Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank, Emmy and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
ETHEL MORTON
AND THE
CHRISTMAS SHIP
BY
MABELL S. C. SMITH
M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK
Made in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB AT HOME 9
II DOROTHY'S COTTAGE 18
III THE CHRISTMAS SHIP 26
IV FINANCIAL PLANS 35
V ROGER GOES FORAGING 47
VI IN THE SMITH ATTIC 57
VII FOR A TRAVELLER'S KIT 70
VIII THE RED CROSS NURSE SETS SAIL 85
IX PLANNING THE U. S. C. "SHOW" 90
X THE EVENTFUL EVENING 101
XI "SISTER SUSIE'S SEWING SHIRTS FOR SOLDIERS" 115
XII JAMES CUTS CORNERS 129
XIII PASTING 139
XIV JAMES'S AFTERNOON PARTY 151
XV PREVENTION 163
XVI FOR SANTA CLAUS'S PACK 177
XVII THE CLUB WEAVES, STENCILS AND MODELS CLAY 194
XVIII ETHEL BLUE AWAITS A CABLE 206
XIX LEATHER AND BRASS 211
XX THE ETHELS COOK TO KEEP 221
XXI THE CHRISTMAS SHIP SAILS 232
XXII A WEDDING AND A SURPRISE 242
ETHEL MORTON AND THE CHRISTMAS SHIP
CHAPTER I
THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB AT HOME
"IT'S up to Roger Morton to admit that there's real, true romance in the
world after all," decided Margaret Hancock as she sat on the Mortons'
porch one afternoon a few days after school had opened in the September
following the summer when the Mortons and Hancocks had met for the first
time at Chautauqua. James and Margaret had trolleyed over to see Roger
and Helen from Glen Point, about three quarters of an hour's ride from
Rosemont where the Mortons lived.
"Roger's ready to admit it," confessed that young man. "When you have an
aunt drop right down on your door mat, so to speak, after your family
has been hunting her for twenty years, and when you find that you've
been knowing her daughter, your own cousin, pretty well for two months
it does make the regular go-to-school life that you and I used to lead
look quite prosy."
"How did she happen to lose touch so completely with her family?"
"I told you how Grandfather Morton, her father, opposed her marrying
Uncle Leonard Smith because he was a musician. Well, she did marry him,
and when they got into straits she was too proud to tell her father
about it."
"I suppose Grandfather would have said, 'I told you so,'" suggested
Helen.
"And I believe it takes more courage than it's worth to face a person
who's given to saying that," concluded James.
"Aunt Louise evidently thought it wasn't worth while or else she didn't
have the courage and so she drifted away. Her mother was dead and she
had no sisters and Father and Uncle Richard probably didn't write very
often."
"She thought nobody at home loved her, I suppose," said Helen. "Father
and Uncle Richard did love her tremendously, but they were just young
fellows at the time and they didn't realize what their not writing meant
to her."
"Once in a while they heard of Uncle Leonard through the music papers,"
went on Roger, "but after his health failed, Aunt Louise told us the
other day, he couldn't make concert appearances and of course a man
merely playing in an orchestra isn't big enough to command public
attention."
"By the time that Grandfather Morton died about twelve years ago she was
completely lost to the family," Helen continued, "and she says she
didn't know of his death until five years after, when she came
accidentally upon some mention of it in a local paper that she picked up
somewhere."
"That was after Uncle Leonard's death, but it seemed to her that she
could not make herself known to her people without being disloyal to his
memory," Roger carried on the story.
"She probably thought that your father and uncle were just as much
opposed to him as her father had been," guessed Margaret.
"As a matter of fact, they have been hunting hard for her through every
clue that promised any result ever since Grandfather died because they
wanted to give her her share of his property."
"He didn't cut her off with a shilling, then?"
"Grandfather seems to have had a change of heart, for he left her more
than he did his sons. He said she needed it more."
"And it has been accumulating all this time."
"Seven years. That means a very pleasant increase for her and Dorothy."
"She must think rather sadly of the days when they suffered real
privation for the lack of it," said Helen.
"Anyway, here they are now, with money in their pockets and an
affectionate family all ready made for them and they are going to live
here in Rosemont near us, and Dorothy is going to school with the
Ethels, and I'm willing to admit that it comes nearer to being a romance
than anything I ever heard of in real life," and Roger nodded his head
gleefully.
"I'm glad she's going to live here so we can see her once in a while,"
said Margaret. "Mother and Sister and I all loved her at Chautauqua, she
was so patient and gentle with the people she taught. And of course we
all think Dorothy is a darling."
"The Ethels are crazy over her. They treat her as if she were some new
belonging and they can hardly bear to have her out of their sight."
"It was Grandfather Emerson who said all summer that she looked like the
Ethels," remarked Roger. "Her hair is fuzzy and her nose is puggy, but
I didn't see much other likeness."
"When she grows as fat as the Ethels I think she'll look astonishingly
like them. She's thin and pale, now, poor little dud."
"I wish she could grow as plump as Della Watkins."
"I saw Tom Watkins yesterday," said James.
"What was a haughty New Yorker doing on the Jersey side of the Hudson?"
"It seems he boards Cupid and his family at the Rosemont Kennels--you
know they're half way between here and Glen Point. He was going to call
on them."
"Dear Cupid!" laughed Margaret, recalling the bulldog's alarming face
which ill agreed with his mild name and general behavior. "Let's go over
to the Kennels and see him some day."
"His wife is named Psyche," went on James, "and they have two pups named
Amor and Amorette."
"I should think Cupid's puppy would be the funniest little animal on
earth," roared Roger. "Never, never shall I forget the day old Cupe ran
away with his market wagon," and he kicked his legs with enthusiasm.
"Did Tom say anything about coming to see us?" asked Margaret.
"He said he and Della were coming over on Saturday afternoon and he
inquired how far it was from Glen Point to Rosemont and whether they
could make two calls in one afternoon."
"Not if he stays at either place as long as we'd like to have him," said
Roger.
"Why don't we have a meeting of the United Service Club on Saturday
afternoon?" suggested Helen, "and then the Watkinses can come here and
you two can come and we can all see each other and at the same time
decide on what we are going to do this winter."
"Great head!" approved Roger. "Can you people be here?"
"We can," assented Margaret.
"And we will." James completed the sentence for her.
"Here are the children. They've been asking when we were to have the
first meeting, so I know they'll be glad to give Saturday afternoon to
it."
"The children" of Helen's patronizing expression came rushing into the
yard at the moment. Ethel Brown Morton, tall and rosy, her cheeks
flushed with running, led the way; her cousin, Ethel Blue Morton, not
quite so tall or quite so rosy, made a fair second, and their
newly-found cousin, Dorothy Smith, brought up the rear, panting a trifle
harder than the rest, but already looking plumper and sturdier than she
had during the summer at Chautauqua.
They greeted Margaret and James gladly, and sat down on the steps of the
porch to engage in the conversation.
"Hullo," a voice came through the screen door. "I'm coming out."
"That must be my friend Dicky," declared James. "Come on, old man," and
he arranged his knees in position to serve as a seat for the
six-year-old who calmly sat himself down upon them.
"How are you?" questioned James gravely. "All right?"
"Firtht rate," replied Dicky briefly. "Have a thuck?" and he offered
James the moist end of an all-day-sucker, withdrawing it from his own
mouth for the purpose.
"Thank you, I'm not eating candy to-day, sir," responded James
seriously. "Much obliged to you, all the same."
Dicky nodded his recognition of James's thanks and resumed his
occupation.
"It keeps us still though we're not pretty to look at as we do it,"
commented Ethel Brown.
"You're talking about me," asserted Dicky suddenly, once more removing
his sucker from his increasingly sticky lips and fixing an accusing eye
upon his sister.
"She was, Dicky, that's true," interposed Helen quickly, "but she loves
you just as much as if she were talking about Roger."
Dicky regarded this as a compliment and subsided against James's chest.
"We're going to try and get the Watkinses to come out next Saturday
afternoon and the Hancocks will come over and we'll have a meeting of
the United Service," explained Roger to the new arrivals.
"Good enough!" approved Ethel Brown.
"What are you going to do, Madam President?" inquired Ethel Blue, who
felt a lively interest in any future plans because the Club was her
idea.
"We'll all think of things between now and Saturday, and suggest them
then."
"Tell the Watkinses when you write to them, Helen."
"I'm just boiling over with ideas for the Club to put into execution
some time or other," announced Roger.
"Big ones or little?" asked Dorothy.
"Some of them are pretty big, but I have a feeling in my bones that
they'll go through."
"Good for old Roger's bones!" commended James. "May we venture to ask
what some of them are?"
"'Nothing venture, nothing have,'" quoted Roger. "I'm merely saying now,
however, that the biggest scheme is one that I told Grandfather Emerson
about the other day and he said he'd help by giving us the house for
it."
"What should we do that would need a house?"
"What do you mean--house?"
Roger grinned delightedly at the commotion he had caused.
"This plan I have is so big that we'll have to get the grown-ups to help
us, but we'll do most of the carrying out ourselves in spite of that."
"I should think we would have to have their help if your plan calls for
a house."
"You needn't be sarcastic, young woman. This is a perfectly good
scheme--Grandfather said so. He said it was so good that he was willing
to back it and to help us by supplying the house we should need."
"Poor old Roger--gone clean crazy," sighed James.
"I almost think so," agreed Helen.
"Let me tell you something, you scoffers----"
"Tell on; that's what we're waiting for."
"Well, on the whole, I guess I won't tell you a thing about it."
"If you aren't the very meanest boy I ever knew in my life," decided
Margaret whole-heartedly. "To work our curiosity all up this way and
then not to tell us a thing."
"I didn't get the encouragement that the plan deserved."
"Like all great inventors," commented James.
"They all come out on top at the end, I notice," retorted Roger. "You
just watch me about next April when the buds begin to swell."
"Heads begin to swell at any time of year, apparently."
"Especially bad cases begin in the autumn--about September."
"Oh, you wait, just wait," threatened Roger. "When you haven't an idea
what to do to make the Club really useful for another minute then you'll
recall that I promised you a really big plan. _Then_--"
"If you aren't going to tell us now I think we'd better talk about
something that has some connection with what we're going to do in
September instead of this April Fool thing of yours," said Helen
somewhat sharply.
"Let's not talk about it until Saturday," begged Ethel Blue. "Then we
can all put our minds on it."
"I rise to remark, Madam President," continued James, "that I believe
this Club has a great future before it if it does not get involved in
wildcat schemes--"
"Now listen to that!" exclaimed Roger. "There speaks the canny Scot that
was James's great-grandfather. Cautious old Hancock! Now you really have
got me riled. I vow to you, fellow-clubmen and -women that I won't be
the first to propose this scheme again. You'll have to come to me. And
I'll prophesy that you will come to me about the first of next April."
"Why April?"
"Nothing to do with April Fool, I assure you. But about that time we
shall have worked off all the ideas that we've cooked up to carry us
through the winter and we'll be glad to undertake a service that is a
service--the real thing."
"We're going to do the real thing all the time." Ethel Blue defended her
idea. "But I dare say we'll want to do your thing, too."
"Grandfather's recommendation doesn't seem to count with you young
know-it-alls."
"Grandfather's recommendation is the only reason why our remarks weren't
more severe," retorted Ethel Brown.
"Each of us must bring in a list next Saturday," said Helen, as they all
walked to the corner to see that the Hancocks took the car safely.
"And I believe that every one will be a perfectly good plan," said Roger
magnanimously.
"There won't be one that will require a house to hold it anyway,"
retorted Margaret.