Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 9

"Those are the ventilators. Don't you think we've made everything very compact here? All these pipes take up very little room."

"Mighty little!" commended Roger. "And they're all open so you can get at them without any trouble."

"Here's a scheme Patrick suggested," laughed Dorothy, pointing upward to what looked like a concrete shelf with an upturned border almost at the top of the cellar wall.

"What's it for?" asked Ethel Brown.

"That shelf is directly underneath the seat beside the fireplace in the drawing room. Patrick plans to save himself the trouble of carrying up the logs by piling them on this shelf down here. Then he lifts the cover of the seat upstairs and all he has to do is to take out his wood and make his fire!"

"That certainly is a cracker-jack labor saving device! Good for Patrick!"

"He's especially tickled with the vacuum cleaner run by this same little motor. You ought to hear him talk about it."

"What are these cupboards for?" asked Helen who had been exploring.

"That one with the gla.s.s doors is for preserves, and the place in the other corner that has a fence for its two inside walls is a place for cleaning silver and shoes and lamps and bra.s.ses. See--there are cupboards along the inside of the fence. They hold all the cleaning materials, and the cleaner can sit in a swing chair in the middle and use a different part of the concrete shelf against the two cellar walls for boots or fire-irons or knives and forks or lamps. At one end is a sink so he can have what water he needs for his work and he can wash his hands when he turns from one kind of cleaning to another."

"And he isn't all smothered up in a small room. Who thought of that?"

"Patrick and I worked that out together. Patrick has lots of ingenuity."

"I should say you had, too!" exclaimed Della, admiringly.

"Here's where Dorothy does her carpentering," cried James.

"I may move that bench up in the attic later," explained Dorothy, "but I thought I'd leave it here until the house was done, because there are apt to be little things to be hammered and nailed for some time, I suppose."

"How long are you going to be before you fikth a plathe for Chrithopher Columbuth?" demanded d.i.c.ky, whose patience was entirely exhausted.

"We'll make him happy right here and now," answered Dorothy briskly, throwing open the door of the laundry.

The sun shone gayly on the concrete floor and the room was a cheerful spot. An electric washing machine stood ready although covered tubs were built against the wall for use in emergencies, and at one side was a drying closet. There were numerous plugs against the wall for the attachment of pressing irons.

"What's this?" asked Ethel Brown, lifting a cover of a hopper at the base of a chute.

"That's the chute for soiled clothes. The other end is on the bedroom floor, and it saves carrying."

"That's as good as Patrick's log device!" smiled Helen.

"Shall I put Christopher's log in here?" asked Roger, lifting the top of one of the stationary tubs.

"Yes, fix it so he can crawl up and sit in the sunshine where it strikes the tub. We'll have to draw some water from the hydrant outside; the water isn't turned on in the house yet."

Roger picked up a pail that was standing near by and went up the cellar stairs two at a time.

"Now, sir," he said to d.i.c.ky when he came back, "I'll lift you up and you can put Christopher into his new abode."

d.i.c.ky deposited his charge gently on the log and he lay there poking out his head to enjoy the sunshine.

"Did you bring some bits of meat for him?" Roger asked.

For answer d.i.c.ky turned out of the pocket of his rompers a handful of chopped beef.

"Certainly unappetizing in appearance," said Tom, wrinkling his nose, "but I dare say Christopher is not particular."

CHAPTER V THE LAW OF LAUGHTER

The Mortons were sitting on their porch on a warm evening waving fans and trying to think that the coming night promised comfortable sleep. The Ethels sat on the upper step, Roger was stretched on the floor at one side, Helen sat beside her mother's hammock which she kept in gentle motion by an occasional movement of her hand, and d.i.c.ky was dozing in a large chair. In a near-by tree an insect insisted that "Katy did," and in the gra.s.s a cricket chirruped its shrill call.

"I do feel that Aunt Louise's being able to build this pretty house after all her years of wandering is about the nicest thing that ever happened out of a fairy story," murmured Helen softly to her mother, but loudly enough for the others to hear.

"There are people who talk about the law of compensation," smiled Mrs.

Morton in the darkness. "They think that if one good is lacking in our lives other goods take its place."

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe that everything that happens to us comes because we have obeyed or disobeyed G.o.d's laws. Sometimes we are quite unconscious of disobeying them, but the law has to work out just as if we knew all about it."

"For instance?" came a deep voice from the floor, indicating that Roger had awakened.

"Do you remember the time you walked off the end of the porch one day?"

"I should say I did! My nose aches at the mere thought of it."

"You didn't know anything about the law of gravitation, but the law worked in your case just as if you had known all about it."

"I'm bound to state that it did," confirmed Roger, still gently rubbing his nose as he lay in the shadow.

"It seems as if it might have held up for a little boy who didn't know what he was going to get by disobeying it," said Ethel Blue sympathetically.

"But it didn't and it never does," returned Mrs. Morton. "That's one reason why we ought to try to learn what G.o.d's laws are just as fast and as thoroughly as we can; not only the laws of nature like the law of gravitation, but laws of morality and justice and right thinking and unselfishness and kindness toward others."

"Sometimes mighty mean people seem to prosper," said Ethel Brown, with a hint of rebellion in her voice.

"That's because those people obey to the letter the law that controls prosperity of a material kind. A man may be cruel to his wife and unkind to his children, but he may have a genius for making money. Some people call it the law of compensation. I call it merely an understanding of the financial law and a lack of understanding of the law of kindness."

"I don't see what law dear Aunt Louise could have broken to have made her have such a hard time," wondered Ethel Blue. "Her husband being killed and her having to wander about without a home for so many years--that seems like a hard punishment."

"Men have decided that 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'!" said her aunt, "and the same thing is true of laws that are not man-made."

"That seems awfully hard," objected Helen; "it doesn't seem fair to punish a person for what he doesn't know."

"If a cannibal should come to Rosemont and should kill some one and have a barbecue, we should think that he ought to be deprived of his liberty because he was a dangerous person to have about, even if we felt sure that he did not know that he was doing an act forbidden by New Jersey law. The position is that although a person may be ignorant of the law it is his business to know it. That seems to be the way with the higher laws; we may break them in our ignorance--but we ought not to be ignorant. We ought to try just as hard as we know how all the time to do everything as well as we can and to be as good as we can. If we never let ourselves do a mean act or think a mean thought we're bound to come to an understanding of the great laws sooner than if we just jog along not thinking anything about them. I believe one reason why your Aunt Louise was so slow in reaching the end of her troubles after Uncle Leonard died was because she was unable to control her sorrow. She has told me that she was completely crushed by his death and the condition of poverty in which she found herself with a little child--Dorothy--to take care of."

"I don't blame her," murmured Ethel Blue.