Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 31

"How do you know?"

"Dorothy told me."

Dorothy sang in the Children's Choir and kept up with the musical activities of Chautauqua more than the Mortons, who were not especially musical.

"Dorothy says that all the music has been ready for some time, so that the singers and players will need just one rehearsal to fit them in right with the other parts of the performance."

"And one of the Vacation Club girls told me," said Helen, "that the elaborate costumes for the ladies and gentlemen of the French Court were to be sent from New York and Chicago, so that only the simple things will have to be made here."

"The Flower Sprites are to wear floating slips of white cheese cloth,"

said Ethel Blue. "I think I can make mine myself."

"I know I can make my Indian clothes," said Ethel Brown, "because they are going to have patterns at the Girls' Club this afternoon and some one to show us how and we'll all make them together."

"The Vacation girls who are to be squaws are going down there this afternoon, too," Helen said.

"I'll walk with you if you'll wait till I find my sewing bag."

"How are the sewing lessons coming on?" asked Mrs. Emerson.

"The best ever, Grandmother. I can make a pretty good b.u.t.tonhole already and by next week I'll be able to fill Mother's order for middies for the Ethels."

"Perhaps your career will prove to be the humble one of sewing," guessed grandmother slyly.

"I don't know that it is so very humble," defended Helen stoutly. "It's one of the most useful occupations there is if you just look at the domestic side of it, and it can be developed into a fine art if you want to go into embroidery. And my teacher says that dressmaking is a fine art, too, when you are designing dresses and not merely turning them out as coverings for the human frame."

Grandmother laughed.

"The factories will turn out the coverings for us, but I can see that your teacher means the adapting of a dress to the style of the wearer."

"She says that a dress ought to be suitable for the purpose for which it is intended--"

"That is, that there should be a sharp distinction between a school dress and a dancing school dress or, for a woman, between an afternoon dress and a dinner dress."

"Yes. The designer ought to study the use to which the dress is to be put and then plan it accordingly. Then she ought to make it suit the person who is to wear it."

"That point seems to be forgotten nowadays when grandmothers and mothers and daughters all wear the same ready-made dresses. The only difference in them is the size."

"They ought to be suitable for the age of the wearer and for her size and shape. If you put a tall woman's dress on a short, fat woman she looks foolish. The lines of the costume ought to bring out the good points of the wearer's figure and make you forget her bad points."

"That means that your mother ought to wear long, flowing lines because she is short and I can wear a tunic if I want to because I am so tall and thin that I can afford to have a few inches seemingly cut off me."

"Then there's coloring. I can wear almost any color because I'm rather indefinite; I just have to be particular about getting the right shade.

But there are certain colors that Margaret can't wear at all on account of her auburn hair--"

"And certain color schemes that she can work out splendidly just because of her auburn hair."

"Doesn't she look pretty in that all brown suit of hers? And she's got a dress of a queer shade of yellow that is just exactly right with her hair and brown eyes. When she wears all those browns and yellows she looks like Autumn."

"We'll see you coming out as Madame Helene and presiding over a big New York dressmaking establishment," smiled Mrs. Emerson.

"I don't believe you will; but I do think there's plenty of opportunity for a real artist in designing dresses, and I wish more girls went into it instead of into teaching."

"Teaching and sewing used to be the only occupations that were thought to be suitable for women when I was young."

"That was drudgery sewing--making men's shirts and doing a lot of finger sewing that can be done by the machine now in the wink of an eye. But the sewing that is worth while cultivating now is the kind that can't be done by the machine but by the fingers of an artist. Embroidery and specialized dressmaking like that we've been talking about--those are the kinds of sewing that make you a craftswoman and an artist and not a drudge."

"You've stowed away all that your teacher has told you, I see."

"She did tell me most of that, but some of it I thought out and then asked her about. You see, since that time when I told Mother I wanted to pay my board--"

"I'm afraid you hurt your mother's feelings then."

"Oh, Granny dear, do you really think so? I didn't mean to, but I couldn't seem to make anybody understand until I said that," Helen paused an instant disconsolately. "Any way, since that time I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do. I want to go to college, but I don't want to teach or be a nurse or a doctor. Margaret says she's going to be a newspaper woman or be on a magazine or something of that sort.

But I seem to be hard to suit."

"It's a long time yet before you have to decide."

"I know it is, but if I decide pretty soon I can make all my college work help me toward what I am going to do afterwards."

"That would be an advantage."

"The trouble is that I like all the homey occupations; I'd like to be the best housekeeper in the world."

"That's a modest wish! However, housekeeping is a science in these days of organizing ideas and knowledge, and if you want to keep house on a large scale it would be perfectly possible for you to learn about sanitation and ventilation and so on at college and then find a position as housekeeper for some charitable inst.i.tution."

"Or be a sort of teaching housekeeper connected with a settlement. I really should like that. If you don't mind I wish you and Mother would visit the School of Mothercraft that is in a cottage half way up the hill to the Post Office. I was pa.s.sing it yesterday and I went in, and, interesting!--well, I should say it was!"

"What do they teach--domestic science?"

"Not the same kind that other schools teach. They teach just what a mother ought to know to run her house properly and to bring up her children properly. They have babies there and the girls who are studying take care of them just as if they were responsible for them. They learn how to feed them to make them grow, and they learn--Oh, it's the best kind of domestic science you ever knew anything about!"

Helen was quite breathless when she stopped.

"Your mother and I will surely go in the next time we go up the hill."

"The school is in New York in the winter, so we can go to see it there sometimes--and I think--I really think, Granny, that I've found what I want."

"I hope you have, dear. It's an interesting something that you've found, at any rate. I'm afraid the Ethels didn't wait for you. They went on when they saw us talking so earnestly."

"Never mind. I'm glad I told you. You see, I told Margaret and she didn't think much of it. Just housekeeping seemed too small for her. But I think it's natural and interesting and gives you lots of opportunities. If you don't have a family of your own to look after you can help out some other woman who has one that she doesn't know how to manage, or I--I really think I'd like to run an orphan asylum and be a mother to several hundred chicks at once."

"If you don't hurry you won't learn how to make Indian dresses for them."

"They're easy," laughed Helen. "I expect to finish mine this afternoon and make Roger's to-morrow afternoon and then help on any others that are lying about to be attended to. Margaret and I told our sewing teacher about the United Service Club and she said that she could give us a chance to help with these costumes. There won't be much self-sacrifice in it, for she's going to superintend it all so it will be almost like having another sewing lesson."

"It seems to me she is qualifying to become a member herself if she is giving her time in the afternoons to helping out with all these costumes."