ETHEL MORTON'S ENTERPRISE
By
MABELL S.C. SMITH
CONTENTS
I HOW IT STARTED
II A SNOW MAN AND SEED CATALOGUES
III DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET
IV GARDENING ON PAPER
V A DEFECT IN THE TITLE
VI WILD FLOWERS FOR HELEN'S GARDEN
VII COLOR SCHEMES
VIII CAVE LIFE
IX "NOTHING BUT LEAVES"
X THE U.S.C. AND THE COMMUNITY
XI THE FLOWER FESTIVAL
XII ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY
XIII IN BUSINESS
XIV UNCLE DAN'S RESEARCHES
XV FUR AND FOSSILS
XVI FAIRYLAND
XVII THE MISSING HEIRESS
CHAPTER I
HOW IT STARTED
Ethel Morton, called from the color of her eyes Ethel "Blue" to
distinguish her from her cousin, also Ethel Morton, whose brown eyes
gave her the nickname of Ethel "Brown," was looking out of the window at
the big, damp flakes of snow that whirled down as if in a hurry to cover
the dull January earth with a gay white carpet.
"The giants are surely having a pillow fight this afternoon," she
laughed.
"In honor of your birthday," returned her cousin.
"The snowflakes are really as large as feathers," added Dorothy Smith,
another cousin, who had come over to spend the afternoon.
All three cousins had birthdays in January. The Mortons always
celebrated the birthdays of every member of the family, but since there
were three in the same month they usually had one large party and
noticed the other days with less ceremony. This year Mrs. Emerson, Ethel
Brown's grandmother, had invited the whole United Service Club, to which
the girls belonged, to go to New York on a day's expedition. They had
ascended the Woolworth Tower, gone through the Natural History Museum,
seen the historic Jumel Mansion, lunched at a large hotel and gone to
the Hippodrome. Everybody called it a perfectly splendid party, and
Ethel Blue and Dorothy were quite willing to consider it as a part of
their own birthday observances.
Next year it would be Dorothy's turn. This year her party had consisted
merely in taking her cousins on an automobile ride. A similar ride had
been planned for Ethel Blue's birthday, but the giants had plans of
their own and the young people had had to give way to them. Dorothy had
come over to spend the afternoon and dine with her cousins, however. She
lived just around the corner, so her mother was willing to let her go in
spite of the gathering drifts, because Roger, Ethel Brown's older
brother, would be able to take her home such a short distance, even if
he had to shovel a path all the way.
The snow was so beautiful that they had not wanted to do anything all
the afternoon but gaze at it. Dicky, Ethel Brown's little brother, who
was the "honorary member" of the U.S.C., had come in wanting to be
amused, and they had opened the window for an inch and brought in a few
of the huge flakes which grew into ferns and starry crystals under the
magnifying glass that Mrs. Morton always kept on the desk.
"Wouldn't it be fun if our eyeth could thee thingth like that!"
exclaimed Dicky, and the girls agreed with him that it would add many
marvels to our already marvellous world.
"As long as our eyes can't see the wee things I'm glad Aunt Marion
taught us to use this glass when we were little," said Ethel Blue who
had been brought up with her cousins ever since she was a baby.
"Mother says that when she and Uncle Roger and Uncle Richard," said
Dorothy, referring to Ethel Brown's and Ethel Blue's fathers, her
uncles--"were all young at home together Grandfather Morton used to make
them examine some new thing every day and tell him about it. Sometimes
it would be the materials a piece of clothing was made of, or the paper
of a magazine or a flower--anything that came along."
[Illustration: "It looked just as if it were a house with a lot of
rooms"]
"When I grow up," said Ethel Blue, "I'm going to have a large microscope
like the one they have in the biology class in the high school. Helen
took me to the class with her one day and the teacher let me look
through it. It was perfectly wonderful. There was a slice of the stem of
a small plant there and it looked just as if it were a house with a lot
of rooms. Each room was a cell, Helen said."
"A very suitable name," commented Ethel Brown.
"What are you people talking about?" asked Helen, who came in at that
instant.
"I was telling the girls about that time when I looked through the high
school microscope," answered Ethel Blue.
[Illustration: Single Cell]
[Illustration: Double Cell]
"You saw among other things, some cells in the very lowest form of life.
A single cell is all there is to the lowest animal or vegetable."
[Illustration: Multiple Cells]
"What do you mean by a single cell?"
"Just a tiny mass of jelly-like stuff that is called protoplasm. The
cells grow larger and divide until there are a lot of them. That's the
way plants and animals grow."
"If each is as small as those I saw under the microscope there must be
billions in me!" and Ethel Blue stretched her arms to their widest
extent and threw her head upwards as far as her neck would allow.
"I guess there are, young woman," and Helen went off to hang her snowy
coat where it would dry before she put it in the closet.
"There'th a thnow flake that lookth like a plant!" cried Dicky who had
slipped open the window wide enough to capture an especially large
feather.
"It really does!" exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was nearest to her little
cousin and caught a glimpse of the picture through the glass before the
snow melted.
"Did it have 'root, stem and leaves'?" asked Dorothy. "That's what I
always was taught made a plant--root, stem and leaves. Would Helen call
a cell that you couldn't see a plant?"
"Yes," came a faint answer from the hall. "If it's living and isn't an
animal it's a vegetable--though way down in the lower forms it's next to
impossible to tell one from the other. There isn't any rule that doesn't
have an exception."
"I should think the biggest difference would be that animals eat plants
and plants eat--what do plants eat?" ended Dorothy lamely.
"That is the biggest difference," assented Helen. "Plants are fed by
water and mineral substances that come from the soil directly, while
animals get the mineral stuff by way of the plants."
"Father told us once about some plants that caught insects. They eat
animals."
"And there are animals that eat both vegetables and animals, you and I,
for instance. So you can't draw any sharp lines."
"When a plant gets out of the cell stage and has a 'root, stem and
leaves' then you know it's a plant if you don't before," insisted
Dorothy, determined to make her knowledge useful.
"Did any of you notice the bean I've been sprouting in my room?" asked
Helen.
"I'll get it, I'll get it!" shouted Dicky.
"Trust Dicky not to let anything escape his notice!" laughed his big
sister.
Dicky returned in a minute or two carrying very carefully a shallow
earthenware dish from which some thick yellow-green tips were sprouting.
"I soaked some peas and beans last week," explained Helen, "and when
they were tender I planted them. You see they're poking up their heads
now."
[Illustration: Bean Plant]
"They don't look like real leaves," commented Ethel Blue.
"This first pair is really the two halves of the bean. They hold the
food for the little plant. They're so fat and pudgy that they never do
look like real leaves. In other plants where there isn't so much food
they become quite like their later brothers."
"Isn't it queer that whatever makes the plant grow knows enough to send
the leaves up and the roots down," said Dorothy thoughtfully.
"That's the way the life principle works," agreed Helen. "This other
little plant is a pea and I want you to see if you notice any difference
between it and the bean."
She pulled up the wee growth very delicately and they all bent over it
as it lay in her hand.
"It hathn't got fat leaveth," cried Dicky.
[Illustration: The Pea Plant]
"Good for Dicky," exclaimed Helen. "He has beaten you girls. You see the
food in the pea is packed so tight that the pea gets discouraged about
trying to send up those first leaves and gives it up as a bad job. They
stay underground and do their feeding from there."
"A sort of cold storage arrangement," smiled Ethel Brown.
"After these peas are a little taller you'd find if you pulled them up
that the supply of food had all been used up. There will be nothing down
there but a husk."
"What happens when this bean plant uses up all its food?"
"There's nothing left but a sort of skin that drops off. You can see how
it works with the bean because that is done above the ground."
"Won't it hurt those plants to pull them up this way?"
"It will set them back, but I planted a good many so as to be able to
pull them up at different ages and see how they looked."
"You pulled that out so gently I don't believe it will be hurt much."
"Probably it will take a day or two for it to catch up with its
neighbors. It will have to settle its roots again, you see."
"What are you doing this planting for?" asked Dorothy.
"For the class at school. We get all the different kinds of seeds we
can--the ones that are large enough to examine easily with only a
magnifying glass like this one. Some we cut open and examine carefully
inside to see how the new leaves are to be fed, and then we plant others
and watch them grow."
"I'd like to know why you never told me about that before?" demanded
Ethel Brown. "I'm going to get all the grains and fruits I can right off
and plant them. Is all that stuff in a horse chestnut leaf-food?"
"The horse chestnut is a hungry one, isn't it?"
"I made some bulbs blossom by putting them in a tall glass in a dark
place and bringing them into the light when they had started to sprout,"
said Ethel Blue, "but I think this is more fun. I'm going to plant some,
too."
"Grandmother Emerson always has beautiful bulbs. She has plenty in her
garden that she allows to stay there all winter, and they come up and
are scrumptious very early in the Spring. Then she takes some of them
into the house and keeps them in the dark, and they blossom all through
the cold weather."
"Mother likes bulbs, too," said Dorothy, "crocuses and hyacinths and
Chinese lilies--but I never cared much about them. Somehow the bulb
itself looks too fat. I don't care much for fat things or people."
"Don't think of it as fat; it's the food supply."
"Well, I think they're greedy things, and I'm not going ever to bother
with them. I'll leave them to Mother, but I am really going to plant a
garden this summer. I think it will be loads of fun."
"We haven't much room for a garden here," said Helen, "but we always
have some vegetables and a few flowers."
"Why don't we have a fine one this summer, Helen?" demanded Ethel Brown.
"You're learning a lot about the way plants grow, I should think you'd
like to grow them."
"I believe I should if you girls would help me. There never has been any
member of the family who was interested, and I wasn't wild about it
myself, and I just never got started."
"The truth is," confessed Ethel Brown, "if we don't have a good garden
Dorothy here will have something that will put ours entirely in the
shade."
The girls all laughed. They never had known Dorothy until the previous
summer. When she came to live in Rosemont in September they had learned
that she was extremely energetic and that she never abandoned any plan
that she attempted. The Ethels knew, therefore, that if Dorothy was
going to have a garden the next summer they'd better have a garden, too,
or else they would see little of her.
"If we both have gardens Dorothy will condescend to come and see ours
once in a while and we can exchange ideas and experiences," continued
Ethel Brown.
"I'd love to have a garden," said Ethel Blue. "Do you suppose Roger
would be willing to dig it up for us?"
"Dig up what?" asked Roger, stamping into the house in time to hear his
name.
The girls told him of their new plan.
"I'll help all of you if you'll plant one flower that I like; plant
enough of it so that I can pick a lot any time I want to. The trouble
with the little garden we've had is that there weren't enough flowers
for more than the centrepiece in the dining-room. Whenever I wanted any
I always had to go and give a squint at the dining room table and then
do some calculation as to whether there could be a stalk or two left
after Helen had cut enough for the next day."
"And there generally weren't any!" sympathized Helen.
"What flower is it you're so crazy over?" asked Ethel Blue.
"Sweetpeas, my child. Never in all my life have I had enough sweetpeas."
"I've had more than enough," groaned Ethel Brown. "One summer I stayed a
fortnight with Grandmother Emerson and I picked the sweetpeas for her
every morning. She was very particular about having them picked because
they blossom better if they're picked down every day."
"It must have taken you an awfully long time; she always has rows and
rows of them," said Helen.
"I worked a whole hour in the sun every single day! If we have acres of
sweetpeas we'll all have to help Roger pick."
"I'm willing to," said Ethel Blue. "I'm like Roger, I think they're
darling; just like butterflies or something with wings."
"We'll have to cast our professional eyes into the garden and decide on
the best place for the sweetpeas," said Roger. "They have to be planted
early, you know. If we plant them just anywhere they'll be sure to be in
the way of something that grows shorter so it will be hidden."
"Or grows taller and is a color that fights with them."
"It would be hard to find a color that wasn't matched by one sweetpea or
another. They seem to be of every combination under the sun."
"It's queer, some of the combinations would be perfectly hideous in a
dress but they look all right in Nature's dress."
"We'll send for some seedsmen's catalogues and order a lot."
"I suppose you don't care what else goes into the garden?" asked Helen.
"Ladies, I'll do all the digging you want, and plant any old thing you
ask me to, if you'll just let me have my sweetpeas," repeated Roger.
"A bargain," cried all the girls.
"I'll write for some seed catalogues this afternoon," said Helen. "It's
so appropriate, when it's snowing like this!"
"'Take time by the fetlock,' as one of the girls says in 'Little
Women,'" laughed Roger. "If you'll cast your orbs out of the window
you'll see that it has almost stopped. Come on out and make a snow man."
Every one jumped at the idea, even Helen who laid aside her writing
until the evening, and there was a great putting on of heavy coats and
overshoes and mittens.