ETHEL MORTON'S ENTERPRISE
By
MABELL S.C. SMITH
CONTENTS
I HOW IT STARTED
II A SNOW MAN AND SEED CATALOGUES
III DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET
IV GARDENING ON PAPER
V A DEFECT IN THE TITLE
VI WILD FLOWERS FOR HELEN'S GARDEN
VII COLOR SCHEMES
VIII CAVE LIFE
IX "NOTHING BUT LEAVES"
X THE U.S.C. AND THE COMMUNITY
XI THE FLOWER FESTIVAL
XII ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY
XIII IN BUSINESS
XIV UNCLE DAN'S RESEARCHES
XV FUR AND FOSSILS
XVI FAIRYLAND
XVII THE MISSING HEIRESS
CHAPTER I
HOW IT STARTED
Ethel Morton, called from the color of her eyes Ethel "Blue" to
distinguish her from her cousin, also Ethel Morton, whose brown eyes
gave her the nickname of Ethel "Brown," was looking out of the window at
the big, damp flakes of snow that whirled down as if in a hurry to cover
the dull January earth with a gay white carpet.
"The giants are surely having a pillow fight this afternoon," she
laughed.
"In honor of your birthday," returned her cousin.
"The snowflakes are really as large as feathers," added Dorothy Smith,
another cousin, who had come over to spend the afternoon.
All three cousins had birthdays in January. The Mortons always
celebrated the birthdays of every member of the family, but since there
were three in the same month they usually had one large party and
noticed the other days with less ceremony. This year Mrs. Emerson, Ethel
Brown's grandmother, had invited the whole United Service Club, to which
the girls belonged, to go to New York on a day's expedition. They had
ascended the Woolworth Tower, gone through the Natural History Museum,
seen the historic Jumel Mansion, lunched at a large hotel and gone to
the Hippodrome. Everybody called it a perfectly splendid party, and
Ethel Blue and Dorothy were quite willing to consider it as a part of
their own birthday observances.
Next year it would be Dorothy's turn. This year her party had consisted
merely in taking her cousins on an automobile ride. A similar ride had
been planned for Ethel Blue's birthday, but the giants had plans of
their own and the young people had had to give way to them. Dorothy had
come over to spend the afternoon and dine with her cousins, however. She
lived just around the corner, so her mother was willing to let her go in
spite of the gathering drifts, because Roger, Ethel Brown's older
brother, would be able to take her home such a short distance, even if
he had to shovel a path all the way.
The snow was so beautiful that they had not wanted to do anything all
the afternoon but gaze at it. Dicky, Ethel Brown's little brother, who
was the "honorary member" of the U.S.C., had come in wanting to be
amused, and they had opened the window for an inch and brought in a few
of the huge flakes which grew into ferns and starry crystals under the
magnifying glass that Mrs. Morton always kept on the desk.
"Wouldn't it be fun if our eyeth could thee thingth like that!"
exclaimed Dicky, and the girls agreed with him that it would add many
marvels to our already marvellous world.
"As long as our eyes can't see the wee things I'm glad Aunt Marion
taught us to use this glass when we were little," said Ethel Blue who
had been brought up with her cousins ever since she was a baby.
"Mother says that when she and Uncle Roger and Uncle Richard," said
Dorothy, referring to Ethel Brown's and Ethel Blue's fathers, her
uncles - "were all young at home together Grandfather Morton used to make
them examine some new thing every day and tell him about it. Sometimes
it would be the materials a piece of clothing was made of, or the paper
of a magazine or a flower - anything that came along."
[Illustration: "It looked just as if it were a house with a lot of
rooms"]
"When I grow up," said Ethel Blue, "I'm going to have a large microscope
like the one they have in the biology class in the high school. Helen
took me to the class with her one day and the teacher let me look
through it. It was perfectly wonderful. There was a slice of the stem of
a small plant there and it looked just as if it were a house with a lot
of rooms. Each room was a cell, Helen said."
"A very suitable name," commented Ethel Brown.
"What are you people talking about?" asked Helen, who came in at that
instant.
"I was telling the girls about that time when I looked through the high
school microscope," answered Ethel Blue.
[Illustration: Single Cell]
[Illustration: Double Cell]
"You saw among other things, some cells in the very lowest form of life.
A single cell is all there is to the lowest animal or vegetable."
[Illustration: Multiple Cells]
"What do you mean by a single cell?"
"Just a tiny mass of jelly-like stuff that is called protoplasm. The
cells grow larger and divide until there are a lot of them. That's the
way plants and animals grow."
"If each is as small as those I saw under the microscope there must be
billions in me!" and Ethel Blue stretched her arms to their widest
extent and threw her head upwards as far as her neck would allow.
"I guess there are, young woman," and Helen went off to hang her snowy
coat where it would dry before she put it in the closet.
"There'th a thnow flake that lookth like a plant!" cried Dicky who had
slipped open the window wide enough to capture an especially large
feather.
"It really does!" exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was nearest to her little
cousin and caught a glimpse of the picture through the glass before the
snow melted.
"Did it have 'root, stem and leaves'?" asked Dorothy. "That's what I
always was taught made a plant - root, stem and leaves. Would Helen call
a cell that you couldn't see a plant?"
"Yes," came a faint answer from the hall. "If it's living and isn't an
animal it's a vegetable - though way down in the lower forms it's next to
impossible to tell one from the other. There isn't any rule that doesn't
have an exception."
"I should think the biggest difference would be that animals eat plants
and plants eat - what do plants eat?" ended Dorothy lamely.
"That is the biggest difference," assented Helen. "Plants are fed by
water and mineral substances that come from the soil directly, while
animals get the mineral stuff by way of the plants."
"Father told us once about some plants that caught insects. They eat
animals."
"And there are animals that eat both vegetables and animals, you and I,
for instance. So you can't draw any sharp lines."
"When a plant gets out of the cell stage and has a 'root, stem and
leaves' then you know it's a plant if you don't before," insisted
Dorothy, determined to make her knowledge useful.
"Did any of you notice the bean I've been sprouting in my room?" asked
Helen.
"I'll get it, I'll get it!" shouted Dicky.
"Trust Dicky not to let anything escape his notice!" laughed his big
sister.
Dicky returned in a minute or two carrying very carefully a shallow
earthenware dish from which some thick yellow-green tips were sprouting.
"I soaked some peas and beans last week," explained Helen, "and when
they were tender I planted them. You see they're poking up their heads
now."
[Illustration: Bean Plant]
"They don't look like real leaves," commented Ethel Blue.
"This first pair is really the two halves of the bean. They hold the
food for the little plant. They're so fat and pudgy that they never do
look like real leaves. In other plants where there isn't so much food
they become quite like their later brothers."
"Isn't it queer that whatever makes the plant grow knows enough to send
the leaves up and the roots down," said Dorothy thoughtfully.
"That's the way the life principle works," agreed Helen. "This other
little plant is a pea and I want you to see if you notice any difference
between it and the bean."
She pulled up the wee growth very delicately and they all bent over it
as it lay in her hand.
"It hathn't got fat leaveth," cried Dicky.
[Illustration: The Pea Plant]
"Good for Dicky," exclaimed Helen. "He has beaten you girls. You see the
food in the pea is packed so tight that the pea gets discouraged about
trying to send up those first leaves and gives it up as a bad job. They
stay underground and do their feeding from there."
"A sort of cold storage arrangement," smiled Ethel Brown.
"After these peas are a little taller you'd find if you pulled them up
that the supply of food had all been used up. There will be nothing down
there but a husk."
"What happens when this bean plant uses up all its food?"
"There's nothing left but a sort of skin that drops off. You can see how
it works with the bean because that is done above the ground."
"Won't it hurt those plants to pull them up this way?"
"It will set them back, but I planted a good many so as to be able to
pull them up at different ages and see how they looked."
"You pulled that out so gently I don't believe it will be hurt much."
"Probably it will take a day or two for it to catch up with its
neighbors. It will have to settle its roots again, you see."
"What are you doing this planting for?" asked Dorothy.
"For the class at school. We get all the different kinds of seeds we
can - the ones that are large enough to examine easily with only a
magnifying glass like this one. Some we cut open and examine carefully
inside to see how the new leaves are to be fed, and then we plant others
and watch them grow."
"I'd like to know why you never told me about that before?" demanded
Ethel Brown. "I'm going to get all the grains and fruits I can right off
and plant them. Is all that stuff in a horse chestnut leaf-food?"
"The horse chestnut is a hungry one, isn't it?"
"I made some bulbs blossom by putting them in a tall glass in a dark
place and bringing them into the light when they had started to sprout,"
said Ethel Blue, "but I think this is more fun. I'm going to plant some,
too."
"Grandmother Emerson always has beautiful bulbs. She has plenty in her
garden that she allows to stay there all winter, and they come up and
are scrumptious very early in the Spring. Then she takes some of them
into the house and keeps them in the dark, and they blossom all through
the cold weather."
"Mother likes bulbs, too," said Dorothy, "crocuses and hyacinths and
Chinese lilies - but I never cared much about them. Somehow the bulb
itself looks too fat. I don't care much for fat things or people."
"Don't think of it as fat; it's the food supply."
"Well, I think they're greedy things, and I'm not going ever to bother
with them. I'll leave them to Mother, but I am really going to plant a
garden this summer. I think it will be loads of fun."
"We haven't much room for a garden here," said Helen, "but we always
have some vegetables and a few flowers."
"Why don't we have a fine one this summer, Helen?" demanded Ethel Brown.
"You're learning a lot about the way plants grow, I should think you'd
like to grow them."
"I believe I should if you girls would help me. There never has been any
member of the family who was interested, and I wasn't wild about it
myself, and I just never got started."
"The truth is," confessed Ethel Brown, "if we don't have a good garden
Dorothy here will have something that will put ours entirely in the
shade."
The girls all laughed. They never had known Dorothy until the previous
summer. When she came to live in Rosemont in September they had learned
that she was extremely energetic and that she never abandoned any plan
that she attempted. The Ethels knew, therefore, that if Dorothy was
going to have a garden the next summer they'd better have a garden, too,
or else they would see little of her.
"If we both have gardens Dorothy will condescend to come and see ours
once in a while and we can exchange ideas and experiences," continued
Ethel Brown.
"I'd love to have a garden," said Ethel Blue. "Do you suppose Roger
would be willing to dig it up for us?"
"Dig up what?" asked Roger, stamping into the house in time to hear his
name.
The girls told him of their new plan.
"I'll help all of you if you'll plant one flower that I like; plant
enough of it so that I can pick a lot any time I want to. The trouble
with the little garden we've had is that there weren't enough flowers
for more than the centrepiece in the dining-room. Whenever I wanted any
I always had to go and give a squint at the dining room table and then
do some calculation as to whether there could be a stalk or two left
after Helen had cut enough for the next day."
"And there generally weren't any!" sympathized Helen.
"What flower is it you're so crazy over?" asked Ethel Blue.
"Sweetpeas, my child. Never in all my life have I had enough sweetpeas."
"I've had more than enough," groaned Ethel Brown. "One summer I stayed a
fortnight with Grandmother Emerson and I picked the sweetpeas for her
every morning. She was very particular about having them picked because
they blossom better if they're picked down every day."
"It must have taken you an awfully long time; she always has rows and
rows of them," said Helen.
"I worked a whole hour in the sun every single day! If we have acres of
sweetpeas we'll all have to help Roger pick."
"I'm willing to," said Ethel Blue. "I'm like Roger, I think they're
darling; just like butterflies or something with wings."
"We'll have to cast our professional eyes into the garden and decide on
the best place for the sweetpeas," said Roger. "They have to be planted
early, you know. If we plant them just anywhere they'll be sure to be in
the way of something that grows shorter so it will be hidden."
"Or grows taller and is a color that fights with them."
"It would be hard to find a color that wasn't matched by one sweetpea or
another. They seem to be of every combination under the sun."
"It's queer, some of the combinations would be perfectly hideous in a
dress but they look all right in Nature's dress."
"We'll send for some seedsmen's catalogues and order a lot."
"I suppose you don't care what else goes into the garden?" asked Helen.
"Ladies, I'll do all the digging you want, and plant any old thing you
ask me to, if you'll just let me have my sweetpeas," repeated Roger.
"A bargain," cried all the girls.
"I'll write for some seed catalogues this afternoon," said Helen. "It's
so appropriate, when it's snowing like this!"
"'Take time by the fetlock,' as one of the girls says in 'Little
Women,'" laughed Roger. "If you'll cast your orbs out of the window
you'll see that it has almost stopped. Come on out and make a snow man."
Every one jumped at the idea, even Helen who laid aside her writing
until the evening, and there was a great putting on of heavy coats and
overshoes and mittens.
CHAPTER II
A SNOW MAN AND SEED CATALOGUES
The snow was of just the right dampness to make snowballs, and a snow
man, after all, is just a succession of snowballs, properly placed.
Roger started the one to go at the base by rolling up a ball beside the
house and then letting it roll down the bank toward the gate.
"See it gather moss!" he cried. "It's just the opposite of a rolling
stone, isn't it?"
When it stopped it was of goodly size and it was standing in the middle
of the little front lawn.
"It couldn't have chosen a better location," commended Helen.
"We need a statue in the front yard," said Ethel Brown.
"This will give a truly artistic air to the whole place," agreed Ethel
Blue.
"What's the next move?" asked Dorothy, who had not had much experience
in this kind of manufacture.
"We start over here by the fence and roll another one, smaller than
this, to serve as the body," explained Roger. "Come on here and help me;
this snow is so heavy it needs an extra pusher already."
Dorothy lent her muscles to the task of pushing on the snow man's
"torso," as Ethel Blue, who knew something about drawing figures, called
it. The Ethels, meanwhile, were making the arms out of small snowballs
placed one against the next and slapped hard to make them stick. Helen
was rolling a ball for the head and Dicky had disappeared behind the
house to hunt for a cane.
"Heigho!" Roger called after him. "I saw an old clay pipe stuck behind a
beam in the woodshed the other day. See if it's still there and bring it
along."
Dicky nodded and raised a mittened paw to indicate that he understood
his instructions.
It required the united efforts of Helen and Roger to set the gentleman's
head on his shoulders, and Helen ran in to the cellar to get some bits
of coal to make his eyes and mouth.
"He hasn't any expression. Let me try to model a nose for the poor
lamb!" begged Ethel Blue. "Stick on this arm, Roger, while I sculpture
these marble features."
By dint of patting and punching and adding a long and narrow lump of
snow, one side of the head looked enough different from the other to
warrant calling it the face. To make the difference more marked Dorothy
broke some straws from the covering of one of the rosebushes and created
hair with them.
"Now nobody could mistake this being his speaking countenance," decided
Helen, sticking two pieces of coal where eyes should be and adding a
third for the mouth. Dicky had found the pipe and she thrust it above
his lips.
"Merely two-lips, not ruby lips," commented Roger. "This is an original
fellow; he's 'not like other girls.'"
"This cane is going to hold up his right arm; I don't feel so certain
about the left," remarked Ethel Brown anxiously.
"Let it fall at his side. That's some natural, anyway. He's walking, you
see, swinging one arm and with the other on the top of his cane."
"He'll take cold if he doesn't have something on his head. I'm nervous
about him," and Dorothy bent a worried look at their creation.
"Hullo," cried a voice from beyond the gate. "He's bully. Just make him
a cap out of this bandanna and he'll look like a Venetian gondolier."
James Hancock and his sister, Margaret, the Glen Point members of the
United Service Club, came through the gate, congratulated Ethel Blue on
her birthday, and paid elaborate compliments to the sculptors of the
Gondolier.
"That red hanky on his massive brow gives the touch of color he needed,"
said Margaret.
"We don't maintain that his features are 'faultily faultless,'" quoted
Roger, "but we do insist that they're 'icily regular.'"
"Thanks to the size of the nose Ethel Blue stuck on they're not
'splendidly null.'"
"No, there's no 'nullness' about that nose," agreed James. "That's
'some' nose!"
When they were all in the house and preparing for dinner Ethel Blue
unwrapped the gift that Margaret had brought for her birthday. It was a
shallow bowl of dull green pottery in which was growing a grove of
thick, shiny leaves. The plants were three or four inches tall and
seemed to be in the pink of condition.
"This is for the top of your Christmas desk," Margaret explained.
"It's perfectly beautiful," exclaimed not only Ethel Blue but all the
other girls, while Roger peered over their shoulders to see what it was.
"I planted it myself," said Margaret with considerable pride. "Each one
is a little grapefruit tree."
"Grapefruit? What we have for breakfast? It grows like this?"
"Mother has some in a larger bowl and it is really lovely as a
centrepiece on the dining room table."
"Watch me save grapefruit seeds!" and Ethel Brown ran out of the room to
leave an immediate request in the kitchen that no grapefruit seeds
should be thrown away when the fruit was being prepared for the table.
"When Mr. Morton and I were in Florida last winter," said Mrs. Morton,
"they told us that it was not a great number of years ago that
grapefruit was planted only because it was a handsome shrub on the lawn.
The fruit never was eaten, but was thrown away after it fell from the
tree."
"Now nobody can get enough of it," smiled Helen.
"Mother has a receipt for grapefruit marmalade that is better than the
English orange marmalade that is made of both sweet and sour oranges,"
said Dorothy. "Sometimes the sour oranges are hard to find in the
market, but grapefruit seems to have both flavors in itself."
"Is it much work?" asked Margaret.
"It isn't much work at any one time but it takes several days to get it
done."
"Why?"
"First you have to cut up the fruit, peel and all, into tiny slivers.
That's a rather long undertaking and it's hard unless you have a very,
very sharp knife."
"I've discovered that in preparing them for breakfast."
"The fruit are of such different sizes that you have to weigh the result
of your paring. To every pound of cut-up fruit add a pint of water and
let it stand over night. In the morning pour off that water and fill the
kettle again and let it boil until the toughest bit of skin is soft, and
then let it stand over night more."
"It seems to do an awful lot of resting," remarked Roger.
"A sort of 'weary Willie,'" commented James.
"When you're ready to go at it again, you weigh it once more and add
four times as many pounds of sugar as you have fruit."
"You must have to make it in a wash-boiler!"
"Not quite as bad as that, but you'll be surprised to find how much
three or four grapefruit will make. You boil this together until it is
as thick as you like to have your marmalade."
"I can recommend Aunt Louise's marmalade," said Ethel Brown. "It's the
very best I ever tasted. She taught me to make these grapefruit chips,"
and she handed about a bonbon dish laden with delicate strips of sugared
peel.
"Let's have this receipt, too," begged Margaret, as Roger went to answer
the telephone.
"You can squeeze out the juice and pulp and add a quart of water to a
cup of juice, sweeten it and make grapefruit-ade instead of lemonade for
a variety. Then take the skins and cut out all the white inside part as
well as you can, leaving just the rind."
"The next step must be to snip the rind into these long, narrow
shavings."
"It is, and you put them in cold water and let them come to a boil and
boil twenty minutes. Then drain off all the water and add cold water and
do it again."
"What's the idea of two boilings?" asked James.
"I suppose it must be to take all the bitterness out of the skin at the
same time that it is getting soft."
"Does this have to stand over night?"
"Yes, this sits and meditates all night. Then you put it on to boil
again in a syrup made of one cup of water and four cups of sugar, and
boil it until the bits are all saturated with the sweetness. If you want
to eat them right off you roll them now in powdered sugar or
confectioner's sugar, but if you aren't in a hurry you put them into a
jar and keep the air out and roll them just before you want to serve
them."
"They certainly are bully good," remarked James, taking several more
pieces.
"That call was from Tom Watkins," announced Roger, returning from the
telephone, and referring to a member of the United Service Club who,
with his sister, Della, lived in New York.
"O dear, they can't come!" prophesied Ethel Blue.
"He says he has just been telephoning to the railroad and they say that
all the New Jersey trains are delayed and so Mrs. Watkins thought he'd
better not try to bring Della out. She sends her love to you, Ethel
Blue, and her best wishes for your birthday and says she's got a present
for you that is different from any plant you ever saw in a
conservatory."
"That's what Margaret's is," laughed Ethel. "Isn't it queer you two
girls should give me growing things when we were talking about gardens
this afternoon and deciding to have one this summer."
"One!" repeated Dorothy. "Don't forget mine. There'll be two."
"If Aunt Louise should find a lot and start to build there'd be
another," suggested Ethel Brown.
"O, let's go into the gardening business," cried Roger. "I've already
offered to be the laboring man at the beck and call of these young women
all for the small reward of having all the sweetpeas I want to pick."
"What we're afraid of is that he won't want to pick them," laughed Ethel
Brown. "We're thinking of binding him to do a certain amount of picking
every day."
"Anyway, the Morton-Smith families are going to have gardens and Helen
is going to write for seed catalogues this very night before she seeks
her downy couch - she has vowed she will."
"Mother has always had a successful garden, she'll be able to give you
advice," offered Margaret.
"We'll ask it from every one we know, I rather imagine," and Dorothy
beamed at the prospect of doing something that had been one of her great
desires all her life.
The little thicket of grapefruit trees served as the centrepiece of
Ethel Blue's dinner table, and every one admired all over again its
glossy leaves and sturdy stems.
"When spring comes we'll set them out in the garden and see what
happens," promised Ethel Blue.
"We have grapefruit salad to-night. You must have sent a wireless over
to the kitchen," Ethel Brown declared to Margaret.
It was a delicious salad, the cubes of the grapefruit being mixed with
cubes of apple and of celery, garnished with cherries and served on
crisp yellow-green lettuce leaves with French dressing.
Ethel Blue always liked to see her Aunt Marion make French dressing at
the table, for her white hands moved swiftly and skilfully among the
ingredients. Mary brought her a bowl that had been chilled on ice. Into
it she poured four tablespoonfuls of olive oil, added a scant half
teaspoonful of salt with a dash of red pepper which she stirred until
the salt was dissolved. To that combination she added one tablespoonful
either of lemon juice or vinegar a drop at a time and stirring
constantly so that the oil might take up its sharper neighbor.
Dorothy particularly approved her Aunt Marion's manner of putting her
salads together. To-night, for instance, she did not have the plates
brought in from the kitchen with the salad already upon them.
"That always reminds me of a church fair," she declared.
She was willing to give herself the trouble of preparing the salad for
her family and guests with her own hands. From a bowl of lettuce she
selected the choicest leaves for the plate before her; upon these she
placed the fruit and celery mixture, dotted the top with a cherry and
poured the dressing over all. It was fascinating to watch her, and
Margaret wished that her mother served salad that way.
The Club was indeed incomplete without the Watkinses, but the members
nevertheless were sufficiently amused by several of the "Does" - things
to do - that one or another suggested. First they did shadow drawings.
The dining table proved to be the most convenient spot for that. They
all sat around under the strong electric light. Each had a block of
rather heavy paper with a rough surface, and each was given a camel's
hair brush, a bottle of ink, some water and a small saucer. From a vase
of flowers and leaves and ferns which Mrs. Morton contributed to the
game each selected what he wanted to draw. Then, holding his leaf so
that the light threw a sharp shadow upon his pad, he quickly painted the
shadow with the ink, thinning it with water upon the saucer so that the
finished painting showed several shades of gray.
"The beauty of this stunt is that a fellow who can't draw at all can
turn out almost as good a masterpiece as Ethel Blue here, who has the
makings of a real artist," and James gazed at his production with every
evidence of satisfaction.
As it happened none of them except Ethel Blue could draw at all well, so
that the next game had especial difficulties.
"All there is to it is to draw something and let us guess what it is,"
said Ethel Blue.
"You haven't given all the rules," corrected Roger. "Ethel Blue makes
two dots on a piece of paper - or a short line and a curve - anything she
feels like making. Then we copy them and draw something that will
include those two marks and she sits up and 'ha-has' and guesses what it
is."
"I promise not to laugh," said Ethel Blue.
"Don't make any such rash promise," urged Helen. "You might do yourself
an injury trying not to when you see mine."
It was fortunate for Ethel Blue that she was released from the promise,
for her guesses went wide of the mark. Ethel Brown made something that
she guessed to be a hen, Roger called it a book, Dicky maintained firmly
that it was a portrait of himself. The rest gave it up, and they all
needed a long argument by the artist to believe that she had meant to
draw a pair of candlesticks.
"Somebody think of a game where Ethel Brown can do herself justice,"
cried James, but no one seemed to have any inspiration, so they all went
to the fire, where they cracked nuts and told stories.
"If you'll write those orders for the seed catalogues I'll post them
to-night," James suggested to Helen.
"Oh, will you? Margaret and I will write them together."
"What's the rush?" demanded Roger. "This is only January."
"I know just how the girls feel," sympathized James. "When I make up my
mind to do a thing I want to begin right off, and the first step of this
new scheme is to get the catalogues hereinbefore mentioned."
"We can plan out our back yards any time, I should think," said Dorothy.
"Father says that somebody - was it Bacon, Margaret? - says that a man's
nature runs always either to herbs or to weeds. Let's start ours running
to herbs in the first month of the year and perhaps by the time the
herbs appear we'll catch up with them."
CHAPTER III
DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET
"How queer it is that when you're interested in something you keep
seeing and hearing things connected with it!" exclaimed Ethel Blue about
a week after her birthday, when Della Watkins came out from town to
bring her her belated birthday gift.
The present proved to be a slender hillock covered with a silky green
growth exquisite in texture and color.
"What is it? What is it?" cried Ethel Blue. "We mentioned plants and
gardens on my birthday and that very evening Margaret brought me this
grapefruit jungle and now you've brought me this. Do tell me exactly
what it is."
"A cone, child. That's all. A Norway spruce cone. When it is dry its
scales are open. I filled them with grass seed and put the cone in a
small tumbler so that the lower end might be damp all the time. The
dampness makes the scales close and starts the seed to sprouting. This
has been growing a few days and the cone is almost hidden."
"It's one of the prettiest plants - would you call it a plant or a
greenhouse? - I ever saw. Does it have to be a Norway spruce cone?"
"O, no. Only they have very regular scales that hold the seed well. I
brought you out two more of them and some grass seed and canary seed so
you could try it for yourself."
"You're a perfect duck," and Ethel gave her friend a hug. "Now let me
show you what one of the girls at school gave Ethel Brown."
She indicated a strange-looking brown object hanging before the window.
"What in the world is it? It looks - yes, it looks like a sweet potato."
"That's what it is - a sweet potato with one end cut off and a cage of
tape to hold it. You see it's sprouting already, and they say that the
vines hang down from it and it looks like a little green hanging
basket."
"What's the object of cutting off the end?"
"Anna - that's Ethel Brown's friend - said that she scooped hers out just
a little bit and put a few drops of water inside so that the sun
shouldn't dry it too much."
"I should think it would grow better in a dark place. Don't you know how
Irish potatoes send out those white shoots when they're in the cellar?"
"She said she started hers in the cellar and then brought them into the
light."
"Just like bulbs."
"Exactly. Aunt Louise is having great luck with her bulbs now. She had
them in the cellar and now she is bringing them out a pot at a time, so
she has something new coming forward every few days."
"Dorothy doesn't care much for bulbs, but I think it's pretty good fun.
You can make them blossom just about when you please by keeping them in
the dark or bringing them into the light. I'm going to ask Aunt Louise
to give me some of hers when they're finished flowering. She says you
can plant them out of doors and next year they'll bloom in the garden."
"Mother has some this winter, too. I'll ask her for them after she's
through forcing them."
"I like them in the garden, too - tulips and hyacinths and daffodils and
narcissus and, jonquils. They come so early and give you a feeling that
spring really has arrived."
"You look as if spring had really arrived in the house here. If there
wasn't a little bit of that snow man left in front I shouldn't know it
had snowed last week. How in the world did you get all these shrubs to
blossom now? They don't seem to realize that it's only January."
"That's another thing that's happened since my birthday. Margaret told
us about bringing branches of the spring shrubs into the house and
making them come out in water, so we've been trying it. She sent over
those yellow bells, the Forsythia, and Roger brought in the pussy
willows from the brook on the way to Mr. Emerson's."
"This thorny red affair is the Japan quince, but I don't recognize these
others."
"That's because you're a city girl! You'll laugh when I tell you what
they are."
"They don't look like flowering shrubs to me."
"They aren't. They're flowering trees; fruit trees!"
"O-o! That really is a peach blossom, then!"
"The deep pink is peach, and the delicate pink is apple and the white is
plum."
"They're perfectly dear. Tell me how you coaxed them out. Surely you
didn't just keep them in water in this room?"
"We put them in the sunniest window we had, not too near the glass,
because it wouldn't do for them to run any chance of getting chilled.
They stayed there as long as the sun did, and then we moved them to
another warm spot and we were very careful about them at night."
"How often do you change the water?"
"Every two or three days; and once in a while we spray them to keep the
upper part fresh - and there you are. It's _fun_ to watch them come out.
Don't want to take some switches back to town with you?"
Della did.
"They make me think of a scheme that my Aunt Rose is putting into
operation. She went round the world year before last," she said, "and
she saw in Japan lots of plants growing in earthenware vases hanging
against the wall or in a long bamboo cut so that small water bottles
might be slipped in. She has some of the very prettiest wall decorations
now - a queer looking greeny-brown pottery vase has two or three sprigs
of English ivy. Another with orange tints has nasturtiums and another
tradescantia."
"Are they growing in water?"
"The ivy and the tradescantia are, but the nasturtiums and a perfectly
darling morning glory have earth. She's growing bulbs in them, too,
only she doesn't use plain water or earth, just bulb fibre."
"What's that?"
"Why, bulbs are such fat creatures that they don't need the outside food
they would get from earth; all they want is plenty of water. This fibre
stuff holds enough water to keep them damp all the time, and it isn't
messy in the house like dirt."
"What are you girls talking about?" asked Dorothy, who came in with
Ethel Brown at this moment.
Both of them were interested in the addition that Della had made to
their knowledge of flowers and gardening.
"Every day I feel myself drawn into more and more gardening," exclaimed
Dorothy. "I've set up a notebook already."
"In January!" laughed Della.
"January seems to be the time to do your thinking and planning; that's
what the people who know tell me."
"It seems to be the time for some action," retorted Della, waving her
hand at the blossoming branches about the room.
"Aren't they wonderful? I always knew you could bring them out quickly
in the house after the buds were started out of doors, but these fellows
didn't seem to be started at all - and look at them!"
"Mother says they've done so well because we've been careful to keep
them evenly warm," said Ethel Brown. "Dorothy's got the finest piece of
news to tell you. If she doesn't tell you pretty soon I shall come out
with it myself!"
"O, let her tell her own secret!" remonstrated Blue. "What is it?"
You know that sloping piece of ground about a quarter of a mile beyond
the Clarks' on the road to Mr. Emerson's?"
"You don't mean the field with the brook where Roger got the pussy
willows?"
"This side of it. There's a lovely view across the meadows on the other
side of the road, and the land runs back to some rocks and big trees."
"Certainly I know it," assented Ethel Blue. "There's a hillock on it
that's the place I've chosen for a house when I grow up and build one."
"Well, you can't have it because I've got there first!"
"What do you mean? Has Aunt Louise - ?"
"She has."
"How grand! How _grand_! You'll be farther away from us than you are now
but it's a dear duck of a spot - "
"And it's right on the way to Grandfather Emerson's," added Ethel Brown.
"Mother signed the papers this morning and she's going to begin to build
as soon as the weather will allow."
"With peach trees in blossom now that ought not to be far off," laughed
Della, waving her hand again at the blossoms that pleased her so much.
"How large a house is she going to build?" asked Ethel Blue.
"Not very big. Large enough for her and me and a guest or two and of
course Elisabeth and Miss Merriam," referring to a Belgian baby who had
been brought to the United Service Club from war-stricken Belgium, and
to her caretaker, a charming young woman from the School of Mothercraft.
"Will it be made of concrete?"
"Yes, and Mother says we may all help a lot in making the plans and in
deciding on the decoration and everything."
"Isn't she the darling! It will be the next best thing to building a
house yourself!"
"There will be a garage behind the house."
"A garage! Is Aunt Louise going to set up a car?"
"Just a small one that she can drive herself. Back of the garage there's
plenty of space for a garden and she says she'll turn that over to me. I
can do anything I want with it as long as I'll be sure to have enough
vegetables for the table and lots of flowers for the house."
"O, my; O, my; what fun we'll have," ejaculated Della, who knew that
Dorothy could have no pleasure that she would not share equally with the
rest of the Club.
"I came over now to see if you people didn't want to walk over there and
see it."
"This minute?"
"This minute."
"Of course we do - if Della doesn't have to take the train back yet?"
"Not for a long time. I'd take a later one anyway; I couldn't wait until
the Saturday Club meeting to see it."
"How did you know I'd suggest a walk there for the Saturday Club
meeting?"
"Could you help it?" retorted Della, laughing.
They timed themselves so that they might know just how far away from
them Dorothy was going to be and they found that it was just about half
way to Grandfather Emerson's. As somebody from the Mortons' went there
every day, and as the distance was, in reality, not long, they were
reassured as to the Smiths being quite out in the country as the change
had seemed to them at first.
"You won't be able to live in the house this summer, will you?" asked
Ethel Blue.
"Not until late in the summer or perhaps even later than that. Mother