Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship Part 29

"That wasn't all. She was going to take them to a cousin of hers who was just getting over the mumps. She wanted to surprise her. She was awfully mad because I didn't make them. She said she had depended on them and she didn't have anything to take to her cousin."

"There you see it," exclaimed Mrs. Morton. "It didn't seem much to Ethel Brown not to make two or three dozen cookies, but in the first place she broke her promise, and in the next place she caused real unhappiness to a girl who was depending on them to give pleasure to her sick cousin."

"You've given us a shake-up we won't forget soon, Mother," remarked Roger. "There's one duty I haven't done this week that you haven't mentioned, but I'm pretty sure you know it so I might as well bring it into the light myself and say I'm sorry."

"What is it?" laughed his mother.

"I haven't been over to see Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson for ten days."

"They'll be sorry."

"I was relying on one of the girls going."

"We haven't been," confessed the Ethels.

"Nor I," admitted Helen.

Mrs. Morton looked serious.

"We love to go there," said Ethel Brown, "but we've been so busy."

"Too busy to be kind to the people near at hand, eh?"

The young people looked ruefully at one another.

"Anyway, watch me be attentive to Fraulein," promised Helen.

She was. She and Roger made a point of giving her as little trouble as possible; and of paying her un.o.btrusive attentions. Roger carried home for her a huge bundle of exercises; the Ethels left some chestnuts at her door when they came back from a hunt on the hillside, and even d.i.c.ky wove her a mat at kindergarten of red and white and black paper--the German colors.

The Mortons were all attention to James, too. Every day they remembered to call him up on the telephone and ask him how his box-making was coming on. He had a telephone extension on the table at his elbow and these daily talks cheered him greatly. The others were leaving the making of most of the pasted articles to him, and they were going on with the manufacture of baskets and leather and bra.s.s and copper articles and of odds and ends of various kinds.

"Perhaps I'll be able to get up to Dorothy's next Sat.u.r.day," James phoned to Roger one day, "if Mrs. Smith wouldn't mind the Club meeting downstairs. I suppose the Pater wouldn't let me try to climb to the attic yet."

Mrs. Smith was delighted to make the change for James's benefit, but before the day came he called up Roger one afternoon in great excitement.

"When did you say those church movies were?" he asked.

"To-morrow evening."

"Father says he'll take me over if he doesn't have a hurry call at the last minute."

Roger gave a whoop that resounded along the wire.

"You'll find the whole Club drawn up at the door of the schoolhouse to meet you," he cried. "The Watkinses are coming out from New York. Will Margaret come with you?"

"She and Mother will go over in the trolley."

As Roger had promised, the Club was drawn up in double ranks before the door when Doctor Hanc.o.c.k stopped his machine close to the step. Roger and Tom ran down to make a chair on which to carry James inside, and Helen and Dorothy were ready with the wheel-chair belonging to the old lady at the Home who had been glad to lend it for the evening to the boy whose acquaintance she had made at the Club entertainment.

James was rather embarra.s.sed at being so conspicuous, but all his Rosemont acquaintances came to speak to him and he was quite the hero of the occasion.

The moving pictures were an innovation in Rosemont. There had been various picture shows in empty stores in the town and they had not all been of a character approved by the parents of the school children who went to them in great numbers. The rooms were dark and there was danger of fire and the pictures themselves were not always suitable for young people to see or agreeable for their elders. The result of a conference among some of the townspeople who had the interests of the place at heart was this entertainment which was the first of a series to be given in the school hall on Friday evenings all through the winter. The films were chosen by a sub-committee and it was hoped that they would be so liked that the poor places down town would find it unprofitable to continue.

The program was pleasantly varied. The story of a country boy who went to New York to make his fortune and who found out that, as in the Oriental story, his fortune lay buried in his own dooryard--in this case in the printing office of his own town--was the opener.

That was followed by a remarkable film showing the habits of swallows and by another whereon some of the flowers of Burbank's garden waved softly in the California breeze.

A dramatization of Daudet's famous story called "The Last Cla.s.s" brought tears to the eyes of the onlookers whose thoughts were much across the Atlantic.

It was a simple, touching tale, and it served appropriately as the forerunner of the war pictures that had just been sent to America by photographers in Germany and France and Belgium.

The first showed troops leaving Berlin, flags flying, bands playing, while the crowds along the street waved a cheerful parting, though once in a while a woman bent her head behind her neighbor's shoulder to hide her tears.

There were scenes in Belgium--houses shattered by the bombs of airmen, huge holes dug by exploding sh.e.l.ls; wounded soldiers making their way toward the hospitals, those with bandaged heads and arms helping those whose staggering feet could hardly carry them.

It was a serious crowd that followed every movement that pa.s.sed on the screen before their eyes. The silence was deep.

Then came a hospital scene. Rows upon rows of beds ran from the front of the picture almost out of sight. Down the s.p.a.ce between them came the doctors, instruments in hand, and behind them the nurses, the red crosses gleaming on their arm bands.

A stir went through the onlookers.

"It looks like her."

"I believe it is."

"Don't you think so? The one on the right?"

"It is--it's Mademoiselle Millerand!" cried Roger clearly.

The operator, hearing the noise in front of his booth, and all unconscious that he was showing a friend to these townspeople where the pretty young French teacher had lived for two years, almost stopped turning his machine. So slowly it went that there was no doubt among any who had known her. She followed the physician to the bed nearest the front. There they stopped and the doctor turned to Mademoiselle and asked some question. She was ready with bandages. An orderly slipped his arm under the soldier's pillow and raised his head. His eyes were closed and his face was deathly white. The doctor shook his head. Evidently he would not attempt an operation upon so ill a man. He signed to the attendant to lay the man down and as he did so the people in Rosemont, far, far away from the Belgian hospital, heard a piercing shriek.

"_Mein Verlobt!_ My betrothed!" screamed Fraulein Hindenburg.

"That's Schuler."

"Don't you recognize Schuler?"

"No wonder poor Fraulein screamed!"

Kind hands were helping Fraulein and her mother from the hall. Doctor Hanc.o.c.k went out with them to give a restorative to the young woman and to take them home in his car.

"Didn't he die at that very moment, Herr Doctor?" whispered Fraulein, and the doctor was obliged to confess that it seemed so.

"But we can't be sure," he insisted.

Fraulein's agitation put an end to the entertainment for that evening.

Indeed, the film was almost exhausted when the bitter sight came to her.

The people filed out seriously.