Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 16

"Yes," she a.s.sented.

Helen had a plan in her mind and she had not meant to tell her mother until the sewing cla.s.s had proved a success and she had learned to do all the things she had mentioned, but she was straightforward and she could not resist sharing her secret with Mrs. Morton.

"I meet so many girls here who are doing something to pay for their holiday, just the way those porters who brought our things down the first morning are, that I'm just crazy to do something, too," she explained breathlessly. "It seemed to me that if I learned how to do the kind of sewing that everybody must have I could get some work to do here and make some money."

Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Emerson looked at each other in amazement. Neither spoke for a moment.

"Why do you need more money, dear? You have your allowance."

"I have plenty of money for all I need; what I want is to feel independent. I don't like to feel that I am a drag on Father and not a help."

"But Father is glad to pay for your living, dear. Just the fact that he has a big, loving daughter is enough return for him."

"I know, Father's a darling. I know he's glad to pay for Roger's education, too, but when Roger earns his room you think it's perfectly fine and when I want to do the same thing you seem to think I'm wanting to do something horrid."

Helen was nearly in tears and the fact that her mother made no reply did not calm her. Mr. Emerson shook his head slowly.

"It's in the air, my dear," he said to Mrs. Morton.

"You're partly right, Helen," said Mrs. Morton at last. "Since Roger is a boy we expect him to earn his living as soon as he is prepared to do so. We should not want him to do it now because his duty now is to secure his education and to make himself strong and well so that he'll be a vigorous and intelligent man. We had not thought of your earning your living outside your home, but if you want to prepare yourself to do so you may. I'm sure your father would have no objection if you selected a definite occupation of which he and I approved and fitted yourself to fill it well. But he would object to your taxing your strength by working now just as he would object to Roger's doing the same thing."

"But you're pleased when Roger earns his room and you seem to think it funny when I want to," repeated Helen.

"Perhaps you are right, dear. It must be because Roger is a boy and so we like to see him turning naturally to being useful and busy just as he must be all the time in a few years."

"But why can't I?"

"I have no objection to your learning how to sew this summer, certainly, if that will satisfy you; and if you'll learn how to make the Ethels'

middy blouses and d.i.c.ky's little suits and rompers, I'll be glad to pay you for them just as I pay a sewing woman at home for making them."

"Oh, Mother," almost sobbed Helen, "that will be good; only," she nodded after a pause, "it won't help Father a bit. The money ought to come out of somebody else's pocket, not his."

"That's true," admitted Mrs. Morton, "but I should have to pay some one to do the work, so why not you? Unless, of course, you wanted to help Father by contributing your work."

"That sounds as if I didn't want to help Father or I'd do it for nothing," exclaimed Helen. "I do really want to help Father, but I want to do it by relieving Father of spending money for me. I'd like to pay my board!"

"This generation doesn't seem to understand family co-operation," said Grandfather Emerson.

"I do want to co-operate," insisted Helen. "I just said I'd like to pay my board and co-operate by contributing to the family expenses in that way. What I don't want is to have any work I do taken for granted just as if we were still pioneers in the wilderness when every member of the family had to give the labor of his hands. I'm willing to work--I'm trying to induce Mother to let me work--but I want a definite value put on it just as there will be a definite value put on Roger's work when he gets started. I'd like to make the middy blouses for the Ethels and have Mother pay me what they were worth, and then pay Mother for my board.

Then I should feel that I was really earning my living. That's the way Roger will do when he's earning a salary. Why shouldn't I do it?"

Helen stopped, breathless. She was too young to realize it, but it was the cry of her time that she was trying to express--the cry of the woman to be considered as separate as the man, to be an individual.

"I understand," said Mrs. Morton soothingly; "but suppose you begin in the way I suggest; and meanwhile we'll put our minds on what you will do after you leave college. There are a good many years yet before you need actually to go out into the world."

"Then I may go this morning and arrange for my lessons?"

"Certainly you may."

"And--and I'm sorry I've done all the talking this morning," apologized Helen. "I'm afraid it hasn't been a very pleasant breakfast."

"A very interesting one," said Mr. Emerson. "It shows that every generation has to be handled differently from the last one," he nodded to his daughter.

"n.o.body has ever been up on the hill to see my room--if Helen will excuse my mentioning it," said Roger.

Helen flushed.

"Don't make fun of me, Roger. You do what you want to and it's all right and I want to do the same thing and it's all wrong," burst out Helen once more.

"There, dear, we don't want to hear it all again. Go and arrange for your lessons and as soon as you can make good blouses I'd like to have a dozen for the Ethels."

"You're a duck, Mother," and Helen ran out of the room, smiling, though with a feeling that she did not quite understand it all. And well she might be puzzled, for what she was struggling with has puzzled wiser heads than hers, and is one of the new problems that has been brought us by the twentieth century.

"I'll walk up with you to see your room, Roger," offered Mr. Emerson, "if you're sure I can go without blundering into some cla.s.s."

"I'll steer you O.K. Come on, sir," cried Roger and he and his grandfather left the cottage as Mrs. Emerson started for her nine o'clock cla.s.s in the Hall of Christ to be followed by the ten o'clock Devotional Hour and the eleven o'clock lecture in the Amphitheatre.

There she would be joined by Mrs. Morton, who went every morning at nine to the Woman's Club in the Hall of Philosophy, and then to a ten o'clock French cla.s.s. Up to the time of the fire the Ethels had escorted d.i.c.ky to the kindergarten and had then run on to the Girls' Club.

Roger and his grandfather strolled northward along the sh.o.r.e of the lake talking about Helen.

"I understand exactly how she feels," said Roger, "because I should feel exactly the same way if you people expected me to do what you expect her to do."

"But she's a girl," remonstrated Mr. Emerson.

"I guess girls nowadays are different from girls in your day, Grandfather," said Roger wisely. "We were talking last night at the Hanc.o.c.ks' about fathers one or two generations ago--how savage they were compared with fathers to-day."

"Savage!" repeated Mr. Emerson under his breath.

"Wasn't your father more severe to his children than you ever were to yours?" persisted Roger.

"Perhaps he was," admitted the old gentleman slowly.

"And I'm sure Father is much easier on me than his father was on him although Father expects a sort of service discipline from me,"

continued Roger.

"May be so," agreed his hearer.

"Just in the same way I believe girls are changing. They used to be content to think what the rest of the family thought on most things. If they ever 'bucked' at all it was when they fell in love with some man the stern parent didn't approve of, and then they were doing something frightful if they insisted on having their own way, like Aunt Louise Morton."

"Surely you don't think she did right to run off!"

"I'm sorry she did it, but I believe if she had been reasoned with instead of ordered, and if Grandfather Morton had tried to see the best in the man she was in love with instead of booting him out as if he were a burglar, it might have come out differently."

"Perhaps it might. Personally I believe in every one's exercising his own judgment."

"And I tell you the girls nowadays have plenty of it," a.s.serted Roger.

"I know lots of girls; there are twenty of them in my cla.s.s at the high school and I don't see but they're just as sensible as we boys and most of them are a heap smarter in their lessons."