Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 35

Once in the Hall the service of Recognition followed; the tale of the historic C. L. S. C. banner was related; five mosaic tablets laid in the flooring were dedicated, and then the lines re-formed and started to the Amphitheatre. The Boys' Guard of Honor preceded the 1914's and repeated their yell.

"Chautauqua! Chautauqua!

Chau-tau-qua!

Nineteen-fourteen!

Rah! Rah! Rah!"

came the shout in the unaccustomed voices of the d.i.c.kens Cla.s.s.

"Show 'em how to do it!" Mrs. Morton heard Roger urging his flock in an undertone.

"Chautauqua! Chautauqua!

Chau-tau-qua!

Nineteen-fourteen!

Rah! Rah! Rah!"

rang out the yell heartily from three score unabashed juvenile throats.

"Great!" commended Roger in a half whisper.

"Fine! Thank you!" responded the d.i.c.kensians gratefully.

Along the lake front the long line twisted, banners s.h.i.+ning, handkerchiefs waving. The moving picture man ground his crank painstakingly; kodakers snapped along the pathway; relatives called out, "There's Mary," or, in shriller tones, "Hullo, Marmer."

The marshal of the division preceded the gleaming white d.i.c.kens banner, bearing the cla.s.s name and year; just behind it followed the cla.s.s officers and then the smiling ranks wound once more between greeting graduates and the boys and Flower Girls into the Amphitheatre.

With the procession seated in the auditorium the young people's work was ended. The girls and boys went off to be refreshed with ice cream cones and the older boys rested under shady trees until such time as they would have to take back the banners to the cla.s.s rooms in Alumni Hall.

"It's a great show," commented Tom Watkins, pa.s.sing his handkerchief over his perspiring forehead.

"A feller doesn't get tired of it if he has seen it all his life,"

agreed James, falling on to his back with his knees crossed high in air.

"We'll have to read the Course ourselves so as to take part in every section of the performance," said Roger who had disposed of his charges and was not sorry to sit down after his unaccustomed duties.

Again the young people fringed the Hall of Philosophy in the afternoon when the Chancellor gave out the diplomas and p.r.o.nounced the members of the cla.s.s of 1914 full fledged members of the Alumni Society of the Hall in the Grove.

"What hath Mother done to make her graduate?" asked d.i.c.ky in a far-reaching whisper as Mrs. Morton received her diploma and was applauded for the Bishop's announcement that she had earned ten seals.

"She has read certain books and magazines faithfully for four years,"

explained Helen, "She didn't read a little bit and then say she was sick of that book, the way I do sometimes; she stuck right to them and read them very carefully, so the Chancellor has given her a diploma, telling what she has done."

"When I grow up," declared d.i.c.ky, "I'm going to be a Chanth.e.l.lor and give people diplomaths and make 'em laugh and clap."

"Mother," said Ethel Brown in the afternoon when Mrs. Morton and Mr.

Emerson and their admiring family had returned to the cottage, "would you object if we had a party this evening while you and Grandfather and Grandmother are at the C. L. S. C. banquet?"

"What sort of party, dear?"

"Oh, I'd like to ask the Hanc.o.c.ks and the Watkinses to supper to celebrate--to celebrate--I don't know just what!" Ethel ended tamely.

"I think in your own mind you'd like a celebration of having finished an unselfish week. Isn't that it? You can make it a celebration for the Watkinses if you initiate them into the United Service Club this evening. Will that do?"

CHAPTER XVIII

IN CAMP

BY the time that the Ethels had learned how to swim well enough to induce Mrs. Morton to let them go across the lake to the Girls' Club camp the season was so far advanced that they had trouble in getting their names on the list at all. Dorothy and Della waited to take their turn at the same time, and when the Inst.i.tution motor-boat at last carried them over it was the last trip of the season.

They found the camping ground on the other side in perfect order for their coming.

"Every squad of campers finds all that it needs to pitch camp with immediately, even down to the wood to make the camp fire," explained Miss Roberts.

"See," cried Ethel Blue, "there it is, stacked up for us. Who does it?"

"The last campers. There was a detachment from the Boys' Club here last night."

"They were fine cleaners--for boys," commented Della.

"Boys are good cleaners," a.s.serted Ethel Brown.

"Oh, Roger has Army and Navy ideas about neatness, but ordinary boys aren't so careful."

"On an earlier trip you girls would leave the camp in just the order in which you found it, wood and all. This is the last one, however, so you won't have to chop wood, but everything else must be so arranged that the men who come over to dismantle the camp will find everything in its place."

It was an evening of delight, to all the girls but especially to Ethel Blue, who had heard her father tell of his camping experiences so often that she felt as if she were repeating one of them through the kind influence of some good fairy who had touched her with her wand without her knowledge.

Pitching the tents was not easy but the girls managed it under the direction of one of Miss Roberts's a.s.sistants. Their united strength was needed for that, but when it was done they divided the remainder of the tasks. Dorothy was one of the squad that made the fire. Ethel Brown went with the girls who took the camp pails to the nearest farmhouse to draw drinking water from the well. Della and three others went up the road a little farther to a dairy to get the evening's supply of milk. Ethel Blue helped unpack the food supplies that had come over in the launch.

When everything was out of the boat and it was chug-chugging away from the sh.o.r.e the campers felt that now they were really cut off from home even if they were not on a desert island.

Not one of the girls ever had eaten a supper that tasted so good as that prepared in the open air and eaten with appet.i.tes sharpened by the exercise of preparation. Dorothy and three of her companions of the cooking cla.s.s volunteered to prepare the main dishes, while Ethel Blue, who had become expert in the water, a.s.sisted the swimming teacher to give a lesson to a few girls who had arrived only a week before. At a suitable time after the lesson was over every girl was directed to cut a forked stick from a near-by hedge. Then they gathered about the fire and each one cooked her own bacon on the end of the fork. Sometimes the flames leaped up and caught the savory bit, and then there was a scream at the tragedy. A huge broiler propped against a stick driven into the ground held a chicken whose skin turned a delicate brown in response to the warmth of the blaze. Potatoes in their jackets and ears of corn in their husks were buried in the ashes with heated stones piled over them so that they should be roasted through evenly. The elders made coffee by the primitive method of boiling it in a saucepan and clearing it with a dash of cold water, and they maintained that no coffee with a percolator experience ever tasted better. None of the girls drank coffee at night, but they all praised the delicious milk that they had brought from the dairy, and started a rivalry of enthusiasm.

When everything was made tidy after supper the fire was heightened to a roaring blaze and the girls sat around it cross-legged and told stories.

"Br'er Rabbit" and the "Tar Baby" seemed just in the shadows beyond the flames and if you listened hard you could hear the hiss of the water as an Indian canoe slipped down the lake in pursuit of Brule or La Salle. A folk dance in the firelight ended the evening's amus.e.m.e.nt.

Bedtime brought an orderly arrangement of the sleeping equipment and a quick going to sleep, for the girls were tired enough to have fatigue overcome the strangeness of their surroundings.

The Ethels, Dorothy, and Della were together. It was at that end of the night when darkness is just giving way to the dim light that comes before the rosiness of the dawn, that Dorothy was roused by heavy breathing outside the tent. A chill of fear stiffened her. In the s.p.a.ce of an eyeflash her mind went back many years to a faraway land where she had been roused in just this way by heavy breathing outside her window.

Then there had been a low call and her father had come into her room and exchanging a word or two over her bed with the man beneath the window, had gone out doors. Almost before she realized that he had gone there was the snap of a revolver and a sharp cry of agony and her mother had shrieked and rushed out, leaving her alone. She was wide awake then and she lay in her narrow bed s.h.i.+vering and wondering.

Her mother came back weeping, and little yellow men had brought in her father's limp body and he had lain on the bed for two days, not opening his eyes, not stirring, until men came once more and carried him away, and she never saw him again.

She had almost outgrown the nightmare that attacked her every once in a while after her father's death, but the memory of the whole happening came back to her now with the sound of the heavy breathing. The suspense was more than she could endure. She reached over and touched Ethel Blue's hand.