CHAPTER IV
PLANS
The work of the carpenters filled in very acceptably the time when the members of the Club were toiling at school.
A visit of inspection toward the end of June gave the onlookers the greatest satisfaction.
"Everything is as fine as a fiddle!" exclaimed Roger as they all stopped in one of the upstairs rooms. "Now it's up to us to do the papering and painting and to concoct some furniture."
So it was decided that all the bedrooms should have white paint and walls of delicate hues and that Mrs. Schuler's office should be pink with white paint and white curtains at the windows.
"We can get very pretty papers for ten cents a roll," said Margaret. "I saw some beauties when I went to the paperers to get some flowery papers for James to cut out when he was pasting decorations on to our Christmas Ship boxes."
"Are you going to use wall paper?" asked Miss Merriam quickly.
"Aren't we?" inquired Margaret. "It didn't occur to me that there was anything else. There is paper on the walls now."
"It's a lot more sanitary to have the walls kalsomined, I know that," said James in a superior tone. "Haven't you heard Father say so a dozen times?"
"I suppose I have, now I think about it," replied Margaret. "It stands to reason that there would be less chance for germs to hide."
"Do you suppose these old walls are in good enough condition to go uncovered?" asked Roger, passing his hand over a suspicious bulge that forced the paper out, and casting his eye at the ceiling which was veined with hair cracks.
"Probably the walls will not be in the pink Of condition," returned Mrs. Morton; "but, even so, color-washing will be better than papering."
"We can go over them and fill up the cracks," suggested Tom, "and we can whitewash the ceilings."
"That's what I should advise," said Miss Merriam. "Put the walls and ceilings in as good condition as you can, and then put on your wash. Kalsomining is rather expensive, but there are plenty of color washes now that any one can put on who can wield a whitewash brush."
"Me for the whitewash brush at an early date," Roger sang gayly. "What do you suggest for these upstairs floors, Miss Merriam? Grandfather thought they weren't bad enough to have new ones laid, but they do look rather rocky, don't they?"
He cast a disparaging glance at the boards under his feet, and waited for help.
"Were you planning to paint them?"
"Yes," Roger nodded.
"Then you ought to putty up the cracks first. That will make them smooth enough. They're not really rough, you see. It's the spaces between the planks that make them seem so."
"That's easily done. We thought we'd paint these old floors and stain the new ones down stairs."
"I'd do that. Paint these floors tan or gray, if you want them to confess frankly that they're painted floors, or the shade of some wood if you want to pretend that they're hard wood floors."
James moved uneasily. Roger guessed the reason.
"What's the matter, old man? Treasury low?"
"It always is," answered James uncomfortably. "How are we going to fill it?" "That's what I've been thinking," Ethel Brown said meditatively. "It's time we did something to earn something."
"Everybody I've sold cookies to all winter seems to have stopped eating them," complained Ethel Brown. "I'm thinking of getting up a cooky sale to relieve my financial distress."
"There's an idea," cried Tom. "Why can't we have a cooky sale--with a few other things thrown in--and use the proceeds for the decoration and furnishing of Rose House?"
"We've had so many entertainments; can we do anything different enough for the Rosemonters to be willing to come?"
"And spend?"
"I think the Rosemonters have great confidence in our getting up something new and interesting; ditto the Glen Pointers," insisted Margaret who lived at Glen Point and knew the opinions of her neighbors.
"Where could we have it--it meaning our sale or whatever we decide to have?"
"Why not have it here? Let's wait until the boys have the house all painted and whitewashed and colorwashed so it looks as fresh as possible, and then tell the town what it is we are trying to do this summer, and ask them over here to see what it looks like."
"Good enough. When they see that it's good as far as it goes, but that our Fresh Air people will be mighty uncomfortable if they don't have some beds to sleep in and a few other trifles of every day use, they'll buy whatever we have to sell. That's the way it seems to me," and Roger threw himself down on the grass before the front door with an air of having said the final word.
"Let's ask the people of Rosemont to come to Rose House to a Rose Fête," cried Ethel Blue, while every one of her hearers waved his handkerchief at the suggestion.
"I'll draw a poster with the announcement on it," she went on, "and we can have it printed on pink paper and the boys can go round on their bicycles and distribute them at every house."
"We must have everything pink, of course. Pink ice cream and cakes with pink icing--"
"And pink strawberries--"
"Not green ones! No, sir!"
"And watermelons if we can get some that won't make too much trouble for Dr. Hancock."
"How are we going to serve them? We can't bring china way out here--and we won't have any for Rose House until after we give this party to earn it!"
"They have paper plates with pretty patterns on them now. And if they cost too much we might get the plain ones and lay a d'oyley of pink paper on each one," suggested Margaret.
"Probably that will be the cheapest and the effect will be just as good, but I'll find out the prices in town," promised Delia.
"I have a scheme for a table of fancy things," offered Dorothy. "Let's have it under that tree over there and over it let's hang a huge rose. I think I know how to make it--two hoops, the kind Dicky rolls, one above the other, the smaller one on top, and both suspended from the tree. Cover them inside and out with big pink paper petals."
"How are you going to make it look like a rose and not a pink bell?" inquired Delia.
"Put a green calyx on the top and some yellow stamens inside and then make a stem that will look like the real thing, only gigantic."
"How will you manage that?"
"Do you remember those wild grape vines that Helen and Ethel Brown found in the West Woods and used for Hallowe'en decorations? If we could get a thick one and wind it with green paper and let it curve from the rose toward the ground it ought to look like a real stem."
"We could hang the rose with dark string that wouldn't show, and fasten the stem to the branch of the tree with a pink bow. It would look as if some giant had tied it there for his ladylove."
"I have an old pink sash I'll contribute to the good cause," laughed Helen. "I've been wondering what to do with it for some time."
"Everything on the table must be pink and shaped like a rose or decorated with roses--cushions, pen-wipers, baskets, stencilled bureau sets--there are a thousand things to be made."
"Boxes covered with rose paper," suggested James solemnly.
Everybody shouted, for James's imagination always seemed to be stimulated whenever he saw a chance to make something with paste-pot and brush.
"How about music?"
This question brought silence, for it was not easy to arrange for music in the open.
"I wish Edward and his violin were here," said Delia, referring to her brother, Dr. Watkins, who had recently gone to Oklahoma to assist an older physician in a flourishing town there. He had been very attentive to Miss Merriam and she was annoyed to find herself blushing at the mention of his name. Ethel Blue, who had been in his confidence, was the only one of the young people who glanced at her, however, so her annoyance passed unnoticed.
"He isn't, and a piano is out of the question. I wonder, if Greg Patton would bring his fiddle?"
"Why didn't we think of him before! He and some of the other high school boys have been getting up a little orchestra; I shouldn't wonder a bit if they'd be glad to help--glad of the experience of playing in public."
"We haven't got to make oceans of paper roses, this time," remarked Ethel Brown gratefully. "Nature is doing the work for us."
She waved her hand at the clump of bushes which was to conceal Dorothy's fortune telling operations, and which was pink with blossoms.
"Our bushes at home are loaded down with them, too," said Margaret. "Everybody's are, so I don't suppose it would be worth while to have a flower table."
"There's no harm in trying. We could say on the poster that exceptionally choice roses will be on exhibition and sale and--and why couldn't we take orders for the bushes? Use the beauties for samples and if people like them, get roots from the bushes they came from and supply them the next day!" Ethel Blue was quite breathless with the force of this suggestion and the others applauded it.
"Just as I think of Ethel Blue as all imagination and dreams she comes out with something practical like that and I have to study her all over again," said Roger, observing his cousin with his head on one side. Ethel Blue threw a leaf at him which he dodged with exaggerated fear.
They decided to have the Rose Fête just as soon as the boys put the house into presentable condition, and then the girls separated, Ethel Brown and Dorothy to see Mr. Emerson about securing the boxes, Helen and Margaret to measure the windows for curtains, Delia and Ethel Blue to work out the design for converting ordinary Chinese lanterns into roses which they had thought of as lending a charm to the veranda and the lawn after the sun went down, and the boys to calculate the quantities of putty and paint and color-wash, based on information given Roger by the local painter and decorator, who was quite willing to help with advice when he found that there was no chance of his own services being called into play.
CHAPTER V
THE ROSE FÊTE
The United Service Club had made so good a name for itself in Rosemont during the few months of its existence that when Ethel Blue's posters brought to their doors the news that the U. S. C. was to give a Rose Fête at Rose House the townspeople were eager to know what attraction the members had devised. The schools were still in session so the Ethels and Dorothy at the graded school and Helen and Roger and the orchestra boys at the high school made themselves into an advertising band and told everybody all about the purpose of the festival. The scholars carried the information home, and there were few houses in Rosemont where it was not known that Mr. Emerson's old farmhouse was to be turned into a summer home for weary mothers and ailing babies.
Helen and Margaret, after consulting with their mothers and Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Emerson, had decided that a cot or single bed and two cribs ought to go in each bedroom except Moya's, where one crib would be enough. This meant that five beds and nine cribs must be provided, and the number made the girls look serious as they calculated the probable proceeds of the Rose Fête and subtracted from them the amount that they would have to pay the local furniture dealer, even though he, being a public spirited and charitable man, offered them a discount. For a day or two they went about in a state of depression, for they had hoped to be able to supply the furnishings without making any appeal to the grownups. Thanks to Dorothy they could discount any expense for bureaus and desks and tables, but their ambition did not soar to constructing bedsteads; these had to be bought or given.
It became evident after a number of householders had inquired how they could help, that there was a chance that the U. S. C. treasury might not be reduced after all by the purchase of beds. When one lady was informed by Helen of their schemes for filling the rooms--how the carpenters had provided them with a table that would do for the dining-room and how shelves innumerable were to do duty for innumerable purposes,--and she had added ruefully, "But we can't make very good beds, and we do want the women to sleep well, poor things. We've got to buy those--" she had cried, "Why, I have a cot in my attic that I should be delighted to let you have, and my daughter's little boy has outgrown his crib and I'm sure she'll contribute that."
A week before the Fête, however, they had been promised all the bedsteads they needed--though some lacked springs, some mattresses, and almost all were without pillows--four cribs, half a dozen chairs and two high chairs, and a collection of odd pieces. Helen refused nothing but double beds; there was not space enough for those in a bedroom with three people in it; it would seem to the women too much like the crowded tenements they came from, she thought. Miss Merriam objected also, on the ground that it was not well for babies to sleep with grown people.
"What do you think of this plan?" Ethel Brown asked her mother after the girls had made a careful list of their gifts. "We did think that if we didn't have a stick in the house the people would be interested in helping us because of our poverty. We've found out that they are awfully interested even without seeing the house. Do you think it would be a good scheme to put into the rooms the things we have ready and to fasten on the door a notice saying 'THIS ROOM NEEDS' and under that a list of what is lacking? Don't you think some of them would say, 'I've got an extra cushion at home that would do for a pillow here; I'll send it over'; or 'Don't you remember that three legged chair that used to be in Joe's room? I believe these children can mend it and paint it to look well enough for this room'?"
"Ethel Brown, you're running Ethel Blue hard in the line of ideas!" cried Roger admiringly from a position at the door which he had taken as he passed through the hall and heard discussion going on.
"It's a capital idea," agreed Mrs. Morton. "You'd better ask Grandfather again for a wagon and go around and collect the things that have been promised. You don't want to bother people to send them over themselves."
Every one worked with vigor during the last few days before the festival, for the renovating of old furniture takes more time than any one ever expects it to. The results were so satisfactory, however, that neither the boys nor the girls gave a thought to their tired hands and backs when evening brought them release from their labors.
The great day was clear, and, for the last of June, cool. Every plan worked out well and every helper appeared at the moment he was wanted. The box seats and tables, superintended by Ethel Brown and served by half a dozen friends all wearing white dresses and pink aprons, bloomed rosily on the veranda. Under the large rose Delia and Ethel Blue, dressed in pink, sold fancy articles. Dorothy, sitting "under the rose" in the rose jungle, and dressed like a moss rose, with a filmy green tunic draping her pink frock, described brilliant futures to laughing inquirers. Margaret, dressed to represent the yellow Scottish roses, sold flowers from the Ethels' garden and took orders for rose bushes.
The boys were everywhere, opening ice cream tubs for Moya in the background, guiding would-be players to the tennis court and the croquet ground, and directing new arrivals where to tie their horses and park their motors. Every member of the club was provided with a small notebook wherein to jot down any bit of advice that was offered and seemed profitable or to record any offer of fittings that might be made.
Helen took no regular duty, leaving herself free to go over the house with any one who wanted to know the Club's plans, and she had more frequent need than any of the others to use her book. Ethel Brown's scheme had been followed. On the door of each room was posted a list of articles needed to complete the furnishing of that room.
"They certainly aren't greedy!" exclaimed one matron after reading the notice. "This says that this room is complete except for bed clothing."
She waved her hand around with some scorn. Helen dimpled with amusement.
"We thought we'd make one room as nearly complete as we could," she explained. "You see this has a bed, two cribs, a looking-glass, and shelves as substitutes for a washstand and a closet and a table and a bureau.
"There are no chairs, child!"
"These two boxes are the chairs. We had a few chairs given us but they'll be needed down stairs. We think they'll have more exercise than any chairs ever had before. They'll be used in the dining-room for breakfast, and then they'll be moved to the veranda to spend the morning, and in they'll come again for dinner and out they'll go for the afternoon, and in for supper, and after supper they'll be moved into the hall which is to serve as the sitting room!"
Helen's hearer pressed her hand to her head.
"You make me positively dizzy!" she exclaimed. "At any rate I'd like to make this room complete according to your notions, so I'll send you some sheets and pillow cases and blankets and a spread if you'll allow me."
"We'll be glad to have them," accepted Helen, beaming. "Roger will call for them if that will be more convenient for you," and she made a note of the gift and the time when it should be sent after.
Other women remembered as they examined the door lists that they had a mattress that could be spared, or a pillow or two or a pair of summer blankets.
"What are you going to do for ornaments," asked another.
Helen laughed.
"James Hancock has an idea for decorating the walls so that they'll interest the babies, and we're going to have fresh cheese-cloth curtains at all the windows, but that's the end of our possibilities."
"I have several bureau scarves that are in good condition but they have been washed so many times that they're a little faded. If you'd like those--?" she ended with an upward inflection.
"We would," replied Helen promptly.
"Could you use some prints of pictures--good paintings?" inquired yet another, a person whose taste Helen knew could be trusted.
"We'd be glad of them. We can frame them in passepartout. We'd be especially glad of madonnas."
"That's just what I was going to offer you. A club I once belonged to studied celebrated paintings of madonnas one winter and I made this collection. Many of them are only penny prints and some are cut from magazines--".
"They're perfectly good for us," Helen reassured her, and made another note in her book.
Most of the visitors went home with the falling dark, but some stayed to see the rose lanterns lighted, and others, who had not been able to come in the afternoon, drove or walked out from town in the evening and were served with ice cream and strawberries from a supply that had been wonderfully well calculated.
"Let us have just a week to spend this money and to make up the sheets and pillow cases and curtains and you can tell Mr. Watkins to send out the women," Helen announced triumphantly to Delia.
"I'm going to spend the week with Margaret so I can come over with her every day and help," returned smiling Delia.
"Then we shan't need a whole week. When you go home to-night please ask your father to be making his selection--four mothers with two children apiece. You and Tom can escort them out on the Tuesday after Fourth of July."
CHAPTER VI
FURNITURE MAKING
It did not take the women long to adjust themselves to life at Rose House, and as for the children, they loved it from the first. It was a great international gathering that was sheltered on the old farm. Mrs. Schuler was German; Moya, Irish. Mrs. Peterson, a Swede, occupied the rooster room with her baby and her flaxen-haired daughter of three; Mrs. Paterno, an Italian, found good pasturage among the cows of the violet room for her black-eyed boys of two and four; Mrs. Tsanoff, a Bulgarian, told the Matron that her twin girl babies were too young to pay attention to the kittens on the curtains of the yellow room; while Mrs. Vereshchagin, a Russian, discovered that the puppies of the blue room were a great help to her in holding the attention of her boys of three and five when she was putting them to bed.
Mrs. Schuler shook her head doubtfully when she took down their names and nationalities in her notebook on the day of their arrival.
"If we get through the summer without quarrels over the war it will be a miracle!" she exclaimed to her husband.
But she found that the poor creatures were too weary, too sad, too physically crushed to have spirit enough left to fight any battles, even those of words. With almost every one of them there had been a tragedy such as often comes to the immigrants who reach the United States equipped for success only with strong muscles--a tragedy of wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs. Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night as he came home from his work.
Conversation was not carried on fluently among them. They met on the common ground of English, but not one of them could speak it well, each one translated phrases of her own tongue quite literally, and the meaning of the whole talk was largely a matter of guesswork. What they did understand was nature's language of motherhood. They were content to sit for hours on the veranda or in the grove or behind the house, preparing vegetables for Moya, chattering about their babies and explaining their meaning by gestures that seemed to be perfectly understood.
The women had daily duties to perform according to a schedule worked out by Mrs. Schuler, who apportioned to each a share of the general work of the house in addition to the care of her own room and the washing for herself and her children. With so many fingers flying the tasks were soon done, and then they sat on the porch or in the grove among the sweet-smelling pines, or walked in the pasture or up and down the lane leading to the main road. Once in a while they went to Rosemont, but for the most part they were too languid to care to walk far and too glad of the change and the rest and quiet to want to weary themselves unnecessarily.
The boys had built a platform across the back of the house, and it was here that they did their carpentry, an awning sheltering them from the sun or rain. A cupboard at one end held their tools, and their partly finished articles were neatly stacked in a corner. As they got out their tools now James made a confession.
"To tell you the honest, unvarnished truth, I'm tired of making chairs. It seems as if we'd never have enough."
"It takes an awful lot to furnish a house," commented Roger wisely, "and you know we had very few given us so if we want enough we have to make them."
"We've got all the chairs you've done upholstered all they're going to be," said Ethel Brown. "Why can't Ethel Blue and I each make a high chair?"
"No reason at all," agreed Roger quickly. "You've watched James and me and seen our really superior workmanship; imitate it, my child!"
The girls were already turning over the boys' supply of boxes to select those suitable for the chairs for the children. They took four that had held lemons or other fruit and were tall and narrow when stood on end. The boards they were made of were very light but quite solid enough to hold the weight of a small child. To make it firm upon the ground, however, they sawed a piece of heavy plank a little larger than the end upon which the box was to stand and nailed it on from the inside.
When the high chair was done the boys complimented their co-workers on the success of their first experiment.
"I hardly could have done it better myself," said Roger grandly.
All the high chairs were covered with blue and white cretonne to match the blue and white of the dining room and the girls set to work to tack on the outside covering and to cut out the covers of the small cushions that were to make the seat and back comfortable. The cushions themselves they had made from ticking filled with excelsior when they had calculated the number of high chairs they must have.
The boys, meanwhile were constructing two chairs of quite different build. One was a heavy chair for the hall or the veranda, its original condition being a packing box a foot and a half deep, about twenty inches wide and three or four feet long. This also was set on end, and the other end and the cover were laid aside to be used in making the seat and in shutting in the openings below the seat.
"How are you going to fasten that seat so it won't let the sitter down on the floor?" inquired Ethel Blue, as James explained what he was going to do.
"Do you see these cleats, ma'am? These are each a foot long. I nail one of these standing up straight at each edge of the sides and the back--six of them altogether. Then I lay three other cleats across their tops--thusly."
"O, you've made a sort of framework that will support the seat! I get that!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.
"All you have to do now is to nail your seat boards on to those horizontal cleats and it's as firm as firm can be."
"Aren't you going to do something with those sides--those arms, or whatever you call them?" inquired Ethel Brown. "They seem sharp and uncomfortable and in the way to me."
Both boys studied the chair seriously before answering. Then they took a pencil and paper and consulted.
"I should think it would look pretty well to cut out a right angle on each aide," suggested James. "That would leave a sort of wing effect like a hall porter's chair, only not so high, and at the same time it would make an arm to rest your elbow on. How does that strike you ?"
Roger nodded. "It hits me all right. I was thinking of a curve instead of a right angle, but the right angle will be easier to make. Go ahead."
So the right angle was decided on and James proceeded to cut it.
Roger, meanwhile, had been sorting out the wood he needed for a chair of another pattern.
"I wish Dorothy would heave in sight," he growled as he piled some half inch thick strips in one heap. "She told me she'd tell me all she knew about chair legs when I reached this stage of proceedings."
"She will," answered a cheerful voice, and gray-eyed Dorothy appeared from the house. "I felt in my bones that you'd be beginning this lot this afternoon, so I ambled over to see if I could help in any way."
"Keep right on ambling till you reach this end of the platform and tell me whether you said that chair legs could be made of this stripping or whether I'll have to get solid pieces, square-ended, you know, joist or scantling or whatever it's called."
"Strips will do, only you'll have to use two for each leg. Nail them together at right angles. It will make a two-sided leg, but it will be plenty strong enough, though perhaps not truly handsome."
"If handsomeness means solidity--no. Still, they'll do. Can you give me the lengths for these strips?" and Roger waved his saw at his cousin as if he were so impatient to begin that he could not wait to study out the lengths for himself.
"For the one I made for the attic," replied his cousin, "I cut four strips each two inches wide and twenty-one inches long for the front legs and four strips each two inches wide and twenty-five inches long for the back legs. Then there were two two-inch strips seventeen inches long to go under the seat to strengthen it front and back, and two two-inch strips each thirteen inches long to go under the seat and strengthen it on the sides. That's all the stock you need except the box."
"I suppose you've got a particular box in mind to fit those sizes."
"Those sizes fit the box, rather. Yes, I got a grocery box that was about eighteen inches long and thirteen wide and eleven deep. I saw one here just like it before I gave you those measurements, so you can go ahead sawing while I pull off one side of the box--the cover has gone already but we don't need it."
Quiet reigned for a few minutes while they all worked briskly.
"Now I'm ready to put this superb article together," announced Roger. "How high from the ground does the seat go?"
"Nail your cleats across with their top edges fifteen inches from the ground and nail the bottom of the box on to the cleats. See how these two-sided legs protect the edges of the box as well as make it decent looking?"
"So they do," admitted Roger. "They aren't so bad after all."
"I think those sides are going to be too high," decided Dorothy after examining the chair carefully and sitting down in it. "Don't you think it pushes your elbows up too high?"
Roger tried it and thought it did.
"Suppose you saw those sides down about five inches."
Roger obeyed and Dorothy tried the chair again and pronounced it much improved.
"It's comfy enough now, but these arms don't look very well, and they'd be liable to tear your sleeves," she said. "Let's put on some strip covers. They'll give a finish to the whole thing, and hide the end of the two-sided legs and be smooth."
"Plenty of reason for having them. How many inches?"
"Twelve," answered Dorothy after measuring. "The top of the back needs a strip cover, too. Cut another nineteen inches long. There, I think that's not such a bad looking chair!'"
"Do you want cushions for those chairs?" inquired Ethel Brown, appearing at the door with a piece of cretonne in her hand. "We've got material enough for at least seat cushions for both of them."
"They'll be lots more comfy," admitted James, "if the excelsior crop is still holding out."
"It is. I'll make them right off, and Ethel Blue can help you out there."
She retired from view and sent out her cousin, and until the sun set the two boys and Dorothy and Ethel measured and sawed and nailed, with results that satisfied them so well that they did not mind being tired.
CHAPTER VII
TROUBLE AT ROSE HOUSE
"If it weren't that I could come out here and see you every day or so I should be wild to get back to work in Oklahoma."
Edward Watkins was the speaker. He and Miss Merriam were walking through a wooded path that ran from Rosemont to Rose House. The day was warm and the shade of the trees was grateful.
"How is your patient?" asked Gertrude.
"Getting on very well, but the doctors won't let him travel yet."
"Have you heard lately from your doctor in Oklahoma?"
"I hear about every day! I was with him just long enough for him to find that I was useful and he's wild to have me there again. I wired him that I'm ready to go, but that the sick man is nervous about making the return trip alone. Of course he wants to keep on the good side of a good patient, so he answered, 'Stay on'."
"Are you able to do anything for your patient? He's still in the hospital, isn't he?"
"I go there every day and he sends me on errands all over town. I'm getting to know almost as much about oil as I do about medicine! But I'm rather tired of playing errand boy."
"You have a chance to see your family."
"And you. But I'm supposed to stay at the hotel, much to Mother's disgust. I'm doing a little medical inspection among Father's poor people, though. That whiles away a few hours every day, and of course, every time I go to the hospital the doctors there tell me about any interesting new cases, so I'm not 'going stale' entirely."
"As if you could!" exclaimed Gertrude admiringly. "You're just storing up ideas and information to startle the Oklahoman natives with."
"The 'natives' in Oklahoma are all too young to be startled," laughed Edward, "but of course I'm stowing away everything new I hear about methods of treatment and operations and so on to tell Dr. Billings when I get back. Now let me hear what you've been doing. How are these kiddies at Rose House?"
"I want you to look them over and talk with the mothers. Dr. Hancock comes over when we send for him, but all these people are so delicate that I feel that they ought to have a physician's eye on them all the time."
"They have you pretty often, don't they?"
"I go over every day either in the morning or the afternoon, and I give them advice about the babies, and teach them and Moya how to prepare their food, but they do such strange things that you can't forestall because you never had the wildest idea that any woman in her senses would treat a baby so."
Edward laughed.
"Russian and Bulgarian peasant customs, I suppose. I never shall forget the first time I saw a two-day old negro baby sucking a bit of fat bacon. I nearly had a chill."
"Didn't the child have a chill?"
"Not the slightest! If they get ahead of you with some pleasing little trick like that you can console yourself with the thought that generally there is some basis of old-time experience that has shown it to be not so harmful as we are apt to think."
"I've done enough tenement house work to know that the babies certainly survive extraordinary treatment, but these babies here are so delicate that they ought to have the most careful diet. Most of them need real nursing."
"Do you think your talks are making any impressions on the mothers?"
"Sometimes Mrs. Schuler and I think so, and just then it almost always happens that one of them does something totally unexpected that gives our hopes a terrible blow."
"Let's trust that this is a good day; I'd rather talk to you than work over a case this fine afternoon."
Gertrude smiled at his tone and they walked on in silence out of the wood and across the brook and down the lane that brought them to the back of Rose House where the Club boys and girls were busy making a piece of furniture of some sort. Mrs. Schuler was talking to Moya in the kitchen.
"I've brought Dr. Watkins to see everybody," announced Miss Merriam gayly. "Where are they all?"
"The ones who are at home are up in the pine grove, but Moya has just told me that Mrs. Paterno and her older boy and Mrs. Tsanoff and one of the twins have gone to town." "Walked?"
"Walked by the road on this scorching day!"
Miss Merriam turned to the doctor.
"This is one of the unexpected events we were just talking about. Little Paterno is four and too large for that little woman to carry, and far too small and weak to take that long walk on his own legs even on a more suitable day than this, and the Tsanoff twins are just holding on to life by the tips of their fingers!"
She sat down in despair. Dr. Watkins looked serious.
"Is there any way of heading them off or bringing them back. Can we reach them anywhere by telephone?"
"No one knows where they can have gone. It seems it must have been about an hour and a half ago that they started and I should think they'd be back before long if they're able to come back--"
"--under their own steam!" finished the doctor with a doubtful smile.
"Let's go to the grove and see the women and children there and perhaps the others will be in sight by the time you've finished your examination."
They turned toward the pines whose thick needles cast a heavy shade upon the ground and gave forth a delicious fragrance under the rays of the sun. As they disappeared Mrs. Schuler went out on the platform where the carpentering operations were going on.
"I'm so disturbed about those women," she said, "I've come to see what you're doing to divert my mind from them."
"We're going to make two of these seats, one for your office and the other for the veranda," said Ethel Brown, standing erect and putting a hand upon her weary back. The rest of the young carpenters stopped their work and wiped their perspiring foreheads while they explained the construction of the piece of furniture to their friend.
"This long narrow box is the seat, you see. It's a shoe case, and it's just the right height for comfort. Roger has put hinges on the cover, so you can use it for a chest and keep rugs and cushions inside."
"That's about as simple as it could be. Does it take all of you to help Roger do that?"
"O, that's only a part of the entire affair. We're making these two sets of shelves to go at the ends of the seat."
"I see. A great light breaks on me!"
"They're to be fastened to the ends of the seat."
"Not for keeps. That's Ethel Blue's patent. She said it would be awkward to move about if it were all built together, so we're making it in three parts, and we're going to lock them together with hooks and screw eyes."
"That is clever! Then if you want to you can use these sets of shelves for little bookcases in another room or you can fasten on one of them and not the other."
"Ethel Blue and I thought we'd make pink cushions for your office if you'd like them."
"I think they'd be charming. That pink room raises my spirits when--"
"--when you get blue?" suggested Roger.
"I'll have to go there now to get revived if those women who walked to town don't turn up soon," and the Matron went to the corner of the house whence she could see the lane that led from the road. "If they come home ill I'll have to ask you to make two bed trays," she suggested as she peered across the grass.
"How do you make them?"
"Ask Ethel Blue."
"Merely put legs on a light board so that the weight of the plates will be lifted from the sick person's legs as he sits up in bed."
"What's to prevent the plates sliding off?"
"Nothing if he's much of a kicker, I should say," laughed Roger; "but you could put a little fence an inch or two high at the back and sides and keep them on board."
"You'd better begin them right off," said Mrs. Schuler dryly, "for here they come."
She disappeared around the corner and the young people followed to see what was the matter.
Trouble there was in very truth. Mrs. Paterno led the way stumbling and running. Her face was flushed a deep, threatening crimson and her breath came fast. By the arm she held little Pietro, who from exhaustion had ceased to scream and merely gave a gulping moan when the gravel scraped his bare knees as his mother jerked him along regardless of whether he was on his feet or whether she dragged him. Behind them at some distance came Mrs. Tsanoff carrying her baby in her arms--one of the twins that always seemed to be merely "holding on to life by the tips of its fingers," to use Gertrude's expression, and now seemed to have lost even that frail hold. It lay in its mother's arms white and with its eyes closed.
Mrs. Schuler ran to meet the Italian woman and lifted the worn child into her arms where he sank against her shoulder as if in a faint.
"Run up in the grove and get Dr. Watkins and Miss Gertrude," Helen said to Roger. "Ask them quietly to come here. Don't frighten the women."
Roger dashed away, his swift feet slowing to a walk as he neared the bit of woods where he delivered his message in an undertone. Ethel Blue meanwhile, had rushed into the house to tell Moya to heat plenty of water and to crack some ice, and Margaret had opened Mrs. Schuler's closet of simple remedies and found the bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia. Ethel Brown and James ran to meet Mrs. Tsanoff, Ethel taking the baby from her and James steadying her shaking steps by a stout arm under her elbow.
As Dr. Watkins ran around the corner of the house he came upon Helen trying to help Mrs. Paterno, who was pushing her away with both hands, while she kept looking over her shoulder and screaming hysterically. Edward seized her hands and commanded her attention at once by speaking to her in Italian. Although she did not know him she responded to his command to tell him of what she was afraid, and poured out a story of terror. "Mano, nera, mano nera--the Black Hand," she repeated over and over again, and Edward, who had heard her history, realized that something she had seen had set her mind in the old train of thought. While Miss Merriam attended to the children he calmed the woman and then turned her over to Mrs. Schuler with instructions to put her to bed in a darkened room and to see that some one stayed with her or just outside her door.
Fortunately for the doctor his experience with the people among whom his father worked in his East Side chapel had given him a smattering of many languages and he was able to make out from Mrs. Tsanoff, although her fright and fatigue had made her forget almost all the English she knew, what had terrified her companion. They had gone to the stationery shop of the Englishman who also sold ice cream and soda, she said, and they had had each a glass of soda and the children had each had an ice cream cone.
Edward groaned and over his shoulder directed Delia to run and tell Miss Merriam that both babies had had ice cream cones. "It will help her to know what to do until I come," he explained.
Just as they were coming out of the store a dark man who looked like an Italian had passed them.
So far as she noticed he had paid no attention to them, but Mrs. Paterno had seized her arm, pointing after him, and then had picked up Pietro and started to run toward home. Neither far nor fast could she go in such heat with such a burden and the poor little chap was soon tossed down and forced to run with giant strides all the rest of the eternal mile that stretched between Rosemont and Rose House. Mrs. Tsanoff herself had followed as fast as she could because she was afraid that something, she knew not what, would happen to her friend.
She, too, was sent to bed, with Moya standing over her to lay cool compresses on her eyes, to sponge her wrists and ankles with cool water and to lay an occasional bit of cracked ice on her parched lips.
The condition of the two children was pitiable. The heat, the sudden chill from the ice cream and the terrible homeward rush sent them both so nearly into a collapse that the doctor, Mrs. Schuler and Miss Merriam worked over them all night, resting only when Dr. Hancock, who had heard the story from James and Margaret and came up to see the state of affairs, relieved them for an hour.
"How are we ever going to teach them the madness of such behavior?" Gertrude asked wearily as Dr. Watkins insisted that she and Mrs. Schuler should go to bed as the dawn broke.
"The poor little Italian woman is almost mad already, thanks to this Black Hand business. It will take her a long time to recover her balance, but I think I can teach the others a lesson from this experience of their friends. Wait till to-morrow comes and hear me talk five languages at once," he promised cheerfully as he turned her over to Mrs. Schuler.