GETTING SETTLED
GETTING the Emerson-Morton party inside the grounds of Chautauqua
Institution was no mean undertaking. Roger was still acting as courier
and he asked his mother to wait until the other passengers from the car
had gone through the turnstile so that the gateman might give them his
undivided attention. They all had to have season tickets and when these
had been made out then one after another the family pushed the stile and
the gateman punched number one from the numerals on their tickets as
they passed.
"If only you were eighty or over you would have your ticket given you by
the Institution, Father," said Mrs. Morton.
"Thank you, I'm a long way outside of that class," retorted Mr. Emerson
with some tartness.
"What's the idea of the punching?" asked Helen, of her grandmother.
"You have to show your ticket every time you go outside of the fence or
out on the lake," explained Mrs. Emerson. "The odd numbers are punched
when you come in--as we do now--and the even numbers when you go out. It
circumvents several little tricks that people more smart than honest
have tried to play on the administration at one time or another."
"Why do we have to pay, anyway?" asked Roger. "I never went to a summer
resort before where you had to pay to go in."
"That's because you never went to one that gave you amusement of all
sorts. Here you can go to lectures and concerts all day long and you
don't have to pay a cent for them. This entrance fee covers everything
of that sort. Where else on the planet can you go to something like
twenty or more events in the course of the day for the sum of twelve and
a half cents which is about what the grown-up season ticket holder pays
for his fun."
"Nowhere, I'll bet," responded Roger promptly. "Are there really as many
as that?"
"There are a great many more if you count in all the things that are
going on at the various clubs and all the classes in the Summer
Schools."
"Don't you have to pay for those?"
"There's a small fee for all instruction because classes require
teachers, and teachers must be paid; and the clubs call for a small fee
because they have expenses which they must meet. But all the public
entertainments are free."
"This is just the place I've been looking for ever since Father gave me
an allowance," grinned Roger, whose struggles with his account book were
a family joke.
"Mother," drawled Dicky in a voice that seemed on the verge of tears,
"why don't we ride? I'm so tired I can hardly walk."
"Poor lamb, there aren't any trolleys here or any station carriages,"
explained Mrs. Morton. "Roger, can't you get another porter to take
your bags while you carry Dicky?"
Thus reinforced the New Jersey army marched down the hill from the Road
Gate to the square.
Mrs. Morton had taken a cottage, and the porters said that they knew
exactly where it was situated. Roger, bearing Dicky perched upon his
shoulder, walked between them soaking up information all the way. He
noticed that both young men wore letters on their sweaters, and he
discovered after a brief examination that they were both college men who
were athletes at their respective institutions.
"There are lots of fellows here doing this," one of them said.
"Working, you mean?"
"I sure do. Jo and I think you really have more fun if you're working
than if you don't. There are college boys rustling baggage at the
trolley station where you came in, and at the steamer landing, and lots
of the boarding houses have them doing all sorts of things. Jo and I
wait on table for our meals at the Bismarck cottage."
"Do you get your room, too?"
"We get our rooms by being janitors at two of the halls where they hold
classes. We get up early and sweep them out every day and we set the
chairs in order after every class. Then we do this porter act at certain
hours."
"So your summer really isn't costing you anything."
"I shall come out a little bit ahead, railroad ticket and all. Jo lives
farther away and he won't quite cover his expenses unless something new
and lucrative turns up--like tutoring."
"Or running a power boat, Henry," smiled silent Jo.
"Did you get that job at the Springers?" asked Henry eagerly.
"I did, and it's more profitable than toting bags."
"Good for you," exclaimed the genial Henry, and Roger added his
congratulations, for the young men were so frank about their business
undertakings that he was deeply interested.
The Ethels, walking at the end of the procession, held each other's
hands tightly so that they might look about without straying off the
sidewalk.
"It's queer for a country place, isn't it?" commented Ethel Brown. "I
haven't seen a cow or a chicken since we came in the gate."
"The houses are so close together there isn't any room for them,"
suggested Ethel Blue. "I haven't seen a cat either."
"I know why. Mother told me she read in a booklet they sent her that
there was a Bird Club and you know bird people are always down on cats.
They must have sent them all out of town."
"Oh, here's quite a large square. See, there are stores in that big
brick building with the columns and the place opposite says Post
Office--"
"And there's a soda fountain under that pergola."
"Dicky's hollering for soda right now."
"Mother won't let him have any so early in the morning but we'll
remember where the place is."
Yet the procession seemed to be slowing up at the head and, Oh, joy,
there was Grandfather making a distribution of ice-cream cones to
grown-ups and children alike. Even the porters ate theirs with evident
pleasure, consuming the very last scrap of the cone itself.
Then they led the way down a very steep hill and along a pleasant path
to a cottage that faced the blue water of the lake.
"Here you are," they said to Mrs. Morton.
"And this must be our landlord's son waiting to open the house for us,"
said Mrs. Morton as a boy of Roger's age came forward to meet them.
Her guess was right and James Hancock instantly proved himself an
agreeable and useful friend. The Hancocks lived in New Jersey in a town
not far from the Mortons, but they never had happened to meet at home.
"How many people are there here now?" asked Roger as James helped him
carry the bags into the house.
"Oh, I don't know just how many to-day, but there are usually about
twelve or fifteen thousand at a time when the season gets started."
"There must be awful crowds."
"The people do bunch up at lectures and concerts but if you don't like
crowds you don't have to go, you know."
"What do the fellows our age do?"
"Swim and row and sail. Do you like the water?"
"My father is in the Navy," replied Roger as if that was a sufficient
answer.
"Then you'll go in for all the water sports. The older chaps in the
Athletic Club let us use their club house sometimes, and they say that
this summer there's going to be a club especially for boys of our
age--too old for the Boys' Club and too young for the Athletic Club."
"Good enough, I'll join," declared Roger, who was the most sociable lad
on earth.
"Can I help your mother any more? So long, then. I live two houses
off--in that red one over there just beyond the boarding house--so I'll
see you a lot," and James leaped over the rail of the porch and strolled
off toward the Pier.
"He seems like a nice boy," said Mrs. Morton; "I'm glad he lives so
near."
"I wonder if he has any sisters," queried Helen. "Did you ask him,
Roger?"
Roger had not and he admitted to himself that it was a mistake he would
remedy the next time he saw James. Just as he was thinking about it the
baggage wagon drove up with the trunks. On top was Jo, the porter.
"Hullo," he called.
"Hullo," returned Roger. "I didn't know you rustled trunks as well as
bags."
"I don't. I rode down to ask you something," and he proceeded to swing
down a trunk to the other two young men as if to hurry up matters so
that he could attend to his errand.
"Now, what is it?" asked Roger when all the pieces of luggage had been
placed about the house to his mother's satisfaction, and the dray had
gone.
"I don't know whether you'll care for it or not, but you were so
interested I thought I'd give you first chance if you did want it," Jo
tried to explain.
"Want what?"
"My job. You see how I've got this work for the Springers running their
motor boat I've got to be somewhere within call of their house about all
the time, so they've given me a room there, and I shall have to give up
janitoring and bag-toting and waiting on table and everything. I thought
if you'd like to try one or all of my jobs I'd speak about you and
perhaps you could get in. As late as this you generally can't find any
work, there are so many applications. What do you say?"
Roger thought a moment.
"I'd like like thunder to do something," he said, and added, flushing:
"I suppose you'll think it queer but I've never earned anything in my
life and I'm just crazy to."
"There are awfully good fellows doing it here. You've seen me and
Henry," Jo went on humorously, "and a son of one of the professors is a
janitor and the nephew of another one is waiting on table at the same
cottage I am, and--"
"Oh, I wouldn't be ashamed to do anything honest," Roger said quickly.
"I was thinking about Mother. You see with Father in Mexico I sort of
have to be the man of the family. I shouldn't want to undertake things
that would keep me from being useful to her."
"And you've got a good house here so you don't need a room, so I guess
I'll just run along," answered Jo.
"Wait a minute," cried Roger. "Let me speak to Mother."
Just at that moment Mrs. Morton came out on the porch, a little frown of
anxiety on her face.
"Here you are, Roger--and you, too,--Mr.--"
"Sampson," filled in Jo.
"Mr. Sampson. I came out to consult with you, Roger. It seems to me that
the room in the top story that I counted on for you is going to be so
warm that you can't possibly sleep there. I wish you'd run up and look
at it."
Roger's face burst into a happy smile.
"Good enough, Mother, I hope it is a roaster," he cried.
Mrs. Morton looked perplexed.
"Jo came to tell me that he thinks he can get me his janitor's job that
will earn me my room," Roger explained. "If you don't mind I'd like
mighty well to do it, and it will settle this trouble here."
"Would you really like it?"
"You bet."
"You'd have to stick to it; and it might mean that you'd have to give up
some pleasures that you'd have otherwise."
"I know. I'm willing, Mother," insisted Roger eagerly.
"I don't see, then, why you shouldn't take it," said Mrs. Morton slowly,
"and we shall be much obliged to you if you can arrange it for Roger,"
she continued, smiling at Sampson.
"How about the table-waiting and the bag-toting?" he inquired.
"I think one job will be about all he'd better undertake for his first
experience," decided Mrs. Morton. "I should be sorry not to have him
with the family at meals, and I want him to have time for some sports."
"All right, then, I'll try to fix it up," said Jo, and he swung off up
the path, pulling off his cap to Mrs. Morton as she nodded "Good-bye" to
him.
"Hi," exclaimed Roger joyfully as Jo disappeared; "isn't he a good chap!
Now then, Mater, if your oldest son were a little younger or your
younger son were a little older one of them might be a caddy on the golf
links and earn his ice-cream cones that way," and he danced a few joyous
steps for his mother's admiration.
"If you undertake a thing like this you'll have to stick to it," Mrs.
Morton warned again, for Roger's chief fault was that he tired quickly
of one thing after another.
"A postage stamp'll be nothing to me, and you're a duck to let me do it.
Here, kids," he cried as the two Ethels came out of the house, "gaze on
me! I'm a horny-handed son of toil. I belong to the laboring classes. I
earn my living--or rather my rooming--by the perspiration of my
eyebrow," and he explained the situation to the admiring girls and to
Helen, who joined them.
"I wish there was something I could do," sighed Helen enviously. "I
suppose I could wait on table somewhere."
"I'm afraid it will have to be in this cottage right here," responded
her mother. "Even when Mary comes to-morrow we shall be short handed so
everybody will have to help."
Mary had been Roger's nurse and had stayed on in the family until now,
when Dicky was too old to need a nurse, she had become a working
housekeeper. She had remained behind to put the Rosemont house in order
after the family left, and she was expected to arrive the next day by
the same train that had brought the family.
"I will, Mother," said Helen. "It's only that doing something to earn
your living seems to be in the air here, and I must have caught a germ
on the way down from the trolley gate."
"You'll be doing something to earn your living by helping at home, and
all you would get by waiting on table at a boarding cottage would be
your meals and not money."
"Still, it would relieve Father's pocketbook if there were one mouth
less to feed."
"True, dear, but Father is quite willing to pay that much for his
daughter's service to her family, if you want to look at it in that
light."
"It sounds sort of horrid and mercenary, but when I'm older then I'll
really do some sort of work and repay Father," and Mrs. Morton nodded
her appreciation of Helen's understanding that a Lieutenant's pay is
pretty small to bring up four children on.
"This is an age of mutual help and service," she said. "We must be a
co-operative family and help each other in every way we can. What you
will do for me this summer will be just as much help to me as what Roger
will do by providing himself with a room."
"Somehow doing things at home never seems to count," complained Helen.
"But it does count. Service is like charity; they both begin at home."
"I know just how you feel, though, Sis," confided Roger when his mother
had gone into the house. "I don't think I ever felt so good in all my
life as I do this minute just because I'm going to earn my own room."