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?"
"What kind of sewing, dear? Embroidery?"
"No, Mother dear; it's the purely domestic variety; plain sewing and
buttonholes and shirtwaists and middy blouses and how to hang a skirt,
if I get so far along. Don't you think I'd be a more useful girl if I
knew how to do some of those things?"
"You're a useful daughter now, dear; but I think it would be a splendid
thing for you to learn just the kind of sewing that we need in the
family."
"That every family needs," corrected Helen.
The mother looked closely at her daughter.
"Yes," she assented.
Helen had a plan in her mind and she had not meant to tell her mother
until the sewing class had proved a success and she had learned to do
all the things she had mentioned, but she was straightforward and she
could not resist sharing her secret with Mrs. Morton.
"I meet so many girls here who are doing something to pay for their
holiday, just the way those porters who brought our things down the
first morning are, that I'm just crazy to do something, too," she
explained breathlessly. "It seemed to me that if I learned how to do the
kind of sewing that everybody must have I could get some work to do here
and make some money."
Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Emerson looked at each other in amazement. Neither
spoke for a moment.
"Why do you need more money, dear? You have your allowance."
"I have plenty of money for all I need; what I want is to feel
independent. I don't like to feel that I am a drag on Father and not a
help."
"But Father is glad to pay for your living, dear. Just the fact that he
has a big, loving daughter is enough return for him."
"I know, Father's a darling. I know he's glad to pay for Roger's
education, too, but when Roger earns his room you think it's perfectly
fine and when I want to do the same thing you seem to think I'm wanting
to do something horrid."
Helen was nearly in tears and the fact that her mother made no reply did
not calm her. Mr. Emerson shook his head slowly.
"It's in the air, my dear," he said to Mrs. Morton.
"You're partly right, Helen," said Mrs. Morton at last. "Since Roger is
a boy we expect him to earn his living as soon as he is prepared to do
so. We should not want him to do it now because his duty now is to
secure his education and to make himself strong and well so that he'll
be a vigorous and intelligent man. We had not thought of your earning
your living outside your home, but if you want to prepare yourself to do
so you may. I'm sure your father would have no objection if you selected
a definite occupation of which he and I approved and fitted yourself to
fill it well. But he would object to your taxing your strength by
working now just as he would object to Roger's doing the same thing."
"But you're pleased when Roger earns his room and you seem to think it
funny when I want to," repeated Helen.
"Perhaps you are right, dear. It must be because Roger is a boy and so
we like to see him turning naturally to being useful and busy just as he
must be all the time in a few years."
"But why can't I?"
"I have no objection to your learning how to sew this summer, certainly,
if that will satisfy you; and if you'll learn how to make the Ethels'
middy blouses and Dicky's little suits and rompers, I'll be glad to pay
you for them just as I pay a sewing woman at home for making them."
"Oh, Mother," almost sobbed Helen, "that will be good; only," she nodded
after a pause, "it won't help Father a bit. The money ought to come out
of somebody else's pocket, not his."
"That's true," admitted Mrs. Morton, "but I should have to pay some one
to do the work, so why not you? Unless, of course, you wanted to help
Father by contributing your work."
"That sounds as if I didn't want to help Father or I'd do it for
nothing," exclaimed Helen. "I do really want to help Father, but I want
to do it by relieving Father of spending money for me. I'd like to pay
my board!"
"This generation doesn't seem to understand family co-operation," said
Grandfather Emerson.
"I do want to co-operate," insisted Helen. "I just said I'd like to pay
my board and co-operate by contributing to the family expenses in that
way. What I don't want is to have any work I do taken for granted just
as if we were still pioneers in the wilderness when every member of the
family had to give the labor of his hands. I'm willing to work--I'm
trying to induce Mother to let me work--but I want a definite value put
on it just as there will be a definite value put on Roger's work when he
gets started. I'd like to make the middy blouses for the Ethels and have
Mother pay me what they were worth, and then pay Mother for my board.
Then I should feel that I was really earning my living. That's the way
Roger will do when he's earning a salary. Why shouldn't I do it?"
Helen stopped, breathless. She was too young to realize it, but it was
the cry of her time that she was trying to express--the cry of the woman
to be considered as separate as the man, to be an individual.
"I understand," said Mrs. Morton soothingly; "but suppose you begin in
the way I suggest; and meanwhile we'll put our minds on what you will do
after you leave college. There are a good many years yet before you need
actually to go out into the world."
"Then I may go this morning and arrange for my lessons?"
"Certainly you may."
"And--and I'm sorry I've done all the talking this morning," apologized
Helen. "I'm afraid it hasn't been a very pleasant breakfast."
"A very interesting one," said Mr. Emerson. "It shows that every
generation has to be handled differently from the last one," he nodded
to his daughter.
"Nobody has ever been up on the hill to see my room--if Helen will
excuse my mentioning it," said Roger.
Helen flushed.
"Don't make fun of me, Roger. You do what you want to and it's all right
and I want to do the same thing and it's all wrong," burst out Helen
once more.
"There, dear, we don't want to hear it all again. Go and arrange for
your lessons and as soon as you can make good blouses I'd like to have a
dozen for the Ethels."
"You're a duck, Mother," and Helen ran out of the room, smiling, though
with a feeling that she did not quite understand it all. And well she
might be puzzled, for what she was struggling with has puzzled wiser
heads than hers, and is one of the new problems that has been brought us
by the twentieth century.
"I'll walk up with you to see your room, Roger," offered Mr. Emerson,
"if you're sure I can go without blundering into some class."
"I'll steer you O.K. Come on, sir," cried Roger and he and his
grandfather left the cottage as Mrs. Emerson started for her nine
o'clock class in the Hall of Christ to be followed by the ten o'clock
Devotional Hour and the eleven o'clock lecture in the Amphitheatre.
There she would be joined by Mrs. Morton, who went every morning at nine
to the Woman's Club in the Hall of Philosophy, and then to a ten o'clock
French class. Up to the time of the fire the Ethels had escorted Dicky
to the kindergarten and had then run on to the Girls' Club.
Roger and his grandfather strolled northward along the shore of the lake
talking about Helen.
"I understand exactly how she feels," said Roger, "because I should feel
exactly the same way if you people expected me to do what you expect her
to do."
"But she's a girl," remonstrated Mr. Emerson.
"I guess girls nowadays are different from girls in your day,
Grandfather," said Roger wisely. "We were talking last night at the
Hancocks' about fathers one or two generations ago--how savage they were
compared with fathers to-day."
"Savage!" repeated Mr. Emerson under his breath.
"Wasn't your father more severe to his children than you ever were to
yours?" persisted Roger.
"Perhaps he was," admitted the old gentleman slowly.
"And I'm sure Father is much easier on me than his father was on him
although Father expects a sort of service discipline from me,"
continued Roger.
"May be so," agreed his hearer.
"Just in the same way I believe girls are changing. They used to be
content to think what the rest of the family thought on most things. If
they ever 'bucked' at all it was when they fell in love with some man
the stern parent didn't approve of, and then they were doing something
frightful if they insisted on having their own way, like Aunt Louise
Morton."
"Surely you don't think she did right to run off!"
"I'm sorry she did it, but I believe if she had been reasoned with
instead of ordered, and if Grandfather Morton had tried to see the best
in the man she was in love with instead of booting him out as if he were
a burglar, it might have come out differently."
"Perhaps it might. Personally I believe in every one's exercising his
own judgment."
"And I tell you the girls nowadays have plenty of it," asserted Roger.
"I know lots of girls; there are twenty of them in my class at the high
school and I don't see but they're just as sensible as we boys and most
of them are a heap smarter in their lessons."
"Helen seems to think as you do, at any rate."
"I'm going to stand up for Helen," declared Roger. "I'll be out of
college a couple of years before she is and if she wants to study
anything special or do anything special I'll surely help her to it."
"Your father's not likely to object to anything that she will want to
do."
"Probably not, only," returned Roger hesitating, "perhaps dear old Dad
will need a little education himself after being in Mexico and suchlike
foreign parts for so long."
The path which they were following ran along the top of a bank that rose
abruptly from the water. On the other side of the roadway were pretty
cottages rather larger than most of those at Chautauqua.
"In this house we're passing," said Roger, "there lives the grandest
sight in Chautauqua. I see him almost every time I go by. Look, there he
is now."
_He_ was a bull dog of enormous head and fiercest visage, his nose
pushed back, his teeth protruding, his legs bowed. Belying his war-like
aspect he was harnessed to a child's express wagon which was loaded with
milk cans and baskets.
"Isn't that a great old outfit!" exclaimed Roger. "He goes to market
every morning as solemn as a judge. His name is Cupid."
"Ha, ha! Cupid!" laughed Mr. Emerson.
The dog's master held a leash fastened to his harness and the strong
creature tugged him along so fast that he almost had to run to keep up.
"You see 'everybody works' at Chautauqua, even the dogs."
"And I must say they all seem to like it, even Cupid," added Mr.
Emerson.
Turning away from the lake they walked up the hill to a grove behind
which rose the walls of a hall and of several school buildings.
"Over to the right is the Hall of Pedagogy where your affectionate
grandson wields the broom and smears the dustrag, and the building
beyond is the College. They aren't especially handsome either inside or
out but they are as busy as beehives. Listen to that hum? I tell you
they just naturally hustle for culture up at this end of the grounds!"
"What's this we're coming out on?"
"The Arts and Crafts Studios. Not bad, are they? Sort of California
Mission effect with those low white pillars. This place beats the others
in the busy bee business. They hum in the mornings but the Arts and
Crafts people are at it all day long. Come along and look in; they keep
the windows open on purpose."
Nothing loath, Mr. Emerson went up the ascending path and on to the
brick walk behind the pillars. First they peered into a room devoted to
the making of lace, but neither of them felt drawn to this essentially
feminine occupation. Then they passed drawing and painting studios where
teachers of drawing and painting were taught how to teach better. In a
hall in the centre they found a blackboard drawing that was as well done
as many a painting, but Mr. Emerson's interest began really to grow when
they came to the next departments. Here they found looms, some of them
old-fashioned and some of them new, but all worked by hand and foot
power. Several young women and two men were threading them or weaving
new patterns. It looked difficult yet fascinating. Beyond there was a
detachment learning how to put rush bottoms into chairs, twisting wet
cat-tail leaves and wrapping them about the edges of frames.
"Look, they're just like the chairs in your dining-room," whispered
Roger. "I've half a mind to learn how to do it so that I can mend them
for Grandmother."
A near-by squad was making baskets, using a variety of materials. In
another room the leather workers were stretching and cutting and wetting
and dyeing and tooling bits of leather which were to be converted into
purses and card cases and mats, and at another table the bookbinders
were exercising the most scrupulous care in the use of their tools upon
the delicate designs which they had transferred to their valuable
material.
Around the bend in the wall were the noisy crafts, put by themselves so
that they might not interfere with the comfort of the quieter toilers.
Here the metal workers pounded their sheets of brass and copper,
building up handsome patterns upon future trays and waste baskets and
lanterns. Here, too, the jewelry makers ran their little furnaces and
thumped and welded until silver cups and chains grew under their fingers
and settings of unique design held semi-precious stones of alluring
colors.
Every student in the whole place seemed alive with eagerness to do his
work well and swiftly; they bent over it, smiling, the teachers were
calm and helpful; gayety and happiness were in the air.
"I'd really like to spend my mornings up here," murmured Mr. Emerson,
"if I only knew what I could do."
"We didn't see the wood-carving room; perhaps you'd like that."
They turned into a door they had passed. A man of Grandfather's age was
drawing his design on a board which was destined to become a book rack.
Another man was chipping out his background, making the flowers of his
pattern stand forth in bold relief. A young woman had a fireboard nearly
finished.
"I believe I will come up here," exclaimed Mr. Emerson.
And so it happened that Grandfather's mornings were taken up as much as
those of the rest of the family, and it was not long before he was so
interested in his work and so eager to get on with his appointed tasks
that he spent not only the mornings but almost all day drawing and
carving and oiling in the midst of sweet-smelling shavings.
On the way back they stopped for a minute to see Roger's cell in the
Hall of Pedagogy, and the boy showed his grandfather with pride his neat
array of brooms and rags. As they passed through Higgins Grove and out
on to the green in front of the Post Office a great clattering attracted
their attention. Men ran, boys shouted, and over and above all rose a
fierce and persistent barking.
"It's Cupid! As sure as you're born, it's Cupid!" cried Roger.
Sure enough it was Cupid. He had been trotting gently down one of the
side streets, his wagon laden with full milk cans and with sundry
bundles. A dog passing across the square at the end of the street
attracted his attention, and he started off at full gallop. The cans
rolled out of the cart and spurted their milky contents on the ground. A
bag of eggs smashed disastrously as it struck the pavement. Tins--of
corned beef, lentils, sardines--bounced on the floor of the wagon until
they jounced over the side into the road. On, on ran Cupid, his harness
holding strongly and the front wheels banging his hind paws at every
jump. The uproar that he created drew the attention of the dog which had
caused all the commotion by his mere presence on the plaza. Casting a
startled glance at Cupid, he clapped his tail between his legs and
fled--fled with great bounds, his ears flapping in a breeze of his own
creation. Unencumbered as he was he had the advantage of Cupid, who was
unable to rid himself of the equipment that marked him as man's slave.
Seeing his quarry disappear in the distance the bull dog came to a
standstill just as Roger seized the strap that dangled from his harness.
"Yours, I believe," he laughed as he handed the leash to the young man
who came running up.
"Mine. Thank you. My name is Watkins and I'd be glad to know you better.
I've noticed you passing the house every day."
"Thank you. My name is Morton," and the two young fellows shook hands
over Cupid's head, while he sat down between the shafts and let slip a
careless tongue from out his heated mouth.