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Juvenile Library
Girls Series
ETHEL MORTON'S HOLIDAYS
BY
MABELL S. C. SMITH
THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
CLEVELAND--NEW YORK
MADE IN U. S. A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1915
PRESS OF
THE COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING CO.
Cleveland
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ETHEL MORTON'S HOLIDAYS
CHAPTER I
PREPARATIONS
The big brown automobile gave three honks as it swung around the corner
from Church Street. Roger Morton, raking leaves in the yard beside his
house, threw down his rake and vaulted over the gate.
"Good afternoon, sir," he called to his grandfather, saluting, soldier
fashion.
"Good afternoon, son. I stopped to tell you that those pumpkins are
ready for you. If you'll hop in now we can go out and get them and I'll
bring you back again."
"Good enough!" exclaimed Roger. "I'll tell Mother I'm going. She may
have some message for Grandmother," and he vaulted back over the gate
and dashed up the steps.
In a minute he was out again and climbing into the car.
"Where are the girls this afternoon?" inquired Mr. Emerson, as he threw
in the clutch and started toward the outskirts of Rosemont where he had
land enough to allow him to do a little farming.
"Helen and Ethel Brown have gone to the West Woods," replied Roger,
accounting for his sisters. "Somebody told them that there was a wild
grapevine there that still had yellow leaves bright enough for them to
use for decorating tomorrow evening."
"I should be afraid last night's frost would have shriveled them. What
are Ethel Blue and Dorothy up to?" asked Mr. Emerson.
Ethel Blue was Roger's cousin who had lived with the Mortons since her
babyhood. Dorothy Smith was also his cousin. She and her mother lived in
a cottage on Church Street.
"They must be over at Dorothy's working up schemes for tomorrow," Roger
answered his grandfather's question. "I haven't seen them since
luncheon."
"How many do you expect at your party?"
"Just two or three more besides the United Service Club. James Hancock
won't be able to come, though. His leg isn't well enough yet."
"Pretty bad break?"
"He says it's bad enough to make him remember not to cut corners when
he's driving a car. Any break is too bad in my humble opinion."
"In mine, too. How many in the Club? Ten?"
"Ten; yes, sir. There'll be nine of us tomorrow evening--Helen and the
Ethels and Dorothy and Dicky and the two Watkinses and Margaret Hancock.
She's going to spend the night with Dorothy."
"Anybody from school?"
"George Foster, the fellow who danced the minuet so well in our show;
and Dr. Edward Watkins is coming out with Tom and Della."
"Isn't he rather old to come to a kids' party?"
"Of course he's loads older than we are--he's twenty-five--but he said
he hadn't been to a Hallowe'en party for so long that he wanted to come,
and Tom and Della said he put up such a plaintive wail that they asked
if they might bring him."
"I suspect he hasn't forgotten how to play," chuckled Grandfather
Emerson, speeding up as they entered the long, open stretch of road that
ended almost at his own door. "Any idea what you're going to do?"
"Not much. Helen and Ethel Brown are the decoration committee and I'm
the jack-o'-lantern committee, as you know, and Ethel Blue and Dorothy
are thinking up things to do and we're all going to add suggestions. I
think the girls had a note from Della this morning with an idea of some
sort in it."
"You ought to get Burns's poem."
"On Hallowe'en?"
"We'll look it up when we get to the house. You may find some 'doings'
you haven't heard of that you can revive for the occasion."
"We decided that whatever we did do, there were certain stunts we
wouldn't do."
"Namely?"
"Swap signs and take off gates and brilliant jokes of that sort."
"As a Service Club you couldn't very well crack jokes whose point lies
in some one's discomfort, could you?"
"Those things have looked like dog mean tricks to me and not jokes at
all ever since I saw an old woman at the upper end of Main Street trying
to hang her gate last year the day after Hallowe'en."
"Too heavy for her?"
"I should say so. She couldn't do anything with it. I offered to help
her, and she said, 'You might as well, for I suppose you had the fun of
unhanging it last night'."
"A false accusation, I suppose."
"It happened to be that time, but I had done it before," confessed
Roger, flushing.
"You never happened to see the result of it before."
"That's it. I just thought of the people's surprise when they waked up
in the morning and found their gates gone. I never thought at all of the
real pain and discomfort that it may have given a lot of them."
"Your Club may be doing a good service to all Rosemont if it proves that
young people can have a good time without making the 'innocent
bystander' pay for it."
"We're going to prove it; to ourselves, anyway," insisted Roger stoutly,
as he leaped out of the car and took his grandfather's parcels into the
house.
"The pumpkins are in the barn," Mr. Emerson called after him. "Go down
there and pick them out when you've given those bundles to your
grandmother."
The big yellow globes were loaded into the car--half a dozen of
them--and Mr. Emerson drove back to the house. As he stopped at the side
porch for a last word with his wife he gave a cry of recognition.
"Look who comes here!" he exclaimed.
"Helen and Ethel Brown," guessed Roger. "Don't they look like those
soldiers we read about in 'Macbeth'--the fellows who marched along
holding boughs in their hands so that it looked as if Birnamwood had
come to Dunsinane."
"Roger is quoting Shakespeare about your personal appearance," laughed
Mr. Emerson as he and his grandson relieved the girls of their burdens.
They sank down on the steps of the porch and panted.
"You're tired out," exclaimed their grandmother. "Roger, bring out that
pitcher of lemonade you'll find in the dining-room. How far have you
walked?"
"About a thousand miles, I should say," declared Helen. "We were bound
we'd get out-of-door decorations if they were to be had, and they
weren't to be had except by hunting."
"You're like me--I like to use out-of-door things as late as I can;
there are so many months when you have to go to the greenhouse or to
draw on your house plants."
"Ethel Blue and Dorothy have been educating the Club artistically.
They've been pointing out how much color there is in the fields and the
woods even after the bright autumn colors have gone by."
"That's quite true. Look at that meadow."
Mrs. Emerson waved her hand at the field across the road. On it sedges
were waving, softly brown; tufts of mouse-gray goldenrod nodded before
the breeze; chestnut-hued cat-tails stood guard in thick ranks, and a
delicate Indian Summer haze blended all into a harmony of warm, dull
shades.
"You found your grapevine," said Roger, pouring the lemonade for his
weary sisters, and nodding toward a trail of handsome leaves, splendidly
yellow.
"It took a hunt, though. What are you doing over here?"
"Getting the pumpkins Grandfather promised us."
"You're just in time to have a ride home," said Mr. Emerson.
"You're in no hurry, Father; let the girls rest a while," urged Mrs.
Emerson. "Can't you make a jack-o'-lantern while you're waiting, Roger?"
"Yes, _ma'am_, I can turn you out a truly superior article in a
wonderfully short time," bragged Roger.
"He really does make them very well," confirmed Helen, "but it's because
he always has the benefit of our valuable advice."
"Here you are to give it if I need it," said Roger good naturedly.
"We'll show Grandmother what our united efforts can do."
So the girls leaned back comfortably against the pillars at the sides of
the steps and Mrs. Emerson sat in an arm chair at the top of the flight
and Mr. Emerson sat in the car at the foot of the steps and Roger began
his work.
"It'll be a wonder if I make anything but a failure with so many
bosses," he complained.
"Keep your hand steady, old man," teased his grandfather. "Don't let
your knife go through the side or you'll let out a crack of light where
you don't mean to."
"Be sure your knife doesn't slip and cut your fingers," advised Mrs.
Emerson.
"Save me the inside," begged Ethel Brown. "I'm going to try to make a
pumpkin pie."
"Save the top for a hat," laughed Helen. "I'll trim it with brown ribbon
and set a new style at school."
Roger dug away industriously under the spur of these remarks.
"Is this the first year you've had a Hallowe'en party?" Mrs. Emerson
asked.
"We used to do a few little things when we were children," Helen
answered; "but for the last few years we've been asked somewhere."
"And with all due respect to our hosts we did a lot of the stupidest and
meanest things we ever got let in for," declared Roger. "I was telling
Grandfather about some of them coming over."
"So we made up our minds that we'd celebrate as a club this year, and do
whatever we wanted to. There's a lot more to a party than just the
party," said Ethel Brown wisely.
Her grandmother nodded.
"You're right. The preparation is half the fun," she agreed. "And it's
fun to have every part of it perfect--the decorations and the
refreshments as well as whatever it is you do for your main amusement."
"That's what I think," said Helen. "I like to think that the house is
going to be appropriately dressed for our Hallowe'en party just as much
as we ourselves."
"Why doesn't your club give a series of holiday parties?" suggested
Grandfather. "Make each one of them a really appropriate celebration and
not just an ordinary party hung on the holiday as an excuse peg. I
believe you could have some interesting times and do some good, too, so
that it could honestly be brought within the scope of your Club's
activities."
"We seem to have made a start at it without thinking much about it,"
said Roger. "The Club had a float, you know, in the Labor Day
procession."
"I didn't know that!" exclaimed Mrs. Emerson.
"You were in New York for a day or two. Grandfather supplied the float!
Why, we had just come back from Chautauqua a day or two before Labor
Day, you know, and the first thing that happened was that a collector
called to get a contribution from Mother to help out the Labor Day
procession. I was there and I said I didn't believe in taxation without
representation. He laughed and said, 'All right, come on. We'd be glad
to have you in the procession'."
"You were rather disconcerted at that, I suspect," laughed Mrs. Emerson.
"Yes, I was, but I hated to take back water, so I said that I belonged
to a club and that I supposed he was going to have all the clubs in
Rosemont represented in some way. He said that was just what they
wanted. They wanted every activity in the town to be shown in some shape
or other."
"There wasn't time to call a meeting of the club," Helen took up the
story, "so Roger and I came over and talked with Grandfather, and he
lent us a hay rack and we dressed it up with boughs and got the
carpenters to make some very large cut out letters--U. S. C.--two sets
of them, so they could be read on both sides. They were painted white
and stood up high among the green stuff and really looked very pretty.
Everybody asked what it meant."
"I think it helped a lot when I went about asking for gifts for the
Christmas Ship," said Roger. "Lots of people said, 'Oh, it's your club
that had a float in the Labor Day parade'."
"If we should work up Grandfather's idea we might have a parade of our
own another year," said Helen.
"Always co-operate with what already exists, if it's worthy," advised
Mr. Emerson. "Don't get up opposition affairs unless there's a good
reason for doing it."
"As there is for our Hallowe'en party," insisted Roger.
"I believe you're right there. There's no reason why you should enter
into 'fool stunts' that are just 'fool stunts,' not worth while in any
way and not even funny."
"We'd better move on now if Grandfather is to take us over and get back
in time for his own dinner," said Roger.
"Come, girls, can you pile in all that shrubbery without breaking it?
Put the pumpkins on the bottom of the car, Roger, and the jacks on top
of them. Now be careful where you put your feet. Back in half an hour,
Mother," and he started off with his laughing car load.