Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship Part 25

said Roger. "I hope it for Fraulein's sake, and for his, too. He's a bully singing teacher."

"Has she heard from him since the war began?"

"Several times, but not for a month now, and she's about crazy with anxiety. He was in Belgium when he got the last letter through and of course that means that he has been in the very thick of it all."

"Poor Fraulein!" sighed Ethel Blue, and the others nodded seriously over their work.

CHAPTER XIV

JAMES'S AFTERNOON PARTY

"NOW are you ready to take in all the difficulties of my art object?"

asked Della.

"Trot her out," implored James.

"It's picture books."

A distinct sniff went over the a.s.sembly, only kept in check by a desire to be polite.

"There can't be anything awfully new about picture books," said Tom.

"Especially cloth picture books. You and Helen have been cutting out cambric for cloth picture books," accused Ethel Brown.

"Della has been making some variations, though." Helen came to Della's rescue. "She's made some with the leaves all one color, pink or blue; and here's another one with a variety--two pages light pink, and the next two pages pale green."

Ethel Brown cast a more interested eye toward the picture book display.

"How do you sew them together?" she asked.

"You can do it on the machine and let it go at that. In fact, that's the best plan even if you go on to add some decoration of feather-st.i.tching or cat-st.i.tching. The machine st.i.tching makes it firmer."

"Is there an interlining?"

"I tried them with and without an interlining. I don't think an interlining is necessary. The two thicknesses of cambric are all you need."

"d.i.c.ky has a cloth book with just one thickness for each page," said Ethel Brown.

"But that's made of very heavy cotton," explained Helen.

"You cut your cambric like a sheet of note-paper," said Della.

"Haven't my lessons on scientific management soaked in better than that?" demanded Roger. "If you want to save time you cut just as many sheets of note-paper, so to speak, as your scissors will go through."

"Certainly," retorted Della with dignity. "I took it for granted that the members of the U. S. C. had learned that. Put two sheets of this cambric note-paper together flat and st.i.tch them. That makes four pages to paste on, you see. You can make your book any size you want to and have just as many pages as you need to tell your story on."

"Story? What story?" asked Ethel Blue, interestedly.

"Aha! I thought you'd wake up!" laughed Della. "Here, my children, is where my book differs from most of the cloth picture books that you ever saw. My books aren't careless collections of pictures, with no relation to each other. Here's a cat book, for instance. Not just every-day cats, though I've put in lots of cats and some kodaks of my own cat. There are pictures of the big cats--lions and tigers--and I've put in some scenery so that the child who gets this book will have an idea of what sort of country the beasts really live in."

"It's a natural history book," declared James.

"Partly. But it winds up with 'The True Story of Thomas's Nine Lives.'"

"The kid it is going to won't know English," objected Roger.

"Oh, I haven't written it out. It's just told in pictures with 1, 2, 3, through 9 at the head of each page. They'll understand."

"Do you see what an opportunity the different colored cambric gives?"

said Helen. "Sometimes Della uses colored pictures or she paints them, and then she makes the background harmonize with the coloring of the figures."

"Why couldn't you make a whole book of my silhouettes?" demanded Ethel Brown.

"Bully!" commended James.

"You can work out all sorts of topics in these books, you see," Della went on. "There are all the fairy stories to ill.u.s.trate and 'Red Riding Hood,' and the 'Bears,' and when you get tired of making those you can have one about 'The Wonders of America,' and put in Niagara."

"And the Rocky Mountains," said Tom.

"And the Woolworth Building," suggested Ethel Brown.

"And a cotton field with the negroes picking cotton," added Ethel Blue.

"There wouldn't be any trouble getting material for that one," said Helen.

"Nor for one on any American city. I've got one started that is going to show New York from the statue of Liberty to the Jumel Mansion and the Van Cortland House, with a lot of other historical buildings and skysc.r.a.pers and museums in between."

"We'll be promoting emigration from the old country after the war is over if we show the youngsters all the attractions that Uncle Sam has to offer."

"There'll be a lot of them come over anyway so they might as well learn what they'll see when they arrive."

"I see heaps of opportunities in that idea," said Roger. "There's a chance to teach the kiddies something by these books if we're careful to be truthful in the pictures we put in."

"Not to make monkeys swinging down the forests of Broadway, eh?" laughed Tom.

"If I'm to do a million or two of these you'll all have to help me get the pictures together," begged James.

"I've brought some with me you can have for a starter," said Della, "and I'm collecting others and keeping them in separate envelopes--animals in one and buildings in another and so on. It will make it easier for you."

"_Muchas gracias, Senorita_," bowed James, who was just beginning Spanish and liked to air a "Thank you" occasionally.

"I know what I'm going to make for some member of my family," declared Roger.

"Name it, it will be such a surprise when it comes."