Ethel Morton at Rose House by Mabell S. C. Smith

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When all was well again Miss Merriam redoubled her efforts to teach the
women something of proper care of their children and themselves, and,
with the help of Dr. Watkins's knowledge of languages, she began to
hope that she was making some progress. Mrs. Tsanoff and Mrs.
Peterson, who had little babies, were taught to modify milk for them,
the dangers of giving small children foods unsuited to their age was
talked about now with the recent experience to point the moral; and
ways of keeping well in hot weather were explained and listened to with
interest.

Substitutes for meat were discussed earnestly, chiefly on account of
the high cost of living but also because meat was declared to be far
too heating for warm weather use. Each of the women knew of some dish
which took the place of meat and she was glad to tell the others about
it. Mrs. Paterno knew very well that cheese is one of the best
substitutes for meat that there is.

"Americans eat cheesa after meata; then sick," she declared with truth.
Her receipt for a risotto Moya wrote down in the blank book in which
she was collecting recipes and Mrs. Paterno beamed when it came onto
the table.

Chiefly for the purpose of giving the little Italian woman a change of
thought, the U. S. C. made a point of providing Rose House with some
sort of entertainment every few days. Once they introduced the inmates
to an American hayride, and the four women, with Moya and the older
children, screamed with delight as they found themselves moving slowly
along on a real load of hay--for Grandfather Emerson declared that that
was the only kind of hayride worth having.

Again they all stowed themselves away in the automobile and went to a
pond ten miles away for a day's picnic. That proved not to be a
success, for everybody was so tired all the next day that there was a
nearer approach to disagreement among them than ever happened before.
Mrs. Schuler made up her mind that home--meaning Rose House--was the
best place for them and that amusements must be found at home and not
afield.

CHAPTER IX

A NEW KIND OF GRASS SEED

"Your grand-father told me once about a field he had that was filled
with daisies," said Ethel Blue. "It looked awfully pretty, but it
spoiled the field for a pasture; the cows wouldn't touch them."

"I remember that field. We used to make daisy chains and trim Mother's
room with them," said Ethel Brown.

"Mr. Emerson tried ploughing up the field and he had men working over
it for two seasons, but on the third, up they grew again as gay as you
please. They acted as if he had just been stirring up the soil so they
would grow better than ever."

"Poor Grandfather; he had a hard time with that field."

"He said he really needed it for a pasture, so he made up his mind that
if he couldn't root out the bad plants, he'd crowd them out. So he
bought some seed of a kind of grass that has large, strong roots, and
he sowed it in the field. As soon as it began to grow he could see
that there certainly were not so many daisies there. He kept on
another year and the cows began to look over the fence as if they'd
like to get in. The third year there were so few daisies that they
didn't count."

"I remember all that," said Ethel Brown, "but what does it have to do
with Mrs. Paterno?"

"Why, if we--or Edward--could make her get a grip on herself and
control herself that would be like Mr. Emerson's digging up the
daisies. It would be hard work and an awfully slow process. But if we
also could fill her mind with thoughts about working for her children
and trying to make other people happy and with making embroidery which
she loves to do, why wouldn't it help? These new things she's thinking
about would be like the strong, new grass seed that didn't give the
weeds a chance to grow."

Dorothy stared seriously at Ethel Blue.

"She does perfectly beautiful embroidery," she said slowly, as she
tried to think out a way to put Ethel Blue's suggestion into effect.
"Do you suppose she'd be willing to teach us how to do it? That
beautiful Italian cut work, you know. If we should call ourselves a
class and ask her to teach us it might give her something quite new to
think about."

"I'd like to learn, too," agreed Ethel Blue. "I heard Mother say once
that there was a school in New York for Italian lace work. Let's get
Delia to find out about it, and when Mrs. Paterno grows stronger and
goes back to the city she might go there. They have a shop uptown
where they sell the pupils' work. The class here and the prospect of
having regular employment when she went back--"

"Work she likes."

"What are you youngsters plotting?" asked the cheerful voice of
Grandfather Emerson, who came around the big oak from the grass grown
lane so quietly that they did not hear him coming.

They told him their plan, and he listened intently.

"The poor little woman has had such a shock that it will be a long time
before she can control herself, I'm afraid," he responded
sympathetically, "but I believe you've hit on the right way."

"Then we'll get Edward Watkins to ask her whether she'll be willing to
teach a class, and we'll all join it."

"The other women might like to learn, too."

"Perhaps they could teach. Bulgarian embroidery has been fashionable
lately, you know, and the peasant women do it."

"Your grandmother and I went through a Peasant's Bazar when we were in
Petrograd and there were mounds of embroidery there that the peasant
women had made."

"The Swedes do beautiful work. Why don't we have a class for
international embroidery?" laughed Dorothy. "I think Mother would like
to learn the Russian; she's crazy about Russian music and everything
Russian."

"We'll ask Mother and Grandmother, too, and perhaps the Miss Clarks
would come and the women could charge a fee and make a little money
teaching us and be amused themselves."

"I dare say it will do the others good as well as the little Italian.
You've hit on something that will benefit all of them while you were
trying to help Mrs. Paterno," surmised Mr. Emerson. "What I came over
here this morning to see you about was this," he went on in a
business-like tone that made them look at him attentively.
"Grandmother and I think that Mrs. Paterno has been a trifle too
exciting for you young people the last few days. We think you need a
change of thought as well as that young woman herself."

They all sat and waited for what was coming, quite unable to guess what
proposition he was going to make.

"Helen and Roger are somewhat older and stand such upheavals a little
better than you girls, so my plan doesn't include them."

"Just us three?" asked Ethel Brown.

"Just you three. Here's my scheme; see if you like it. I have to go
over to Boston to-morrow on a matter of business and it occurred to me
that it would be a pleasant sail on the Sound and that you'd be
interested in seeing the city--"

"O--o!" gasped Dorothy; "Cambridge and Longfellow's house."

"Concord and Lexington!" cried Ethel Brown.

"The Art Museum!" murmured Ethel Blue.

"And Bunker Hill Monument, and, of course, the Navy Yard especially for
this daughter of a sailor," and he nodded gayly at his granddaughter.

"Grandmother will go, to take you around when I have to attend to my
business, and we can stay a day or two and come back fresh to attend to
Mrs. Paterno's affairs. How does it strike you?"

Without any preliminary conference, the three girls flung their arms
around his neck and hugged him heartily.

"Have you talked about it with Mother and Aunt Louise?" asked Ethel
Brown.

"I'm armed with their permission."

"I guess we were all worrying about Mrs. Paterno," admitted Ethel Blue.
"This will be the strong grass seed that will clear up our minds so
that we can help her better after we come back."

"I think you're the most magnificent Grandfather that ever was born!"
exclaimed Ethel Brown, standing back and gazing admiringly at her
ancestor.

"Thank you," returned Mr. Emerson, bowing low, his hand on his heart,
"I am quite overcome by such a wholesale tribute!"

"Had we better tell Mrs. Schuler about the embroidery class plan?"
asked Dorothy.

"Run up to Rose House now and explain it to her and ask her to talk to
the women about it while you are gone, and then when you get back
she'll have it all ready to start," Mr. Emerson suggested.

The next twenty-four hours were full of excitement. Each of the girls
had only a small handbag to pack, but the selection of what should go
into each bag seemed a matter of infinite importance. The Ethels
filled their bags twice before they were satisfied that they had not
left out anything that would be wanted, and Dorothy confessed that she
had first put in too much and then had gone to the other extreme, and
that it had not been until after she had had a consultation with her
mother that she had decided on just the number and kind of garments
that she would need for a two-day trip to the Hub of the Universe.

"Why is it called that?" she asked of Ethel Brown.

"I asked Mother and she said that people from New York and other cities
used to say that Bostonians thought that their town was the centre of
civilization. So they guyed it by calling it the 'Hub'."

Roger and Helen went into New York with the travellers and Delia and
Margaret were on the pier to see the steamer leave.

It was a glorious afternoon and the boat slipped around the end of the
Battery while the westering sun was still shining brilliantly on the
water, touching it with sparkles on the tip of each tiny wave. The
Statue of Liberty, with the sun behind it, towered darkly against the
gold. The huge buildings of the lower city stretched skywards, the new
Equitable, the latest addition to the mammoth group, shutting off
almost entirely the view of the Singer Tower from the harbor, just as
the Woolworth Tower hides it from observers on the north.

Between them Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson were able to point out
nearly all of the sights of the East River--several parks and
playgrounds, Bellevue Hospital, the Vanderbilt model tenements for
people threatened with tuberculosis, the Junior League Hotel for
self-supporting women, the old dwelling where Dorothy's friend, the
"box furniture lady," had established a school to teach the folk of the
neighborhood how to use tools for the advantage of their
house-furnishings.

The boat was one of those which steams around Cape Cod instead of
stopping at Fall River, Rhode Island, and sending its passengers to
Boston by train. Early morning found them all on deck watching the
waters of Massachusetts Bay and trying to place on a map that Mr.
Emerson produced from his pocket the towns whose church spires they
could see pointing skyward far off on their left. Twin lighthouses
they decided, marked Gurnet Point, the entrance to Plymouth Bay, and
they strained their eyes to see the town that was the oldest settlement
in Massachusetts, and imagined they were watching the bulky little
Mayflower making her way landward between the headlands.

Mr. Emerson convoyed his party to a hotel on Copley Square and left
them there while he went out at once to meet his business friends.

"How far away Rosemont seems, and poor Mrs. Paterno with her troubles,"
she said an hour later as they stood before Sargent's panel of the
Prophets in the Public Library.

CHAPTER X

TROLLEYING

As for the Art Museum, they wandered delightedly from one room to
another, but went away with a sensation of having seen too much that
was almost as uncomfortable as that of having eaten too much.

"I should like to come here or to go to the Metropolitan in New York
with some one who could tell me about every picture or every object in
just one room and stay there for an hour and then go away and think
about it," said Ethel Blue.

"We will do that some day at the Metropolitan," said Mrs. Emerson. "If
the Club would like to go in a body some day we can get one of the
guides who do just what you describe. We can tell her the sort of
thing we want to see--classical statuary or English artists or the
Morgan collection--and have it all shown to us from the standpoint of
the expert critic. Or we can put ourselves in the hands of the guide
and say that we'd like to see the ten exhibits that the Museum looks
upon as the choicest."

"Either way would be wonderful!" beamed Ethel Blue, and the three girls
promised themselves the delight of reporting Mrs. Emerson's offer to
the Club at its next meeting.

The homeward trip was made by a route quite different from the one by
which the party reached Boston. Grandfather proposed it at breakfast
on the morning of the day on which they had intended to leave in the
afternoon.

"Are you people very keen on this drive through the Park System
to-day?" he asked.

The girls did not know what to say, but Mrs. Emerson scented a new idea
and replied "not if you have something to suggest that we'd like
better."

"How would you like to trolley back to New York?"

"Trolley back to New York!" repeated the girls with little screeches of
joy. "All the way by trolley? How long will it take? I never heard
of anything so delightful in all my life!"

After such a quick and satisfactory response Mr. Emerson did not need
to lay his plan before them in any further detail.

"I see you're 'game,' as Roger would say, for anything, so we'll go
that way if Mother agrees."

Mrs. Emerson did agree and even went so far as to say that she had
wanted to do that very thing for a long time.

"It's lucky Grandfather insisted that we shouldn't bring anything but
small handbags," said Ethel Brown. "These little things we have won't
be any trouble at all, no matter how many times we have to change."

They started in heavy inter-urban cars which rode as solidly as
railroad cars and enabled them to be but very little tired at the end
of the first "leg" of the journey. The wide windows permitted views of
the country and the girls ran from one side to the other of the closed
cars, so that they should not miss anything of interest, and sat on the
front seat of the open cars into which they changed later, so that they
might have no one in front of them to obstruct their view.

They went out of the city straight westward through Brookline, through
Chestnut Hill, where is one of the reservoirs from which the city is
supplied; past Wellesley, where they saw the college buildings rising
among the trees on the left.

The party reached Springfield at dusk and had time to take a walk after
dinner. They admired the elm-bordered streets and the comfortable
houses, and they thought the Arsenal looked extremely peaceful outside
in spite of its murderous activities within.

It was a deep sleep that visited them all that night. A whole day in
the open air with the gentle but continuous exercise provided by the
car made them unconscious of their surroundings almost as soon as they
touched their pillows.

CHAPTER XI

THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY

With a long and varied day ahead of them they were delighted to find
the morning clear when they awoke.

"There are almost as many points of interest in the Connecticut River
Valley as there are on the Concord and Lexington road," Mr. Emerson
told the girls. "We're going first to Holyoke, which is one of the
largest paper manufacturing towns in the world. I have a little
business to do there and while I am seeing my man you people can take a
little walk. Be sure you notice the big dam. It's a thousand feet
long. The Holyoke water power is very unusual."

Perhaps because they were not experts on water power they were not
greatly impressed by the floods of the Connecticut River diverted into
deep canals and swimming along so smoothly as to impart but little idea
of their strength. Only the whir of the great mills gave evidence that
iron and steel were being moved by it.

"How Roger would enjoy this!" cried Ethel Brown, and "Wouldn't Helen be
just crazy over all the history of this region?" added Ethel Blue,
while Dorothy, who had travelled much but never without her mother,
silently wished that she were there to enjoy it all.

"There's another girl's college of note," and Mrs. Emerson pointed out
Mt. Holyoke at South Hadley, northeast of Mt Tom.

"And we're going to see Smith College to-day! I feel as if I wanted to
go to all of them!" cried Ethel Blue.

"You might take a year at each and find out which was best suited to
your temperament," laughed Mrs. Emerson.

From the foot of the mountain they went northward again to Northampton.

"Here's where I ought to go if names count for anything," decided
Dorothy.

"If all the girls named Smith who go to college anywhere should go here
because of the name there wouldn't be room for any other students,"
said Mr. Emerson jokingly.

"They say," returned Dorothy on the defensive, "that in the beginning
all the people in the world were named Smith and it was only those who
misbehaved who had their names changed."

"You can at least pride yourself on their being an industrious lot.
Think of all their crafts--they were armorers and goldsmiths, and
silversmiths and blacksmiths."

CHAPTER XII

THE BERKSHIRES AND BENNINGTON

Greenfield, where the party spent the night, they found to be a
pleasant old town with the wide, tree-bordered streets to which they
were growing accustomed in this trolleying pilgrimage. A quiet hotel
sheltered them and they slept soundly, their dreams filled with
memories of colleges and rose gardens and Indians in romantic
confusion. The next day they started westward.

Pittsfield they found to be a large town whose old houses surrounded by
ancient trees gave a feeling of solidity and comfort.

"Longfellow wrote 'The Old Clock on the Stairs' here," said Mr. Emerson
pointing out the Appleton house. "The first stanza describes more than
one of the old mansions," and he recited:--

"Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,--
'Forever--never!
Never--forever!'"

"I remember that poem, but I never liked it much;" acknowledged
Dorothy; "it's too gloomy."

"It is rather solemn," admitted Mr. Emerson. "You'll be interested to
know that merry Dr. Holmes used to come to Pittsfield in the summer.
There are many associations with him in the town."

"I'm sure he wrote gayer poems than 'The Old Clock on the Stairs' when
he was here."

"Is this a very old town?" Ethel Blue asked.

"It was settled in 1743. Does that seem old to you?"

[Illustration: "It was settled in 1743"]

"1743," Ethel repeated, doing some subtraction by the aid of her
fingers, for arithmetic was not her strong point. "A hundred and
eighty-seven years," she decided after reflection. "Yes, that seems
pretty old to me. It's a lot older than Rosemont but over a hundred
years younger than Plymouth or Boston."

"A sort of middle age," Mr. Emerson summed up her decision with a smile.

After luncheon at the hotel an early afternoon car sped on with them to
a station whence they took an automobile for a drive through
Stockbridge and Lenox with their handsome estates and lovely views.

The trolley whizzed them back over the same route to North Adams and
westward to Williamstown.

"One of my brothers--your great-uncle James, Ethel Brown--went to
Williams College," said Mr. Emerson, "and I shall be glad to spend the
night here and see the town and the buildings I heard him talk so much
about."

"Why don't we get out, then?"

"We're going now to Bennington, Vermont."

"Vermont! Into another state!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.

"When we come back we'll leave the car here."

"Are those the Green Mountains?" asked Dorothy as the trolley ran into
a smoother country than they had been in while traveling in the
Berkshires, but one which showed a background of long wooded ranges
rising length after length against the sky.

"Those are the Green Mountains; and this is the 'Green Mountain State,'
and the men who fought in the Revolution under Ethan Allen were the
'Green Mountain Boys'."

"But, ranged in serried order, attent on sterner noise,
Stood stalwart Ethan Allen and his 'Green Mountain Boys'
Two hundred patriots listening as with the ears of one,
To the echo of the muskets that blazed at Lexington!"

quoted Mrs. Emerson. "They were bound northward to the British fort at
Ticonderoga."

"Did they get there?"

"They took the British completely by surprise. That was in May, 1775.
It was in August, two years later that the battle of Bennington took
place."

"We'd better agree to have dinner or supper here if we don't want to
get back to Williamstown after all the food in the place has been eaten
by those hungry college boys," suggested Mrs. Emerson.

Mr. Emerson took a hasty glance at the setting sun.

"You never spoke a truer word, my dear," applauded her husband, "though
this is vacation and the boys won't be there! Still, I'm as hungry as
a bear. Let's have our evening meal, whatever it proves to be, in
Bennington."

They were all hungry enough to think the plan one of the best that
their leader had offered for some time, so it was only after what
turned out to be supper that they went back to Williamstown.

In the moonlight the towers of the college buildings glimmered
mysteriously through the trees, and the girls went to bed happy in the
promise of what the morning was going to bring them.

Ethel Brown was sorry that there were no students to be seen on the
grounds when they wandered about the next morning, for she would have
liked to see what sort of boys they were, and, if she liked their
looks, have suggested to Tom or James that they come here to college
amid such lovely surroundings. She liked it better than Amherst but
Ethel Blue preferred that compact little village, and Dorothy clung to
her deep-seated affection for Cambridge.

"After all, our Club boys have their plans all made so we don't need to
get excited over these colleges," decided Ethel Brown; "and I'm glad
they're all going to different ones because when they graduate we'll
have invitations to three separate class-days and other festivities."

"What a perfectly beautiful tower," exclaimed Dorothy.

"It's the chapel. That light-colored stone is superb, isn't it!"

"Some of these other buildings look as old as some of the oldy-old
Harvard ones."

"They can't be anywhere near as old. This college wasn't founded until
1793."

"That's old enough to give it a settled-down air in spite of these
handsome new affairs. There must be lovely walks about here."

"Hills almost as big as mountains to climb. But the boys don't have
any girls to call on the way the Amherst boys do, with the Smith girls
and the Mt. Holyoke girls just a little ride away."

"Perhaps they'd rather have mountains," remarked Ethel Brown wisely.

As the college was not in session Mr. Emerson was not able to see any
of the records that he had hoped to look over to search for his
brother's name, and as almost all of the professors were out of town,
he could not question any of the older men of the place as to their
recollection of him. He was quite willing, therefore, to take a
comparatively early train for Albany.

They arrived early enough to go over the Capitol, seated at the head of
a broad but precipitous street. It was very unlike the stern
simplicity of the Massachusetts State House, but they amused themselves
by saying that at least the two buildings had one part of their
decoration in common. In Albany the tops of the columns were carved
with fruits and flowers, all to be found in the United States. In
Boston a local product, the codfish, held a position of honor over the
desk of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

"All made in the U. S. A.," laughed Dorothy, quoting a slogan of the
wartime, intended to help home industries.

They wanted to see the Cathedral and St. Agnes' School as well as the
State Board of Education Building, and after they had hunted them out
with the help of a map of the city, and had taken a trolley ride into
the suburbs, and had eaten a hearty dinner they were glad to go to bed
early so as to be up in time to catch the Day Boat for New York.

"What splendid weather we've had," exclaimed Mrs. Emerson as they took
their places on the broad deck of the handsome craft. It was not the
same one that had taken them to West Point at the end of May. This one
was named after Hendrik Hudson, the explorer of the river. They found
it to be quite as comfortable as the other, and the day went fast as
they swept down the stream with the current to aid them.

Occasionally broad reaches of the river grew narrower and wider again
as the soil had proven soft or more resistant and the water had spread
or had cut out a deep channel. Off to the west the Catskills loomed
against the sky, more varied than the Green Mountains and more rugged.

"More beautiful, too, I think," decided Ethel Blue. "I like their
roughness."

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