Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 32

"Command me," murmured Roger again.

"Poor old Roger! You shan't be worked to death! Patrick will do the grinding."

"For small mercies I'm thankful," returned Roger, a beaming smile breaking over his face.

"I speak for chopped preserved ginger with whipped cream, served in those lovely ramequins of Aunt Louise's," cried Ethel Blue.

"Why can't we have maple marguerites to go with everything?"

"New to me, but let's have 'em," urged Roger.

"Boil together a cup and a half of brown sugar and a half a cup of water until it makes a soft ball when it's dropped into cold water. Let it cool for a few minutes and then put in half a teaspoonful of maple flavoring and beat it all together. Have ready a quarter of a cup of finely chopped nut meats. Add half of this amount and drop this perfectly _dee_-licious stuff on to crackers. While it's still warm enough to be sticky sprinkle over the crackers the remainder of the nut meats."

"I'll grind the nut meats," offered Roger.

"And ask for heavy pay in marguerites!" laughed Ethel Brown.

"I scorn your aspersions of my character," returned her brother solemnly.

"What are you going to have to drink?"

"Coffee--grape-juice--lemonade--the usual things."

"I think that's a pretty good list. Write it down and let's see what Aunt Louise thinks of it," recommended Helen.

CHAPTER XVI COLUMBUS DAY

Ethel Blue, as Columbus Day approached, was filled with many strange feelings, some of them far from pleasant. When she read a letter from her father a few days before the twelfth she felt as if dread had brought upon her exactly what she had dreaded. The letter was filled with loving expressions but it told her that her father was to be married very soon.

"I know that you will love the dear lady who has honored me by saying that she will relieve my loneliness," he wrote.

"_I_ would have relieved his loneliness if he had given me a chance,"

Ethel sobbed to herself as she lay on her bed and read the tear-blotted lines for the tenth time.

"It will be a sorrow to you to leave Aunt Marion and your cousins, but perhaps the thought that now you will belong in a home of your own will make up for it, in part, at any rate. I don't see how we can all help being happy together, and we must all try to make each other happy."

Ethel Blue thought of a great many things to say in reply to her father.

They sounded very smart and very convincing as she said them over to herself in a whisper, but just as she was wiping her eyes and getting up to sit at her desk and put them on paper her Aunt Marion's suggestion that she would be selfish if she did anything that would hurt her father or prevent him from making a belated happiness for himself cut her to the heart.

"He doesn't love me or he wouldn't do it," she repeated, and then she remembered that all her life she had had a home and a loving family of cousins who were as good as brothers and sisters, while her father had spent the same time without the thought, even, of home-making.

"I suppose it's some old Fort Myer woman who's as cross as two sticks,"

she murmured again and again; and then an inner voice seemed to speak in her ear and tell her that there was no reason why she should not imagine that it was some really lovely person who was as sweet as she was pretty.

"Everybody says my mother was pretty," thought poor Ethel Blue, who had been making herself very miserable by her old habit of "pretending"

without any basis of fact, and who now was trying to get a sc.r.a.p of comfort from the thought that her father had had good taste once and might be trusted to exercise it again.

Whether or not to show the letter to her Aunt Marion she did not know.

Her father had not said whether he had informed her or not. Usually Ethel told her aunt everything promptly, but now she did not feel as if she could speak of the thing that had appeared dreadful when it was only a possibility. The reality was so much worse that it did not seem as if she could trust herself to mention it.

"Aunt Louise has asked him to come on to the housewarming," she said.

"I'll wait and see if he comes. Then he can tell her and Aunt Marion himself; and if he doesn't come it won't be any worse for me to tell them a few days from now than right off this minute."

It was so forlorn an Ethel Blue who dragged herself through the preparations for the Columbus Day entertainment, that Ethel Brown could not help noticing the melancholy air that hung over her usually smiling face. Ethel Blue would make no explanation to her cousin, nor would she tell her aunt anything more than the rea.s.suring words that she was perfectly well. They gave up trying to make her talk about herself, trusting to time to bring its own healing.

No letter came from her father announcing his acceptance of his sister Louise's invitation, nor did another letter reach Ethel Blue. She was inclined to make a grievance of this until it occurred to her that she was not likely to hear until she replied to her father's announcement of his proposed marriage.

"It's a serious thing and I ought to answer his letter right off," her conscience told her, "but I can't say I'm glad and I don't want to say I'm not glad. I'll wait until after the twelfth, any way."

Her feelings of selfishness and uncertainty made her a miserable girl during the interval.

On the morning of Columbus Day the Mortons and Hanc.o.c.ks went into New York to the Watkinses. Della's and Tom's father was a clergyman who worked among the foreigners of the East Side. This was an advantage to the Club members when they watched the procession that wound its way from the lower part of the city northward to Columbus Circle at 59th Street.

"These people must come from all over Europe," exclaimed Ethel Brown as bits of conversation in languages that she never had heard drifted to her ears.

"New York is called one of the largest foreign cities in the world,"

laughed Roger, whose spirits had risen although he was having difficulties again with his camera and its persistent desire to take everything that came within its range, "whether the girls are pretty or not!" he complained.

"They say that New York is the second largest German city in the world, and that there are more Hebrews of different nationalities gathered here than anywhere else," said Tom.

"Here are a lot of people wearing peasant costumes that I never saw in any geography," cried Dorothy.

"When otherwise not accounted for you can generally put them among the Balkan states," laughed Della.

"Look at that girl over there in peasant costume and right side of her is a girl in the latest New York style! That's a tremendous contrast."

"I suppose the American-dressed girl thinks she is very fashionable, but the other looks much more sensibly dressed and more attractive, too,"

said James gravely.

"She's a great deal prettier girl for one reason," smiled his sister.

"She would look better whatever she wore."

They all laughed at James who insisted that he preferred peasant dress, but they all exclaimed with delight at the gorgeous costumes worn by a group of Hungarian men. Some of them were riding in carriages and they seemed very self-conscious but greatly pleased at the attention they attracted.

"This is a great day for the Italians," said Helen as band after band, and society after society, bearing the Italian red, white and green pa.s.sed them.

"Well, Columbus was an Italian. They ought to feel comfortable about it.

He discovered us."

They all shouted at James's way of putting his defense of Columbus's countrymen.

"If we're going to hear any of the speeches at Columbus Circle we'd better hop into the subway and speed to 59th Street," urged Tom.

They were in plenty of time, and watched the placing around the Columbus monument of numberless wreaths and emblems which the societies brought with them, chiefly at the ends of tall poles and deposited at the feet of the statue of the great explorer.

As soon as they reached home the Mortons all went over to Sweetbrier Lodge to help with the final decorations. The attic they had set in order the day before. This was necessary for they had to have a curtain and they wanted to put it through a rehearsal as well as themselves. Extra chairs had been brought in for the occasion and they were now unfolded so that the little audience room was ready for its opening performance.