Ethel Morton at Rose House | Page 5

had placed in a May basket and hung on Miss
Merriam's door might have something to do with her appearance of
anxiety. She changed the subject as a measure of precaution, for she
had been in the confidence of Dr. Watkins, the elder brother of Tom
and Delia and a warm admirer of Miss Merriam's, and she did not want
the conversation to run into channels where she might have to answer
inconvenient questions.
"This scheme of Roger's is pretty tremendous," she began by way of
introducing a theme in which Ethel Brown would be sure to be
interested.
"We--the Club, I mean--never has 'fallen down' yet on anything, even
some of our 'shows' that we didn't have much time to get up, so we
ought to have confidence in ourselves as a Club."
"With this next undertaking, though, we don't really know how the
thing is done."
"How to make over the house, you mean?"
"How to make over the house and how to run the Fresh Air settlement
when the house is made over."
"There's no doubt we'll know more at the end of the summer than we
know now! We've got to get information from every source we can."
"The way Roger has up to now."

"We must think of every one we know who has made over a house, and
Dr. Watkins ought to be able to tell us of some people who have had
Fresh Air children staying with them, so we can get some idea about
what they need and how a house is managed."
"Come, come." A chirp rose from near the ground. Ayleesabet was
tired of being disregarded for so long.
"You blessed Lamb!" cried Ethel Blue. "Did you say, 'Come, come,'
just because you heard it? Did you think we were talking very learnedly
about things we didn't know much about! Never mind, ducky daddles,
we'll know a lot about them six months from now!"
"Just the way we've learned a lot about babies in the last six months
from this little teacher!" added Ethel Brown.
"Come, come. Home, home," remarked Elisabeth insistently.
"What's the matter? Are your leggies tired? Want the Ethels to carry
you?"
Elisabeth made it known that she would like some such method of
transportation, and sat joyfully on a "chair" which the two girls made
by interclasping their wrists.
Not for long did this please her ladyship.
"Down, down," she demanded in a few minutes.
"We might as well go home if she's too tired to walk and too restless to
ride," decided Ethel Brown, and they turned about, to the evident
pleasure of the baby.
As they were returning along Church Street but were still at a distance
from Dorothy's house Elisabeth suddenly gave a chirrup of delight. The
Ethels looked about to see the cause of this unexpected expression of
joy. Crawling out through a hedge on to the sidewalk was a child of
about Elizabeth's age, but a thin and dirty little mite, with a face that

betrayed her race as Irish.
"What's this morsel doing here all by herself!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.
"She must have run away; or perhaps she isn't alone. Let's look about
for her mother."
Up and down the street they looked while Elisabeth scraped
acquaintance with the sudden arrival upon her path.
"It doesn't seem as if she could be far off."
In truth she was not far off, for as the girls wondered and exclaimed a
weak voice made itself heard from the other side of the hedge.
"Don't take her away," it said.
Leaving the children to entertain each other on the sidewalk they
enlarged the hole from which the new baby had crawled, and pushed
their way through it. On the ground behind the hedge, and hidden from
the sidewalk by its thick twigs lay a young woman, so pale that she
frightened the girls.
"Don't take the baby away. I'll feel better in a little while. She crept off
from me."
"How did you get here?" asked Ethel Brown.
"I came out from New York to look for work in the country. I felt so
sick I lay down here."
"Did you get any work?"
A slight movement of the head indicated that she had not. The Ethels
consulted each other by disturbed glances. There was no hospital nearer
than Glen Point, and indeed, the woman seemed so ill that they did not
see how she could reach the hospital even in the trolley.
As they stood silent and perplexed the honk of a motor roused the

almost unconscious woman.
"Is the baby in the street?" she inquired frantically.
Ethel Brown crushed her way through the hedge, and found that the
children were still on the sidewalk, but were so near its edge that the
driver of