PREVENTION
THE Mortons were gathered about the fire in the half hour of the day
which they especially enjoyed. Mrs. Morton made a point of being at home
herself for this time, and she liked to have all the young people meet
her in the dusk and tell her of the day's work and play. It was a time
when every one was glad to rest for a few minutes after dressing for
dinner.
"I'm sure to get my hair mussed up if I do anything but talk to Mother
after I brush it for dinner," Roger was in the habit of explaining, "so
it suits me just to stare at the fire."
He was sitting now on the floor beside her with his head leaning against
the arm of her chair. Dicky was occupying the Morris chair with her, and
the three girls were in comfortable positions, the Ethels on the sofa
and Helen knitting a scarf as she sat on a footstool before the blaze.
"You're not trying your eyes knitting in this imperfect light?" asked
her mother.
"This is plain sailing, Mother. I can rush along on this straight piece
almost as fast as Mrs. Hindenburg, and I don't have to look on at all
unless a horrid fear seizes me that I've skipped a stitch."
"Which I hope you haven't done."
"Never really but there have been several false alarms."
"How is Fraulein?"
"All right, I guess."
"Did you see her to-day?"
"We had German compo to-day. I didn't do much with it."
"Why not?"
"It didn't seem to go off well. I don't know why. Perhaps I didn't try
as hard as usual."
"Did it disturb Fraulein?"
"Did what disturb Fraulein?"
"That you didn't do your lesson well."
"Disturb Fraulein? I don't know. Why should it disturb her? I should
think I was the one to be disturbed."
"Were you?"
"Was I disturbed? Well, no, Mother, to tell the truth I didn't care
much. That old German is so hard and the words all break up so
foolishly--somehow it didn't seem very important to me this morning. And
Fanny Shrewsbury said something awfully funny about it under her breath
and we got laughing and--no, I wasn't especially disturbed."
"Although you had a poor lesson and didn't try to make up for it by
paying strict attention in the class!"
"Why, Mother, I, er--"
Helen stopped knitting.
"You think I'm taking too seriously a poor lesson that wasn't very bad,
after all? Possibly I am, but I've been noticing that all of you are
more careless lately than I want my girls and boys to be."
Mrs. Morton stroked Roger's hair and looked around at the handsome young
faces illuminated by the firelight.
"You mean us, too?" cried the Ethels, sitting up straight upon the sofa.
"You, too."
"We haven't meant to be careless, Mother," said Roger soberly. His
mother's good opinion was something he was proud of keeping and she was
so fair in her judgments that he felt that he must meet any accusations
like the present in the honest spirit in which they were made.
"Do you want to know what I think is the trouble with all of you?"
Every one of them cried out for information, even Dicky, whose "Yeth"
rang out above the others.
"If you ask for my candid opinion," responded Mrs. Morton, "I think you
are giving so much time and attention to the work of the U. S. C. that
you aren't paying proper attention to the small matters of every day
life that we must all meet."
"Oh, but, Mother, you approve of the U. S. C."
"Certainly I approve of it. I think it is fine in every way; but I don't
believe in your becoming so absorbed in it that you forget your daily
duties. Aunt Louise had to telephone to Roger to go over and start her
furnace for her yesterday when the sharp snap came, and the Ethels have
been rushing off in the morning without doing the small things to help
Mary that are a part of their day's work."
"Oh, Mother, they're such little things! She can do them easily once in
a while."
"Any one of your morning tasks is a small matter, but when none of them
are done they mount up to a good deal for Mary. If there were some real
necessity for making an extra bed Mary would do it without complaining,
but when, as happened yesterday morning, neither of you Ethels made
your bed, and Roger left towels thrown all over his floor, and not one
of Helen's bureau drawers was shut tight, and Dicky upset a box of beads
and went off to kindergarten without picking them up--don't you see that
what meant but a few minutes' work for each one of you meant an hour's
work for one person?"
"I'll bet Mary didn't mind," growled Roger.
"Mary is too loyal to say anything, but if your present careless habits
should continue we should have to have an extra maid to wait on you, and
you know very well that that is impossible."
"I'm sorry, Mother," said Roger penitently. "I'm sorry about the towels
and about Aunt Louise and I'm sorry I growled. You're right, of course."
"I rather guess we've been led astray by being so successful with our
team work in the club," said Helen thoughtfully. "We've found out that
we can do all sorts of things well if we pull together and we've been
forgetting to apply co-operation at home."
"Exactly," agreed Mrs. Morton. "And you've been so absorbed in the needs
of people several thousand miles away that you overlook the needs of
people beside you. What you've been doing to Mary is unkind; what Helen
did to Fraulein this morning was unkind."
"Oh, Mother! I wouldn't be unkind to Fraulein for the world."
"I don't believe you would if you thought about it. She certainly is in
such sore trouble that she needs all the consideration that her scholars
can give her, yet you must have annoyed her greatly this morning."
"I'm afraid Fraulein's used to our not knowing our lessons very well,"
observed Roger.
"I'm sorry to hear that, but if you know you aren't doing as well as you
ought to with your lessons that is the best reason in the world for you
to pay the strictest attention while you are in class. Yet Helen says
that she and Fanny Shrewsbury were laughing. I'm afraid Fraulein isn't
feeling especially content with her work this afternoon."
"Mother, you make me feel like a hound dog," cried Helen. "And I've been
talking as if I were so sorry for Fraulein!"
"You are sorry for her as the heroine of a romance, because her
betrothed is in the army and she doesn't know where he is or whether he
is alive. It sounds like a story in a book. But when you think what that
would mean if it were you that had to endure the suffering it wouldn't
seem romantic. Suppose Father were fighting in Mexico and we hadn't
heard from him for a month--do you think you could throw off your
anxiety for a minute? Don't you think you'd have to be careful every
instant in school to control yourself? Don't you think it would be
pretty hard if some one in school constantly did things that irritated
you--didn't know her lessons and then laughed and giggled all through
the recitation hour?"
Helen's and Roger's heads were bent.
"Imagine," Mrs. Morton went on, "how you would feel every day when you
came home, wondering all the way whether a letter had come; wondering
whether, if one _had_ come, it would be from Father or from some one
else saying that Father was--wounded."
"Oh, Mother, I can't--" Helen was almost crying.
"You can't bear to think of it; yet--"
"Yet Fraulein was just so anxious and--"
"And we made things worse for her!"
"I know you didn't think--"
"We ought to think. I've excused myself all my life by saying 'I didn't
think.' I ought to think."
"'I didn't think' _explains_, but it doesn't _excuse_."
"Nothing excuses meanness."
"That's true."
"And it's almost as mean not to see when people are in trouble as it is
to see it and not to care."
"I'm glad you're teaching us to be observant, Aunt Marion," said Ethel
Blue quietly. "I used to think it was sort of _distinguished_ to be
absent-minded and not to pay attention to people, but now I think it's
just _stupidity_."
"Mother," said Roger, sitting up straight, "I've been a beast. Poor
Fraulein is worrying herself to pieces every minute of the day and I
never thought anything about it. And I let Aunt Louise freeze yesterday
morning and Dorothy had to go to school before the house was warmed up
and she had a cold to-day because she got chilled. I see your point, and
I'm a reformed pirate from this minute!"
Roger rose and squared his shoulders and walked about the room.
"When you think it out it's little things that are hard to manage all
the time," he went on thoughtfully. "Here are these little things that
we've been pestering Mary about, and when we kids squabble it's almost
always about some trifle."
"A pin prick is often more trying than a severe wound," agreed his
mother. "You brace yourself to bear a real hurt, but it doesn't seem
worth while for a trifle and so you whine about it before you think. If
Father and Uncle Richard really were in action all of us would do our
best to be brave about it and to bear our trouble uncomplainingly--"
"The way Fraulein does," murmured Helen.
"That's the way when you have a sickness," said Ethel Brown. "When I had
the measles you and Mary said I didn't make much fuss, but every time I
catch cold I'm afraid all of you hear about it."
"We do," agreed Roger cheerfully.
"I should say, then," remarked Mrs. Morton as Mary appeared at the door
to announce dinner, "that this club should bear in mind that it is to
serve not only those at a distance but those near home, and not only to
serve people in deepest trouble but to serve by preventing suffering."
"I get you, Mother dear," said Roger, taking his father's seat.
"Prevention is a great modern principle that we don't think enough
about," said Mrs. Morton.
"I know what you mean--fire prevention," exclaimed Ethel Blue. "Tom
Watkins was telling us the other day about the Fire Prevention parade
they had in New York. There were a lot of engines and hose wagons and
ladder wagons and they were all covered with cards telling how much
wiser it was to prevent fire than to let it start and then try to put it
out."
"Della saw the parade," said Ethel Brown. "She told me there were signs
that said 'It's cheaper to put a sprinkler in your factory than to
rebuild the factory'; and 'One cigarette in a factory may cost
thousands of dollars in repairs.'"
"The doctors have been working to prevent disease," said Roger. "James
has often told me what his father is doing to teach people how to avoid
being sick."
"All these clean-up campaigns are really for the prevention of illness
as much as the making of cleanliness," said Mrs. Morton.
"Everything of that sort educates people, and we can apply the same
methods to our own lives," advised Mrs. Morton. "Why can't we have a
household campaign to prevent giving Mary unnecessary work and to avoid
irritating each other?"
"All that can be worked in as part of the duties of the Service Club,"
said Ethel Blue.
"Certainly it can. What's the matter, Ethel Brown?"
Ethel Brown was on the point of tears.
"One of the girls at school gave me an order for cookies the other day,"
she said, "and I didn't do them because we went over to the Hancocks'
that afternoon."
"You got your own punishment there," remarked Roger. "If you didn't fill
the order you didn't get any pay."
"That wasn't all. She was going to take them to a cousin of hers who was
just getting over the mumps. She wanted to surprise her. She was awfully
mad because I didn't make them. She said she had depended on them and
she didn't have anything to take to her cousin."
"There you see it," exclaimed Mrs. Morton. "It didn't seem much to Ethel
Brown not to make two or three dozen cookies, but in the first place
she broke her promise, and in the next place she caused real unhappiness
to a girl who was depending on them to give pleasure to her sick
cousin."
"You've given us a shake-up we won't forget soon, Mother," remarked
Roger. "There's one duty I haven't done this week that you haven't
mentioned, but I'm pretty sure you know it so I might as well bring it
into the light myself and say I'm sorry."
"What is it?" laughed his mother.
"I haven't been over to see Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson for ten
days."
"They'll be sorry."
"I was relying on one of the girls going."
"We haven't been," confessed the Ethels.
"Nor I," admitted Helen.
Mrs. Morton looked serious.
"We love to go there," said Ethel Brown, "but we've been so busy."
"Too busy to be kind to the people near at hand, eh?"
The young people looked ruefully at one another.
"Anyway, watch me be attentive to Fraulein," promised Helen.
She was. She and Roger made a point of giving her as little trouble as
possible; and of paying her unobtrusive attentions. Roger carried home
for her a huge bundle of exercises; the Ethels left some chestnuts at
her door when they came back from a hunt on the hillside, and even Dicky
wove her a mat at kindergarten of red and white and black paper--the
German colors.
The Mortons were all attention to James, too. Every day they remembered
to call him up on the telephone and ask him how his box-making was
coming on. He had a telephone extension on the table at his elbow and
these daily talks cheered him greatly. The others were leaving the
making of most of the pasted articles to him, and they were going on
with the manufacture of baskets and leather and brass and copper
articles and of odds and ends of various kinds.
"Perhaps I'll be able to get up to Dorothy's next Saturday," James
phoned to Roger one day, "if Mrs. Smith wouldn't mind the Club meeting
downstairs. I suppose the Pater wouldn't let me try to climb to the
attic yet."
Mrs. Smith was delighted to make the change for James's benefit, but
before the day came he called up Roger one afternoon in great
excitement.
"When did you say those church movies were?" he asked.
"To-morrow evening."
"Father says he'll take me over if he doesn't have a hurry call at the
last minute."
Roger gave a whoop that resounded along the wire.
"You'll find the whole Club drawn up at the door of the schoolhouse to
meet you," he cried. "The Watkinses are coming out from New York. Will
Margaret come with you?"
"She and Mother will go over in the trolley."
As Roger had promised, the Club was drawn up in double ranks before the
door when Doctor Hancock stopped his machine close to the step. Roger
and Tom ran down to make a chair on which to carry James inside, and
Helen and Dorothy were ready with the wheel-chair belonging to the old
lady at the Home who had been glad to lend it for the evening to the boy
whose acquaintance she had made at the Club entertainment.
James was rather embarrassed at being so conspicuous, but all his
Rosemont acquaintances came to speak to him and he was quite the hero of
the occasion.
The moving pictures were an innovation in Rosemont. There had been
various picture shows in empty stores in the town and they had not all
been of a character approved by the parents of the school children who
went to them in great numbers. The rooms were dark and there was danger
of fire and the pictures themselves were not always suitable for young
people to see or agreeable for their elders. The result of a conference
among some of the townspeople who had the interests of the place at
heart was this entertainment which was the first of a series to be given
in the school hall on Friday evenings all through the winter. The films
were chosen by a sub-committee and it was hoped that they would be so
liked that the poor places down town would find it unprofitable to
continue.
The program was pleasantly varied. The story of a country boy who went
to New York to make his fortune and who found out that, as in the
Oriental story, his fortune lay buried in his own dooryard--in this case
in the printing office of his own town--was the opener.
That was followed by a remarkable film showing the habits of swallows
and by another whereon some of the flowers of Burbank's garden waved
softly in the California breeze.
A dramatization of Daudet's famous story called "The Last Class" brought
tears to the eyes of the onlookers whose thoughts were much across the
Atlantic.
It was a simple, touching tale, and it served appropriately as the
forerunner of the war pictures that had just been sent to America by
photographers in Germany and France and Belgium.
The first showed troops leaving Berlin, flags flying, bands playing,
while the crowds along the street waved a cheerful parting, though once
in a while a woman bent her head behind her neighbor's shoulder to hide
her tears.
There were scenes in Belgium--houses shattered by the bombs of airmen,
huge holes dug by exploding shells; wounded soldiers making their way
toward the hospitals, those with bandaged heads and arms helping those
whose staggering feet could hardly carry them.
It was a serious crowd that followed every movement that passed on the
screen before their eyes. The silence was deep.
Then came a hospital scene. Rows upon rows of beds ran from the front of
the picture almost out of sight. Down the space between them came the
doctors, instruments in hand, and behind them the nurses, the red
crosses gleaming on their arm bands.
A stir went through the onlookers.
"It looks like her."
"I believe it is."
"Don't you think so? The one on the right?"
"It is--it's Mademoiselle Millerand!" cried Roger clearly.
The operator, hearing the noise in front of his booth, and all
unconscious that he was showing a friend to these townspeople where the
pretty young French teacher had lived for two years, almost stopped
turning his machine. So slowly it went that there was no doubt among any
who had known her. She followed the physician to the bed nearest the
front. There they stopped and the doctor turned to Mademoiselle and
asked some question. She was ready with bandages. An orderly slipped his
arm under the soldier's pillow and raised his head. His eyes were closed
and his face was deathly white. The doctor shook his head. Evidently he
would not attempt an operation upon so ill a man. He signed to the
attendant to lay the man down and as he did so the people in Rosemont,
far, far away from the Belgian hospital, heard a piercing shriek.
"_Mein Verlobt!_ My betrothed!" screamed Fraulein Hindenburg.
"That's Schuler."
"Don't you recognize Schuler?"
"No wonder poor Fraulein screamed!"
Kind hands were helping Fraulein and her mother from the hall. Doctor
Hancock went out with them to give a restorative to the young woman and
to take them home in his car.
"Didn't he die at that very moment, Herr Doctor?" whispered Fraulein,
and the doctor was obliged to confess that it seemed so.
"But we can't be sure," he insisted.
Fraulein's agitation put an end to the entertainment for that evening.
Indeed, the film was almost exhausted when the bitter sight came to her.
The people filed out seriously.
"If that poor girl has been in doubt about her betrothed, now she
knows," one said to another.
"Do you think he really died?" James asked his father as they were
driving home.
"I'm afraid he did, son. But there is just a chance that he didn't
because the film changed just there to another scene so you couldn't
tell."
"That might have been because they didn't want to show a death scene."
"I'm afraid it was."