THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB IS ORGANIZED
THE Hancocks were notified on Monday morning of their election to
membership in the new club. They were delighted to join, especially as
it would mean after they got home a regular meeting with the pleasant
friends they had had to come many miles from home to know.
"What are we going to do first?" they asked Roger who took the
invitation to them.
"Helen has called a meeting for this afternoon at five o'clock. We'll
decide on something then."
"Where's it going to be?"
"Up in the ravine just before you get to Higgins Hall. Dorothy's going
to make some sandwiches."
"Oh, Dorothy's going to belong."
"Sure thing. Our household can't do without her since Grandfather was
sick. I asked Mother if Mary couldn't make us some sandwiches, but she
said Mary was awfully busy to-day, and Dorothy said if the club was to
help people she'd help Mary by making the sandwiches."
"Good old Dorothy! She's begun to be a United Server before the club has
really got to working."
"I don't see why I can't come in on the sandwich business," said James.
"I'm a dandy ham slicer."
"Come over, then. Dorothy's making them now on the back porch."
So it happened that there was almost a meeting of the club before the
time actually set for it, but after all there was not a quorum,
according to James, while at five o'clock every active member was
present, though the members of the Advisory Board were detained by other
engagements.
The ravine extended back from the lake toward the fence. Through it ran
a brook which the dry weather had made almost non-existent, but its
course was marked by an abundant growth of wild flowers, including the
delicate blue of the forget-me-not.
"Let's have the forget-me-not for our flower," suggested Margaret as
soon as they were settled on the bank under the tall trees. "We mustn't
pick any of these, of course, but they won't be hard to find at home,
and they'll be easy to embroider if we ever need to make badges or
anything of that sort."
"Perhaps in the course of a few years we'll be advanced enough to have
pins," said Helen, "and forget-me-not pins will be lovely. Even the boys
can wear them for scarf pins--little ones with just one flower."
Roger and James approved this suggestion and so the matter of an emblem
was decided not only without trouble but before the meeting had been
called to order.
"We certainly are a harmonious lot," observed James when some one
mentioned this fact.
"What I want to do," said Ethel Brown, "is to give a vote of thanks to
Dorothy and James and Ethel Blue for making the sandwiches."
"Good idea; they're bully," commended Roger. "I move, Helen, that the
people just mentioned be elected official sandwich makers to the club."
"Don't call the president by her name," objected James. "Don't you have
parliamentary law in your school?"
"No; plenty without it."
"We do. We have an assembly every morning--current events and things
like that and sometimes a speaker from New York--and one of the scholars
presides and we have to do the thing up brown. You wouldn't call Helen
'Helen' there, I can tell you."
"What ought I to say?"
"'Miss President,' or 'Madam President.'"
This was greeted by a howl of joy from Roger.
"'Madam' is good!" he howled, wriggling with delight. "I do know how to
put a motion, though. I'll leave it to Ethel Blue if I didn't set her
idea on its legs last night by putting through a unanimous vote for
Helen for president."
"You did, but you don't seem to be giving the president a chance to call
the meeting to order now."
"I apologize, Madam President," and again Roger rolled over in excessive
mirth.
"The meeting will come to order, then," began Helen. "Is that right,
James?"
"O.K. Go ahead."
"Madam President," said Margaret promptly, "do you think it's necessary
for us to be so particular and follow parliamentary law? I think it will
be dreadfully stiff and fussy."
"Oh, let's do it, Margaret. I want to learn and you and James know how,
so that's a service you can do for me. And Helen ought to know if she's
going to be president," Roger urged.
"Here's where you're wrong at the jump-off, old man. You ought not to
speak directly to Margaret. You ought to address the chair--that is,
Helen."
"What are you doing yourself, then, talking straight to me?"
"Bull's-eye. Margaret was all right, though, Madam President. She
addressed the chair. What does the chair think about Margaret's
question?"
"I think--the chair thinks--" began Helen, warned by James's amused
glance, "that Margaret is right. It won't do us any harm to obey a few
parliamentary rules, but if we are too particular it'll be horrid."
"It's a mighty good chance to learn," growled Roger. "I want to make old
James useful."
"If you talk that queer way I'll never open my mouth," declared Ethel
Blue in a tone of lament.
"Then I move you, Madam President, that we don't do it," said James,
"because this club is Ethel Blue's idea and it would be a shame if she
couldn't have a say-so in her own club."
"I'm willing to compromise, Helen--Madam President," went on Ethel Blue,
giggling; "I say let Roger be parliamentary if he wants to, and the rest
of us will be parliamentary or unparliamentary just as we feel like it."
Applause greeted this suggestion, largely from Dicky, who was glad of
the opportunity to make some noise.
"There's a motion before the house, Madam President," reminded James.
"Dear me, so there is. What do I do now?"
"Say, 'Is it seconded?'" whispered James.
"Is it seconded?"
"I second it," came from Margaret.
"It is moved and seconded by the Hancocks that we do not follow
parliamentary rules in the United Service Club."
Helen had felt herself getting on swimmingly but at this point she
seemed to have come to a wall.
"Are you ready for the question?" prompted James in an undertone.
"Are you ready for the question?" repeated Helen aloud.
"Let her rip," advised Roger.
"All in favor say 'Aye.'"
Margaret and James said "Aye."
"Contrary minded----"
"No," roared Roger.
"No," followed Ethel Blue meekly.
"No," came Ethel Brown in uncertain negative.
Helen didn't know just how to handle this situation.
"Three to two," she counted. "They don't agree," and she turned
helplessly toward James.
"Right you are," he acknowledged. "Why don't you ask for Ethel Blue's
motion?"
"But I didn't make a motion," screamed Ethel Blue, deeply agitated.
"Same thing; you said you were willing to compromise and let Roger be
parliamentary if he wanted to and the rest of us do as we liked."
"I think that's a good way."
"Do you make that motion?" asked Helen, prompted by James.
"Yes, I make that motion," repeated Ethel Blue.
"Hurrah for the lady who said she'd never talk 'that queer way,'"
cheered Roger.
"It isn't so bad when you know how," admitted Ethel Blue.
"Is that motion seconded?" Helen had not forgotten her first lesson.
"I second it." It was Roger who spoke.
"Question," called Margaret.
"It is moved and seconded that we all do as we like except Roger and
that he talk parliamentary fashion all the time."
Thus the president stated the motion.
"Oh, say," objected Roger. "I call that unfair discrimination."
"Not at all," retorted the president. "You were the one who wanted to
learn so it's only fair that you should have the chance."
"I can't do it alone."
"Perhaps some of us will be moved to do it, too, once in a while. You
see the president ought to know how. These Hancock experts here said
so."
"You haven't asked for the 'Ayes' and 'Nos' yet," reminded Margaret, and
this time Helen sent it through without a hesitation.
"The next thing for us to decide," continued the president when Ethel
Blue's motion had passed without a dissenting voice, "is what we are
going to do. Of course we can't undertake any really big things here at
Chautauqua where we have all our time pretty well filled and where we
are studying things that we ought not to slight because they may help us
out later in our plans for service. So I think what we must look out for
is little things that we can do to be helpful. Does anybody know of
any?"
"I know of one," offered James promptly. "Tomorrow is Old First Night.
That's the only time in all the summer when there is a collection taken
on the grounds. All the money they get on Old First Night is used for
the benefit of the general public. The Miller Tower, for instance, was
an Old First Night Gift, and part of the Arts and Crafts Studios was
paid for by another one, and the Sherwood Music Studio."
"Great scheme," remarked Roger. "You take your contribution out of one
pocket and put it into the other, so to speak. Where do we come in?"
"They want boys to collect the money from the people in the
Amphitheatre. That's something you and I can do."
"Is there anything that girls do on Old First Night?"
Ethel Brown turned to Margaret as authority because the Hancocks had
been at Chautauqua many summers.
"There never has been anything particular for them to do but I don't
know why we couldn't offer to trim the stage. I believe they'd like to
have us."
"How shall we find out?"
"I'll telephone to the Director to-night, and if he says 'Yes,' then we
can go outside the gate to-morrow afternoon and pick wild flowers and
trim the stage just before supper."
"You boys will have to go too," said Helen; "we'll need you to bring
back the flowers."
"Right-o," agreed James. "Anybody any more ideas?"
"We'll have to keep our eyes open as things come along," said Ethel
Blue. "There ought to be something every day. There's Recognition Day,
any way."
"We're all too big for Flower Girls; they have to be not over ten; but
Mother went to the 1914 Class meeting this afternoon and one of the
members of the class proposed that they should have boys as well as
girls--a boys' guard of honor--so there's a job for our honorary member,
Mr. Richard Morton."
"If they have a lot of kids they'll want some big fellows to keep them
straight and make them march right," guessed James; "that's where you
and I come in, Roger, thanks to your mother and grandfather and my
father being in the class."
"How about us girls?"
"The graduating class can use all the flowers they can lay their hands
on, so we can bring them all we can carry and I know they'll be glad to
have them," said Margaret.
"Can't we help them decorate?"
"They always do all the decorating themselves, but the evening before
Recognition Day there's going to be a sale of ice cream for the benefit
of the fund the C.L.S.C. people are raising to build a veranda on Alumni
Hall and we can help a lot there."
"Where's that going to be?"
"There'll be hundreds of lanterns strung between the two halls, the band
will play, and they'll have tables in the Hall of Philosophy."
"And we'll wait on the tables."
"We'll carry ice cream and sell cake and tell people how awfully good a
chocolate cake that hasn't been cut yet looks so they'll want a piece of
that to take home to one of the children who couldn't come."
"Foxy Margaret!"
"It'll be true."
"I suspect it will. My mouth waters now."
"You'll excuse my turning the subject, Madam President," said James
excitedly, "but there are some of the jolliest little squirrels up over
our heads. I've been watching them ever since we came and I believe I've
learned a thing or two about them."
"What!"
They all threw themselves on their backs and stared up into the trees.
"They have regular paths that they follow in going from tree to tree.
Did you see that fellow jump? He went out on the tip of that long twig
and leaped from there. He just could grab the branch that sticks out
from that oak. I believe that must be the only place where it is near
enough for them to make the leap, for I've seen at least twenty jump
from that same twig since I noticed them first."
"Twenty! How do you know it wasn't one leaping twenty times to show off
to us?"
"It was more than one, anyway, for there was a chap with a grand, bushy
tail and another one with hardly any tail at all."
"Cats," hissed Ethel Brown tragically.
"Very likely, since shooting isn't allowed here. Last summer I saw a cat
catch a chipmunk right over there by that red cottage."
"Did she kill him?"
"Not much! Mr. Chip gave himself a twist and scampered back into his
hole in the bank. I tell you the stripes on his back looked like one
continuous strip of ribbon he went so fast!"
"Poor little fellow. Any more sandwiches left?" queried Roger. "No? Too
bad. Let's adjourn, then. Madam President, I move we adjourn."
"To meet when?"
"When the president calls us," said Ethel Blue.
"And we'll all have our eyes and ears open so as to give her information
so she'll have something to call us for."
Picking up the honorary member and setting him on his shoulder Roger led
the procession back to the lake front, and so ended the first meeting of
the United Service Club which was to fill so large a part in the lives
of all its members for several years to come.