Ethel Morton at Rose House | Page 2

size.
"Peace! Withdraw that battering ram!" pleaded Roger. "I'll tell you all
about it. Tom's really responsible for this idea, anyway."
"Ideas, real fresh ones, aren't much in my line," admitted practical Tom,
"but I'm glad to have helped for once."
"I don't suppose you remember that time last autumn when I went in to
New York to see you and you took me down to the chapel where your
father preaches on Sunday afternoons?"
"I remember it; we found Father there talking with a lot of mothers and
children."
"That's the time. Well, those women and children got on my nerves like
anything. You see, out here in Rosemont we haven't any real suffering
like that. There are poor people, and Mother always does what she can
for them, and there's a Charitable Society, as you know, because you all
helped with the Donnybrook Fair they had on St. Patrick's Day. But the
people they help out here are regular Rockefellers compared with those
poor creatures that your father had in his office that day."
"Father says he could spend a million dollars a year on those people,
and not have a misspent cent," said Delia.
"What hit me hardest was the thin little children. Elisabeth hadn't come
to us yet," Roger went on, referring to a Belgian baby that had been

sent to the Club to take care of, "and I wasn't so accustomed to thinness
as I've grown to be since, and it made me--well, it just made me sick."
"I don't wonder," agreed Delia seriously. "That's the way they make me
feel."
"I know what you thought of," exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was so
imaginative and sympathetic that she sometimes had an almost
uncanny way of reading peoples' thoughts. "You wanted to bring some
of those poor women out into the country so that the children could get
well, and you told your grandfather about it and he offered you a house
somewhere."
"That's about it, kidlet. I heard one of the women say that she'd had a
week in the country--some sort of Fresh Air business--and that the baby
got a lot better, and then she had to go back to the city and the little
creature was literally dying on her hands."
"You want to give them a whole summer," guessed Ethel Brown.
"That's the idea. Since I've seen what proper care and good food and
fresh air have done for that wretched little skeleton, Elisabeth, I'm more
than ever convinced that if we can give some of those mothers and
babies a whole month or perhaps two months of Rosemont air we'll be
saving lives, actually saving lives."
Roger looked about earnestly from one grave face to another. All were
in sympathy with him and all waited for the development of his plan,
for they knew he would not have laid so much stress upon it if he had
not thought out the details.
"I've talked it over with Grandfather and he rose to it right off. Here's
where the house comes in. He said he was going to build a new cottage
for his farm superintendent this spring--you know it's almost done
now--and that we could have the old farm house if we wanted to fix it
up for a Fresh Air scheme."
"Mr. Emerson is a brick. I pull my forelock to him," and Tom

illustrated his remark.
"Where's the money to come from?" asked James, who was both of
Scottish descent and the Club treasurer, and so was not only shrewd but
accustomed to look after details.
"Grandfather said he'd help in this way; if the Club would study the old
house and decide on the best way to make it answer the purpose he
would provide two carpenters for a fortnight to help us. That will mean
that if we want to do any whitewashing or papering or matters of that
kind we'll have to do it ourselves, but the carpenters will put the house
in repair and put up any partitions that we want and so on."
"Is it furnished?"
"There's another problem. The superintendent has had his own furniture
there and what will be left when he goes is almost nothing. There are
some old things in the garret, but we'll have to use our ingenuity and
invent furniture."
"The way I did for our attic." Dorothy reminded them of the room
where the Club had been meeting ever since its members returned from
Chautauqua where it had been formed the summer before.
"Just so. We'll have to make a raid on our mothers' attics and also on
the stores in town that have their goods come in big boxes, and I
imagine we shall be able to concoct things that will 'do,' though they
may be remarkable to