once more.”

Once again they stood before “Friedland.”

“If you were to prolong the up-standing lines of weapons and helmets you would find that they were parallel or tended toward some point possibly outside of the picture. Unless an appearance of confusion is desired it would not do to have lines leading in every direction.”

“It would make a picture look every which way, wouldn’t it?” said Ethel Blue.

“Attention to such points as this helps to give expression to the whole picture,” went on Miss Daisy. “Not only do the figures in the pictures have their own expression, but the picture as a whole may wear an expression of peace, like that quiet landscape over there; or of confusion, like this picture of the attempted assassination of a pope, or of orderly excitement, like that cavalry charge yonder.”

As they turned from one canvas to another the Club realized the truth of what Miss Graham was saying.

“That is a fact, isn’t it?” agreed Tom. “You don’t have to see the look on the fellows’ faces to get the general effect of the picture even from a distance.”

“We’ve been talking so much about color schemes in connection with Dorothy’s new house, that I am sure the phrase is familiar to you,” said Miss Graham. “Look at the color schemes of these pictures around us. Do you see that there are no discords because a color note is struck and all of the other shades and colors harmonize with it? That battle rush, for instance, is a study in red. Compare that with the dull misty blues, greens, and greys in LePage’s ‘Jeanne d’Arc.’”

They went from one picture to another and proved the truth of this statement to their satisfaction.

“Now we’ll call our lesson done,” said Miss Graham. “We’ll have some luncheon downstairs and when we come up we can let Roger have his heart’s desire, and we’ll give the afternoon to looking at the Morgan and Altman and Riggs collections of wonders. I doubt if there was ever gathered together anywhere three such groups. The Altman pictures are choice, the Riggs armor is unequalled anywhere in the world, and the Morgan collection is the finest general collection ever owned by a private individual.”

It was a weary but a happy party that returned to Rosemont in the late afternoon.

“One of these days is awfully hard on your head,” confessed Roger, as he was talking to his mother about the Club’s experience, “but it certainly is good for your gray matter.”

“We’re going to remember whenever we look at pictures again,” said Ethel Brown.

“And there are lots of things in it that we shall think about when we look over the decorating in our house,” insisted Dorothy.

“What I thought was the nicest of all was the way Miss Graham taught us. It was just like talking. I think she is awfully nice,” was Ethel Blue’s decision.

CHAPTER XV
PREPARATIONS FOR THE HOUSEWARMING

The trip to the Metropolitan Museum gave every member of the party a new set of words for her vocabulary. They looked at pictures with opened eyes and talked of their “composition” and “balance.” They were all of them more or less interested in photography and now they tried to take photographs that would be real pictures.

“It isn’t so easy to make a picture by selecting what you want to have and leaving out the things you don’t want,” said Roger to Helen one morning as they walked toward Sweetbrier Lodge, “when the things are right there in the landscape and won’t get out of the camera’s way. A painter would leave out that stupid old wooden house in the field there, but he’d leave in the splendid elm bending over it. Now if I ‘shoot’ the elm I’ve got to ‘shoot’ the house, too.”

“The only way out is to take the house at some angle that will show off any good points it may have,” declared Helen, wrinkling a puzzled brow.

“Then as likely as not you’ll have to take the tree on the side where the lightning hit it and peeled off all its bark,” growled her brother gloomily.

“That just shows that a photographer has to be more skilful than a painter,” she said. “The painter can do what he likes, but the photographer has to get good results out of what is set before him.”

“And as for balance—if nature happens to have placed things in balance, well and good; but if she didn’t what can you do about it?”

“Nothing, my child, unless you introduce some object that you have some power over. Put in a girl or a dog or a horse somewhere where their weight will bring about the result you want.”

“You can’t carry girls and dogs and horses round with you,” objected Roger, who was in a depressed mood this morning and found difficulties in every suggestion.

“You’ve got enough sisters and cousins for the girls, and you can take Christopher Columbus around with you in your pocket to play the four-footed friend,” laughed Helen.

“Speaking of Columbus—are we going to celebrate Columbus Day this year?” asked Roger, as he deftly inserted a new spool of film. “It’s just luck James and I being here at all, you know. We’d like to do something to celebrate being exposed to scarlet fever as soon as we got to Boston, and being sent home for it to incubate, and then having nothing hatch!”

“Haven’t you heard? Aunt Louise is going to have her housewarming on October 12, Columbus Day? She has asked the Club to do something appropriate.”

“I thought the Watkinses had asked us to go into New York to see the parade.”

“They have. That won’t interfere with us. They’ll come out here later and then we’ll do something in the evening in the new attic to amuse Aunt Louise’s guests.”

“Any idea what?”

“I’ve got an idea in the back of my head. I’ll have to talk it over first with the girls to see if we can manage the costumes. If we can I think it will be mighty pretty.”

Roger nodded absent-mindedly. He had perfect confidence in his sister’s good judgment and he was willing to do his part for his aunt’s sake as well as for the good name of the Club.

“What are you taking?” Helen asked him after they had roamed about the new place for a time. “You seem to be using a lot of film.”

“I am. I thought I’d take the new house and garden from every point of view I could, inside and out, and make two or three portfolios of them and send them to Father and Uncle Richard, as they’d probably like to have them.”

“What a perfectly darling idea! Isn’t Aunt Louise delighted?”

“She seems to be,” returned Roger.

“You knew she had asked Uncle Richard to come up for her house-warming?”

“Father, too; but it’s dollars to doughnuts they won’t be able to come, so I thought I’d do these any way.”

“Father won’t be able to, but Uncle Richard may.”

“He’ll be glad to have the prints even if he has seen the original places.”

“Perhaps he’ll like them better on that account.”

“I think I should. It would be like having your memory illustrated.”

“Are you going to do the rockery in the garden?”

“If the frost has left anything.”

“It must be placed in just the right spot for there’s a lot of it left. I passed it early to-day and it looked almost as pretty as if it were summer.”

“Dorothy certainly made a success of that.”

“It was an afterthought, too.”

“I believe the chief reason it has been so lovely is that it was placed in a natural position. The rocks look as if they ought to be just where they are.”

“Mrs. Schermerhorn’s rockery looks as if she had said, ‘Lo, I’ll have a rockery,’ and then she stuck it right in the middle of her lawn where no collection of rocks has been for twenty years.”

“And she has hot-house ferns in it!”

The brother and sister laughed delightedly at their neighbor’s ideas of natural beauty.

“Perhaps it was fortunate that Dorothy didn’t have a hot-house to draw on,” said Roger, moving from one side to another of his cousin’s rockery in order to get the best view of its remaining loveliness.

“Dorothy has too much sense. In the first place she snuggled hers in here under the trees, just the way the rocks are naturally over in FitzJames’s Woods. Then she brought over here exactly the plants she found there.”

“It had to look as if it were a bit of the woods, didn’t it?”

“Do you want me to be in this picture?”

“You look too dressed up.”

“Thank you! This is a middy I’ve worn all summer, and I’m just wearing out the rags of it on Saturdays.”

“Nevertheless, you dazzle me.”

“That’s a polite way of saying you don’t want me in the foreground. You’d better put in what Miss Daisy calls ‘contemporaneous human interest.’ I’m a great addition to any picture in which I appear.”

“You are, ma’am, of course,” replied Roger with exaggerated politeness, “but I think I’d like you under an arbor in a graceful attitude and not hobnobbing with these wild flowers.”

“You forget that wild flowers have been my special care this summer,” returned Helen, withdrawing to a point where she would not interfere with Roger’s plans. “Dorothy’s wild garden is only a copy of mine.”

“Not in arrangement. Hers is prettier with everything piled up on the stones this way—columbines, ferns, wild ginger, hepaticas.”

“You’re right about that. Mine had to be in a regular bed. Are you going to take a picture of the vegetable garden?”

“Certainly I am. And of tomatoes that were started with and without dirt bands.”

Roger’s chief attention during the summer garden campaign had been devoted to the raising of vegetables, while the girls had done wonders with flowers.

“What are dirt bands?” inquired Helen.

“I know,” cried the voice of Ethel Brown who came in sight through the pergola. “They’re brown paper cuffs to put around young plants. It keeps the earth all close and cozy and warm and they grow faster than the ones that don’t wear such fine clothes.”

“Listen to that,” Roger said approvingly to Helen. “Those Ethels haven’t let anything slip that happened in any of our gardens all summer. They know all about everything!”

“Roger is in a very complimentary mood this morning,” laughed Helen. “If I could only think of something to say I’d be polite in return.”

“I’m sorry it doesn’t come to you spontaneously,” replied her brother, “but what care I?” and he broke into song:

“I’m a careless potato, and care not a pin

How into existence I came;

If they planted me drill-wise or dibbled me in,

To me ’tis exactly the same.

The bean and the pea may more loftily tower,

But I care not a button for them.

Defiance I nod with my beautiful flower

When the earth is hoed up to my stem.”

“Oo-hoo!” came a voice from the Lodge. “Come in and help.”

“There’s Dorothy calling,” cried Ethel Brown, and they all moved toward the house where they found their cousin on the back porch with an array of plates, bowls, stones, small plants, tiny trees and small china figures before her.

“May I inquire, madam, what on earth—” began Roger, but Ethel Brown’s exclamation enlightened him.

“You’re making Japanese gardens!”

“I’m going to try to. I think they’re awfully pretty and cunning. Let’s each make one.”

Mrs. Smith had bought a professionally made garden at an Oriental shop in New York, and the girls were seized with a desire to copy it.

“Here’s the real thing,” and Dorothy indicated a flat bowl of gray and dull green pottery. In it were some stones outlining the bed of a stream over which stretched the span of a tiny porcelain bridge. A twisted tree that looked aged in spite of its height of only three inches reared its evergreen head at one end of the bridge; a patch of grass the size of three fingers grew greenly at the other end, and a goldfish swam happily in a pool at the side.

“Margaret told me that horse-radish would grow if you kept it damp and let it sprout, so I’ve got several pieces started for our gardens.”

Sure enough, the horse-radish had sent forth shoots and a head of small leaves quite tall enough for the size of the garden, and its body looked brownish and gnarled like some bit of queer Oriental wood. Dorothy had taken up little plants of running growth like partridge berry and she had collected many wee ferns.

“We can sprinkle a pinch or two of grass seed and bird seed over them all when they’re done,” she said. “That ought to bring up something fresh every little while.”

“These will be all started for your housewarming,” suggested Helen.

“That’s why I’m doing them. We can leave them here, and I’ll come over every day so they’ll be watered. I think they’ll be awfully pretty and they’ll be different from the usual decorations.”

“I read somewhere the other day that the Japs arrange their flowers with a meaning.”

“O, they do,” cried Dorothy. “They have very little in one holder, perhaps only three flowers. One—the highest one—means Heaven, the next lower is Man, and the lowest is Earth.”

“I should have to have a diagram with every vase,” insisted Roger.

“The water in the bowl that holds the flowers represents the surface of the earth and the edge of the bowl is the horizon. Then they have ways of suggesting the different seasons—spring by flowers, summer by a lot of green leaves, autumn by bright colored leaves and winter by tall stems without much on them.”

“We’ve got flowers left in the gardens—lots of them,” insisted Ethel Brown proudly.

“Plenty,” answered Dorothy; “and by this time next year I hope we’ll have a little hot-house of our own so that we can have flowering plants all winter, but I like other things, too.”

“Miss Daisy was telling me the other day that we Americans didn’t pay enough attention to using through the winter branches of trees and seedling trees from the woods and boughs of pine and fir and cedar,” said Ethel Blue, who came through the house and had been listening to the conversation.

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have a small maple-tree growing all winter in the dining-room if you put your mind on it,” answered Helen.

“A great jar of Norway spruce with cones hanging from the fingers would be stunning,” decided Roger, as he set his horse-radish in place and planted a tree at one end of it.

“The covers for the radiators are all on now,” said Dorothy, changing the subject. “Did you notice them when you came through the house?”

The Ethels had not and Helen and Roger had gone directly to the garden, so they all went in on a tour of examination.

“Mother said that there was one thing about heating that she couldn’t stand, and that was the ugly radiators; so the heating man has tried to hide them as much as he could. There isn’t one in the house that stands out like a monument of pipes,” declared Dorothy.

“Even in the attic?”

“Not even in the attic. See, he’s covered most of them with grilles bronzed or painted like the wood-work of the room, so they aren’t at all conspicuous.”

“It’s these little points that make this house so attractive,” declared Helen. “Aunt Louise has thought of everything.”

“What are you going to wear at the party?” asked Ethel Blue of Dorothy.

“If we do that Columbus thing—” began Dorothy, looking at Helen.

“Go on,” the president of the U. S. C. replied to the inquiring gaze; “we might as well tell Roger now as later.”

“If we have the tableaux and pantomimes we can stay in our court dresses.”

“Court dresses?” inquired Roger, sitting up interestedly. “Why so scrumptious?”

“Columbus at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella,” answered Helen.

“You as Columbus.”

“Me? Me? Why this honor?” asked Roger meekly.

“Need you ask?” returned Helen. “That’s in reply to your remarks about me as an addition to the foreground of your photographs.”

“Even. I don’t care what I do as long as I have time to get it up.”

“You shall have plenty of time,” promised Dorothy. “What I’m more interested in just now is what we’re to have to eat on the festive night.”

“Is Aunt Louise going to let us decide?”

“Subject to her veto, I suspect,” smiled Helen.

Dorothy nodded.

“She says she wants something different from ice-cream and cake and chicken salad.”

They all laughed, for Rosemont was noted for invariably having these three excellent but monotonous viands at all her teas and receptions and church entertainments.

“I move we have cold turkey,” said Roger.

“It’s rather early for turks, but we can have capon if we can’t find a good turkey,” replied Ethel Brown, who kept the run of the Rosemont market.

“Let’s have little birds in aspic jelly,” suggested Dorothy.

They all gurgled with pleasure at this idea.

“Squabs,” went on Dorothy as her imagination began to work.

“Um,” commented Roger, his eyes shut.

“Split them down the back, dip them into beaten egg and melted butter, sprinkle them with the finest bread crumbs and broil them.”

“O,” came a gentle murmur from Roger, who was deeply affected by the recital of this appetizing dish. “Where’s the aspic?”

“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 perfectly dee-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.

CHAPTER XVI
COLUMBUS DAY

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.

“I would 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.

“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.”

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.

“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 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 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 the Santa Maria, while Ethel Brown recited Joaquin Miller’s poem: