Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 8

"This is Dorothy Smith."

Margaret introduced the young girl on the porch to Helen, for she was already speaking to the Ethels.

"Helen, Helen," they cried, "this is our friend Dorothy we told you about."

Helen looked with interest at the girl who had seemed to know all about Chautauqua as her new acquaintances reported her conversation. She saw a girl about the age of the Ethels but not so tall and lacking in their appearance of vigor. Otherwise she was not unlike them, for she had curly brown hair and her nose was just the least bit "puggy," to use Roger's descriptive word. Her eyes, however, were unlike either Ethels', for they were gray. She had easy manners with a pretty touch of shyness that seemed to Helen quite remarkable since she had travelled all over the United States.

"I wouldn't miss the Girls' Club for anything," she was saying. "I learned how to make lots of things there last summer, and at Christmas time I sold enough to pay my club fee this year, and more too."

Helen looked at her with renewed interest. Here was a girl two years younger than she and she was earning money to pay for her pleasures this summer. It gave her something to think about.

"You and I must join the Young Women's Vacation Club," said Margaret to Helen. "They say they are going to have picnics and plays and great fun.

It's a new club."

"I certainly shall. What kinds of things did you learn to make?" Helen asked Dorothy.

"I put almost all my time on baskets. Mother said she thought it was better to learn how to do one thing very well than to do a lot of things just middling well; so I learned how to make ten different kinds of baskets and trays."

"All different shapes?"

"Different materials, too; wicker and splints and rushes and some pretty gra.s.ses that I found across the lake one afternoon when Mother and I went over to Maple Springs on the steamer."

"I know they were beauties," said Helen heartily.

"They were," confirmed Margaret. "I saw some of them. I thought the prettiest of all was that small tray made of pine needles."

"Pine needles!" exclaimed James. "How could you work with them? I should think they'd come bristling out all the time."

"They were needles from the long-leaved pine that grows in the South. I got them in North Carolina when Mother and I were there the winter before."

"And you sold a lot of them?" ventured Helen, who was not quite sure that it was polite to ask such a question but who was eager to know just how Dorothy had managed.

"It was easy," explained Dorothy simply. "Mother and I were in a town in Illinois last winter. Mother was teaching embroidery in an art store, so she got acquainted with the ladies who were getting up a bazar at Christmas time and they let me sell my things there on commission."

"On commission? What's that?" asked Ethel Blue to Helen's relief, for she did not like to acknowledge that she did not know.

"On commission? Why, I made a table full of baskets and when they sold them they kept one-tenth of the price for their commission. It was like paying rent for the table you see and a salary to a clerk to sell it.

That's the way Mother explained it to me," ended Dorothy rather shyly, for James was staring at her with astonishment that a girl and not a very old girl either should know as much as that about business.

"Hullo, here comes Roger," he exclaimed. "Let's hear what he's been up to," and he left the porch by his usual method--over the rail--and joined his new friend before he reached the house. As they strolled off the girls heard sc.r.a.ps of conversation about "baseball," "first and second crew" and "sailing match."

"Are you all going to the Amphitheatre this evening?" asked Margaret as the Mortons prepared to leave.

"I think Mother will let us go to-night because it's our first night and we're crazy to see everything," replied Ethel Brown, "but she says we've got to go to bed early here just as we do at home or else we'll get thin instead of fat this summer."

"Mother lets me go whenever there are pictures," said Margaret. "Often there are splendid travel lectures that are ill.u.s.trated. I love those.

And once in a while I go to a concert in the evening, but usually I go to the afternoon concerts instead."

"Do you suppose we'll ever be big enough to go to bed just as late as we want to?" Ethel Blue asked Helen as they went up the steps of their own house.

"Even Roger doesn't do that. I remember Father's telling me once that he used to growl about going to bed early when he was a boy and that when the time finally came when he could go to bed as late as he liked he didn't care anything about it and used to go early half the time."

"I don't believe I shall be that way," sighed Ethel. "How queer grown people are!"

But since they had these curious and insistent ideas about the need of repose she eagerly took advantage of any break in the routine such as was offered by the chance to go to the Amphitheatre that evening. It was a wonderful sight, the immense open building, the glittering organ, the brilliant electric lights, and, facing the thousands of people that made up the audience, a slender woman with a marvellously rich voice, who sang negro melodies and told negro stories that brought laughter and tears.

After the recital was over the whole audience went to the lakeside, and there watched the lighting of the signal fires that for years have flashed to the country around the news that another a.s.sembly has opened.

Higher and higher the flames roared at different points along the sh.o.r.e.

Point Chautauqua, across the water, saw the beacon and flashed on the news down the lake until fires far beyond the sight of the people on the a.s.sembly grounds told their story to the dwellers near-by and the glare of the sky pa.s.sed it farther afield.

"Isn't it just too wonderful," whispered Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown, and Ethel Brown answered, "I can't believe we're really here."

CHAPTER V

LEARNING TO SWIM

BY the middle of the next week the Ethels were established in the Girls'

Club and the Club was well under way. Dorothy went with them on the opening morning and introduced them to the director of the Club so that they felt no embarra.s.sment in beginning their new activities. Miss Roberts was a fresh-faced, wholesome young woman whose cordial manner made the girls think of their teacher at home. They liked her at once, and so they were eager to follow any suggestions that she made.

The very first was that which Dorothy's mother had urged upon her the summer before, the suggestion which had made so good a basket-maker of her that she had been able to sell her work during the winter.

"It's a great deal better for you to work hard at one thing," said Miss Roberts in a little speech she made at the opening of the club, "than to learn a little bit about several things. Don't be a 'jack of all trades and good at none' girl; be a thorough work-woman at whatever craft you select. Pick out the thing you think is going to interest you most and put your whole strength on it."

"Stenciling for me," whispered Dorothy, "and invalids' cooking."

"Me, too," said Ethel Brown, who admired her new friend so much that she wanted to have the pleasure of being in the same cla.s.s with her. Ethel Blue looked disturbed when she heard what the others were saying, for she had made up her mind to learn basketry, but it seemed rather forlorn to be in a cla.s.s with girls she did not know at all. She thought she would ask Miss Roberts what she thought about it.

"Another thing I want every girl here to do," went on Miss Roberts, "is to take some physical exercise every day. You'll never have a better chance to learn to swim, for instance, and it is one of our customs to have light gymnastic movements every morning. In about a week the School of Physical Education will have an exhibition in the Amphitheatre and we must send a squad of girls to represent the Club, so the harder you work to become exact and uniform in your exercises the better showing we shall make."

When it came to enrolling in the cla.s.ses both Ethels registered as wanting to swim.

"I must learn," said Ethel Blue, "because I've got an uncle in the Navy."

"And I've got to," laughed Ethel Brown, "because her uncle is my father."

Ethel Brown and Dorothy gave their names for the cla.s.s in stenciling, but Ethel Blue crossed to Miss Roberts's side before she enlisted.

"I know I'd like stenciling," she said, "only I made up my mind that I wanted to make baskets and I really want to do that more than to do stenciling."

"But you think you'll be lonesome? Is that it?" asked the Director with her kind eyes on Ethel's face.

"You see I don't know anybody here but Ethel Brown and Dorothy."

"Come here a minute, Della," called Miss Roberts to a short, rosy-faced girl whose crisp red hair was flying behind her as she skipped across the room.