Ethel Morton's Holidays

The big brown automobile gave three honks as it swung around the corner from Church Street. Roger Morton, raking leaves in the yard beside his house, threw down his rake and vaulted over the gate.

"Good afternoon, sir," he called to his grandfather, saluting, soldier fashion.

"Good afternoon, son. I stopped to tell you that those pumpkins are ready for you. If you'll hop in now we can go out and get them and I'll bring you back again."

"Good enough!" exclaimed Roger. "I'll tell Mother I'm going. She may have some message for Grandmother," and he vaulted back over the gate and dashed up the steps.

In a minute he was out again and climbing into the car.

"Where are the girls this afternoon?" inquired Mr. Emerson, as he threw in the clutch and started toward the outskirts of Rosemont where he had land enough to allow him to do a little farming.

"Helen and Ethel Brown have gone to the West Woods," replied Roger, accounting for his sisters. "Somebody told them that there was a wild grapevine there that still had yellow leaves bright enough for them to use for decorating tomorrow evening."

"I should be afraid last night's frost would have shriveled them. What are Ethel Blue and Dorothy up to?" asked Mr. Emerson.

Ethel Blue was Roger's cousin who had lived with the Mortons since her babyhood. Dorothy Smith was also his cousin. She and her mother lived in a cottage on Church Street.

"They must be over at Dorothy's working up schemes for tomorrow," Roger answered his grandfather's question. "I haven't seen them since luncheon."

"How many do you expect at your party?"

"Just two or three more besides the United Service Club. James Hancock won't be able to come, though. His leg isn't well enough yet."

"Pretty bad break?"

"He says it's bad enough to make him remember not to cut corners when he's driving a car. Any break is too bad in my humble opinion."

"In mine, too. How many in the Club? Ten?"

"Ten; yes, sir. There'll be nine of us tomorrow evening-Helen and the Ethels and Dorothy and Dicky and the two Watkinses and Margaret Hancock. She's going to spend the night with Dorothy."

"Anybody from school?"

"George Foster, the fellow who danced the minuet so well in our show; and Dr. Edward Watkins is coming out with Tom and Della."

"Isn't he rather old to come to a kids' party?"

"Of course he's loads older than we are-he's twenty-five-but he said he hadn't been to a Hallowe'en party for so long that he wanted to come, and Tom and Della said he put up such a plaintive wail that they asked if they might bring him."

"I suspect he hasn't forgotten how to play," chuckled Grandfather Emerson, speeding up as they entered the long, open stretch of road that ended almost at his own door. "Any idea what you're going to do?"

"Not much. Helen and Ethel Brown are the decoration committee and I'm the jack-o'-lantern committee, as you know, and Ethel Blue and Dorothy are thinking up things to do and we're all going to add suggestions. I think the girls had a note from Della this morning with an idea of some sort in it."

"You ought to get Burns's poem."

"On Hallowe'en?"

"We'll look it up when we get to the house. You may find some 'doings' you haven't heard of that you can revive for the occasion."

"We decided that whatever we did do, there were certain stunts we wouldn't do."

"Namely?"

"Swap signs and take off gates and brilliant jokes of that sort."

"As a Service Club you couldn't very well crack jokes whose point lies in some one's discomfort, could you?"

"Those things have looked like dog mean tricks to me and not jokes at all ever since I saw an old woman at the upper end of Main Street trying to hang her gate last year the day after Hallowe'en."

"Too heavy for her?"

"I should say so. She couldn't do anything with it. I offered to help her, and she said, 'You might as well, for I suppose you had the fun of unhanging it last night'."

"A false accusation, I suppose."

"It happened to be that time, but I had done it before," confessed Roger, flushing.

"You never happened to see the result of it before."

"That's it. I just thought of the people's surprise when they waked up in the morning and found their gates gone. I never thought at all of the real pain and discomfort that it may have given a lot of them."

"Your Club may be doing a good service to all Rosemont if it proves that young people can have a good time without making the 'innocent bystander' pay for it."

"We're going to prove it; to ourselves, anyway," insisted Roger stoutly, as he leaped out of the car and took his grandfather's parcels into the house.

"The pumpkins are in the barn," Mr. Emerson called after him. "Go down there and pick them out when you've given those bundles to your grandmother."

The big yellow globes were loaded into the car-half a dozen of them-and Mr. Emerson drove back to the house. As he stopped at the side porch for a last word with his wife he gave a cry of recognition.

"Look who comes here!" he exclaimed.

"Helen and Ethel Brown," guessed Roger. "Don't they look like those soldiers we read about in 'Macbeth'-the fellows who marched along holding boughs in their hands so that it looked as if Birnamwood had come to Dunsinane."

"Roger is quoting Shakespeare about your personal appearance," laughed Mr. Emerson as he and his grandson relieved the girls of their burdens.

They sank down on the steps of the porch and panted.

"You're tired out," exclaimed their grandmother. "Roger, bring out that pitcher of lemonade you'll find in the dining-room. How far have you walked?"

"About a thousand miles, I should say," declared Helen. "We were bound we'd get out-of-door decorations if they were to be had, and they weren't to be had except by hunting."

"You're like me-I like to use out-of-door things as late as I can; there are so many months when you have to go to the greenhouse or to draw on your house plants."

"Ethel Blue and Dorothy have been educating the Club artistically. They've been pointing out how much color there is in the fields and the woods even after the bright autumn colors have gone by."

"That's quite true. Look at that meadow."

Mrs. Emerson waved her hand at the field across the road. On it sedges were waving, softly brown; tufts of mouse-gray goldenrod nodded before the breeze; chestnut-hued cat-tails stood guard in thick ranks, and a delicate Indian Summer haze blended all into a harmony of warm, dull shades.

"You found your grapevine," said Roger, pouring the lemonade for his weary sisters, and nodding toward a trail of handsome leaves, splendidly yellow.

"It took a hunt, though. What are you doing over here?"

"Getting the pumpkins Grandfather promised us."

"You're just in time to have a ride home," said Mr. Emerson.

"You're in no hurry, Father; let the girls rest a while," urged Mrs. Emerson. "Can't you make a jack-o'-lantern while you're waiting, Roger?"

"Yes, ma'am, I can turn you out a truly superior article in a wonderfully short time," bragged Roger.

"He really does make them very well," confirmed Helen, "but it's because he always has the benefit of our valuable advice."

"Here you are to give it if I need it," said Roger good naturedly. "We'll show Grandmother what our united efforts can do."

So the girls leaned back comfortably against the pillars at the sides of the steps and Mrs. Emerson sat in an arm chair at the top of the flight and Mr. Emerson sat in the car at the foot of the steps and Roger began his work.

"It'll be a wonder if I make anything but a failure with so many bosses," he complained.

"Keep your hand steady, old man," teased his grandfather. "Don't let your knife go through the side or you'll let out a crack of light where you don't mean to."

"Be sure your knife doesn't slip and cut your fingers," advised Mrs. Emerson.

"Save me the inside," begged Ethel Brown. "I'm going to try to make a pumpkin pie."

"Save the top for a hat," laughed Helen. "I'll trim it with brown ribbon and set a new style at school."

Roger dug away industriously under the spur of these remarks.

"Is this the first year you've had a Hallowe'en party?" Mrs. Emerson asked.

"We used to do a few little things when we were children," Helen answered; "but for the last few years we've been asked somewhere."

"And with all due respect to our hosts we did a lot of the stupidest and meanest things we ever got let in for," declared Roger. "I was telling Grandfather about some of them coming over."

"So we made up our minds that we'd celebrate as a club this year, and do whatever we wanted to. There's a lot more to a party than just the party," said Ethel Brown wisely.

Her grandmother nodded.

"You're right. The preparation is half the fun," she agreed. "And it's fun to have every part of it perfect-the decorations and the refreshments as well as whatever it is you do for your main amusement."

"That's what I think," said Helen. "I like to think that the house is going to be appropriately dressed for our Hallowe'en party just as much as we ourselves."

"Why doesn't your club give a series of holiday parties?" suggested Grandfather. "Make each one of them a really appropriate celebration and not just an ordinary party hung on the holiday as an excuse peg. I believe you could have some interesting times and do some good, too, so that it could honestly be brought within the scope of your Club's activities."

"We seem to have made a start at it without thinking much about it," said Roger. "The Club had a float, you know, in the Labor Day procession."

"I didn't know that!" exclaimed Mrs. Emerson.

"You were in New York for a day or two. Grandfather supplied the float! Why, we had just come back from Chautauqua a day or two before Labor Day, you know, and the first thing that happened was that a collector called to get a contribution from Mother to help out the Labor Day procession. I was there and I said I didn't believe in taxation without representation. He laughed and said, 'All right, come on. We'd be glad to have you in the procession'."

"You were rather disconcerted at that, I suspect," laughed Mrs. Emerson.

"Yes, I was, but I hated to take back water, so I said that I belonged to a club and that I supposed he was going to have all the clubs in Rosemont represented in some way. He said that was just what they wanted. They wanted every activity in the town to be shown in some shape or other."

"There wasn't time to call a meeting of the club," Helen took up the story, "so Roger and I came over and talked with Grandfather, and he lent us a hay rack and we dressed it up with boughs and got the carpenters to make some very large cut out letters-U. S. C.-two sets of them, so they could be read on both sides. They were painted white and stood up high among the green stuff and really looked very pretty. Everybody asked what it meant."

"I think it helped a lot when I went about asking for gifts for the Christmas Ship," said Roger. "Lots of people said, 'Oh, it's your club that had a float in the Labor Day parade'."

"If we should work up Grandfather's idea we might have a parade of our own another year," said Helen.

"Always co-operate with what already exists, if it's worthy," advised Mr. Emerson. "Don't get up opposition affairs unless there's a good reason for doing it."

"As there is for our Hallowe'en party," insisted Roger.

"I believe you're right there. There's no reason why you should enter into 'fool stunts' that are just 'fool stunts,' not worth while in any way and not even funny."

"We'd better move on now if Grandfather is to take us over and get back in time for his own dinner," said Roger.

"Come, girls, can you pile in all that shrubbery without breaking it? Put the pumpkins on the bottom of the car, Roger, and the jacks on top of them. Now be careful where you put your feet. Back in half an hour, Mother," and he started off with his laughing car load.

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