CHAPTER IX
GRANDFATHER ARRANGES HIS TIME
The Mortons breakfasted rather later than most people at Chautauqua. This was on Roger's account. He had to put his building into perfect order before the classes began to assemble at eight in the morning. He always did some of his sweeping the afternoon before after the students had left the Hall, but there was plenty of work for him in the early hour after he had reluctantly rolled off his cot. He had grown up with the Navy and Army ideals of extreme neatness, and experience was teaching him now that if he expected to have the rooms as tidy as his father would want to see them he must go to bed early and rise not long after the sun poked his rosy head over the edge of the lake.
"Nix on sitting up to hear the chimes," he confided to the family at breakfast the morning after the Spelling Match. "Last night's the first time I've heard them in a week. That room is worth a lot to me just for the feeling it's giving me that I'm earning it, and I'm going to pay good honest work for it if it busts me."
"'Bust' means, I suppose, if you have to go to bed early and work till almost eight in the morning to do it," translated his mother. "You're quite right, my dear; that's what your father would want you to do. And none of us here have eight o'clock classes so we can just as well as not have our breakfast at eight and have the pleasure of seeing you here opposite me."
Ever since he was a little boy Roger had sat in his father's seat when Lieutenant Morton was on duty. He felt that it was a privilege and that because of it he represented the head of the family and must shoulder some of his father's responsibilities. It made his behavior toward his mother and sisters and Ethel Blue and Dicky far more grown-up than that of most boys of his age, and his mother depended on him as few mothers except those in similar positions depend on sons of Roger's age.
Every time that Helen heard Roger mention his room she was stirred again with the desire that had filled her on the first day when Jo Sampson had offered it to him. She told herself over and over that she was doing as much as Roger, for since they only had one maid and Mary was busy all the time with the work necessary for so large a family, Helen waited on the table. She earned her meals by doing that just as much as if she were doing it in one of the boarding houses. Yet it did not seem to her just the same. She did not really want to wait on table in one of the boarding houses; she would have been frightened to death to do it, she thought, although she had been long enough at Chautauqua to see many nice young teachers and college girls in the boarding cottages and at the hotel and in the restaurant, and if they were not frightened, why should she be? Perhaps they were and didn't show it. Perhaps it was because it would take courage for her to attempt it that she wanted to so much. Whatever the reason, she could not seem to rid her mind of the idea that it would be delightful to earn money or its equivalent. This morning Roger's talk about his room roused her again.
"Mother," she said, "Margaret Hancock is going to take sewing from the teacher in the Hall of Pedagogy. Do you think I might, too?"