Mabell S. C. Smith

“ They had grown up with the belief that armament was necessary to preserve peace. Great men and good had said so. "If we are prepared for war," they declared, "other nations will be afraid to fight us." Captain and Lieutenant Morton had agreed with them, as was natural for men of their profession. They did not believe in aggression but in being ready for defense should they be attacked.
Now it seemed to Roger and Helen as they read of the sufferings of invaded France and the distress of trampled Belgium that no country had the right to benefit by results obtained through such cruel means. ”

“ There was a great clapping when the curtain fell, but the managers had decided that there should be no encores, so the curtain merely rose once upon a bowing, smiling group and then fell with a decision that was understood to be final.
"Whatever we do wrong, the thing we must do right," Helen had insisted when she was drilling her performers, "is to have promptness in putting on our 'acts.'"
"That's so," agreed Tom, "there's nothing an audience hates more than to wait everlastingly between 'turns' while whispering and giggling goes on behind the scenes." ”

“ THE RED CROSS NURSE SETS SAIL
THE girls' cheeks were rosy and their hair was tangled by the wind as Helen and the rest of the U. S. C. left the car at West Street and made their way to the French Line Pier. Roger was heading the flock of Mortons, Mrs. Smith was with Dorothy, the Hancocks had come from Glen Point, more for the fun of seeing a sailing than to say "Good-bye" to Mademoiselle, whom they hardly; knew. The Watkinses were accompanied by their elder brother, Edward, a young doctor. ”

“ The idea of needing money, which they did not have, was depressing to the club members who sat around the fire staring into it gloomily.
"The question is, how to get it," went on Tom. [41]
"People might give us money just as well as cloth, I suppose," suggested Margaret.
"I think it would be a thousand times more fun to make the money ourselves," said Ethel Blue.
"The infant's right," cried Tom. "It will be more fun and what's more important still, nobody can boss us because he's given us a five dollar bill."
"I suppose somebody might try," murmured Helen. ”

“ Mary told me her sister bought a chair one month and a table at another time when she and her husband came across bargains," said practical Ethel Brown who had caught up with them. "They've furnished their whole house the way we children have added to our kitchen tins and plates; and then everything would be broken to smash by just one of those shells."
"The people who've been spreading the gospel of peace for years and years needn't be discouraged now, it seems to me," observed Roger thoughtfully, "even if it does look as if all their talk had been for nothing. ”

“ Ethel Blue wondered.
"Grandmother Emerson would be sure to have something in her attic and I shouldn't wonder if she'd be willing to ask the ladies at the Guild if they'd contribute," said Helen.
"Do we want to take things from outside of the Club?" objected Ethel Brown.
"I don't see why not," answered Margaret. "The idea is to get together for the orphans as many presents as possible, no matter where they come from. We're serving the orphans if we work as collectors just as much as if we made the clothes ourselves." ”

“ 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. ”

“ It's all right except for tightening a button or two," and Ethel Brown inscribed, "Coat; tighten buttons" on the slip which Della tied on to one of the incompetent fasteners.
"Good for Mrs. Warburton!" cried Helen.
"What's she done?"
"Here's a great roll of pink flannelette—and blue, too—among her things. We can make dresses and wrappers and sacques and petticoats out of that."
"It always seems just as warm as woolen stuff to me," said Dorothy. "Of course it can't be."
"Cotton is never so warm as wool, but if it's warm enough why ask for anything different. What's in your mind?" ”

“ ALTHOUGH Helen never had been president of any club before, yet she had seen enough of a number of associations in the high school and the church to understand the advantage of striking while the iron of enthusiasm was hot. For that reason she and Roger worked out the districting of Rosemont before they went to bed that night, and the next afternoon Roger went over to Glen Point on his bicycle, and, with James's help, did the same for that town. ”

“ It's a poor present that you have to sit down and mend."
"We certainly won't," agreed Margaret. "I wear my clothes almost down to the skeleton, too, but I know I have some duds that I can make over into dresses for small children. I'm gladder every day that we took that sewing course last summer, Helen."
"Me, too. My dresses—or what's left of them—usually adorn Ethel Brown's graceful frame, but perhaps Mother will let us have for the orphans the clothes that would ordinarily go to Ethel Brown." ”

“ They all laughed for all of them had cut just such figures when they were children.
"Now my application of this simple device," went on Tom in the solemn tones of a professor, "is to make them serve as lamp shades."
"For the orphans?" laughed Roger.
"For the orphans I'm going to cut about a bushel [159] of strips of all colors. Children always like to play with them just so."
"I don't see why those of us who can't draw couldn't cut a child or a dog or some figure from a magazine and lay it on the folded paper and trace around the edges and then cut it," suggested Dorothy. ”

“ Or to give each one of them a foolish present or a pretty one to offset the solid things the grown-ups will give."
"When I was a kid," observed James, "I used to consider it a mean fraud if I had clothing worked off on me as Christmas presents. My parents had to clothe me anyway; why should they put those necessities among my Christmas gifts which were supposed to be extras!"
"There you are again; what people want in this world of pain and woe, ye-ho, he-ho," chanted Roger, "is the things they can go without." [30]
"Has any one thought of anybody else we can benefit?" questioned Helen. ”

“ James reminded them.
"It seems to me," Ethel Brown said slowly, thinking as she spoke, "that we might collect more clothing than we shall be able to find in our own families."
"There are a good many of us," suggested Della.
"There are two Watkinses and two Hancocks and five Mortons and one Smith—that's ten, but if the rest of you are like the Morton family—we wear our clothes pretty nearly down to the bone."
All the Mortons pealed at this and the rest could not help joining in.
"One thing we must not do," declared Helen. "We must not send a single old thing that isn't in perfect order. ”

“ Has any one come across anything that we can do here in Rosemont or in Glen Point or in New York? Anything that will be an appropriate beginning for the United Service Club? We want to do something that would be suitable for the children of our father and uncle who are serving in the Army and Navy trying to keep peace in Mexico, and of a man like Doctor Hancock, who is serving his fellowmen in the slums every day, and of a clergyman who is helping people to do right all the time. ”

“ Every girl in the room agreed with this opinion.
"The rag dolls are the ones I believe the children will like best," said Helen; "that is, if they are at all like American children."
"Isn't it funny—I always liked that terrible looking old rag object of mine better than the prettiest one Father ever sent me," agreed Ethel Blue.
"Every child does," said Margaret. [182]
"Dorothy made some fine ones," complimented Helen.
"Did you draw them or did you get the ones that are already printed on cloth?" asked Della. ”

“ James made a face at the memory of the unexpected caress he had earned unwittingly, but he approved highly of the addition to the picture of the old ladies.
"They're thinking about the orphans as they knit—and there are the orphans," he said, and even his sister Margaret smiled at the approbation with which he looked on a tableau that left nothing to the imagination. ”

“ WITH the evening well under way Helen was beginning to be relieved of the worry that she had not been able to control, but as the time for the silhouette approached the Ethels became distinctly disturbed. Dicky always was an uncertain element. Because he had behaved like an angel child in the tableau with the old ladies was no assurance that as a pussy cat in the silhouettes he would not raise an uproar which would put to shame any backyard feline of their acquaintance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Della did and expressed her memories with closed eyes and out-stretched hands.
"If each one of us makes himself and herself responsible for having his own part perfect and the stunts that he's drilling others in as nearly perfect as he can, then I don't see why we need more than ten days for it."
"Especially as we know all the dances now and the Old Ladies' Home tableau won't take much preparation."
"Have we got enough numbers on the program, Helen?"
"I think we ought to end with a long thing of some sort."
"We'll never pull off the show if you try to stick in a play," growled James. ”

“ Helen flushed over this long speech.
"Rosemont, Glen Point, and New York—a wide [29] field," said Tom dryly. "It seems as if we might find something without much trouble."
"I thought of the orphanage in Glen Point," said Margaret.
"What is there for us to do for the kids there that the grown people don't do?" asked Roger.
"The grown people contribute clothes and food and all the necessaries, but sometimes when I've been there it seemed as if the children didn't have much of any of the little nothings that boys and girls in their own homes have. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Mrs. Smith proved to be delighted to go over [108] with Doctor Watkins the music he had brought and they selected one or two lively bits that would set the mood of the audience for the evening. So Mrs. Morton and the Emersons and the younger members of the cast were greatly surprised to hear an overture from a well-played violin accompanied by the piano. While the applause was dying away the curtain rose on Helen seated at a desk reading from a blank exercise book filled with Ethel Blue's neat writing. ”

“ Why don't we work for that? For the Santa Claus Ship?"
"'Charity begins at home,'" demurred Margaret.
"We needn't forget the Glen Point orphans. The Christmas Ship is going to sail early in November and we'll have plenty of time after she gets off to carry out those other schemes that we've spoken of."
"I'd like to move," said Ethel Brown, getting on to her feet to make her action more impressive, "that the United Service Club devote itself first to preparing a bundle to send off on the Christmas Ship. After that's done we can see what comes next." ”

“ The men may die, but at least they can fight for their lives. The women and children have to sit down and wait for death or destruction to come their way."
"It's too big a situation for us way off here to grasp," said Roger slowly, "but there are people on the spot who are trying to give assistance, and if Americans could only get in touch with them it seems as if help might be handed along the way we handed [34] the water buckets last summer when the cottage was on fire."
"The Red Cross is working in all the countries that are at war," said Helen. ”

“ The Hancocks went in to New York and over to Brooklyn in the Doctor's car and Mrs. Emerson's big touring car held all the Mortons and Dorothy and her mother, and Fräulein and her mother, though it was a tight squeeze.
"The old woman who lived in a shoe must have been on her way to a Christmas Ship," cried Grandmother when Roger tossed Dicky in "on top of the heap of Ethels," as he described it and took up his own station on the running board.
The pier at the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn was already well crowded with people and motors when the Rosemont party arrived. ”

“ Here must we stay—here."
"You're safe here, at any rate," responded Roger, at a loss what reply to make that would be soothing in the face of such depressing facts.
"Safe!" retorted the woman scornfully. "Who cares to be safe? A woman's place is mit her men when they are in danger. My daughter and I—we should be in Germany and we cannot get there!"
"It's surely a shame if you want to go as much as that," returned Roger gently, and just then to his surprise there came through an inner door a young woman whom he recognized as his German teacher in the high school, Fräulein Hindenburg. ”

“ When she had done as many stars as there were openings on the pattern she took out the pins and moved the stencil along so that the holes came over a fresh piece of material, making sure that the space between the first new star and the last old one was the same as that between the stars on the stencil.
"How can we boys apply that?" asked James.
"You can stencil on anything that you would decorate with painting," said Ethel Brown.
"Your jig-saw disks, Tom. Stencil a small conventional pattern on each one—a star or a triangle." ”

“ It was early in October that Helen rushed home from school one day with the news that Mademoiselle was going to sail at the end of the week.
"We must begin to-day to make up a good-bye parcel for her," she cried.
"Red Cross nurses are allowed a very small kit," warned Mrs. Morton.
"We can try to make things so tiny that she won't have to leave them behind her when she goes on duty, but even if she does she can give them to somebody who can make them useful."
"I'll make steamer slippers to begin with," said Ethel Brown.
"How?" asked Ethel Blue. ”

“ Emerson.
"She was new at school last year and you've heard us say she's the most fascinating little black-eyed creature."
"Perhaps she can't talk fast!" added Roger.
"What's the story about her?" demanded Ethel Brown.
"It's not a romantic story like Fräulein's; that is, there's no betrothed on the other side that she's crazy to get to; but she's going over to join the French Red Cross."
"That little thing!" cried Roger. "Why she doesn't look as if she had strength enough to last out a week!"
"She says she's had a year's training in nursing and that a nurse is taught to conserve her strength. ”

“ Ethel Blue in the back of the group gave a sob.
"She'll pick up soon when she has good food every day," the nurse reassured them, and then she told them of her own experiences.
She had been, it seemed, in the same hospital with Mademoiselle in Belgium. Out on the field one day a bit of shrapnel had wounded her foot so that she was forced to come home. Mademoiselle had asked her to bring over this mite "to the kindest young people in the world," and here she was.
The baby's father and mother were both dead, she went on. That she knew.
"Are you sure her name is Elisabeth?" asked Dorothy. ”