Ethel Morton's Holidays

The big brown automobile gave three honks as it swung around the corner from Church Street. Roger Morton, raking leaves in the yard beside his house, threw down his rake and vaulted over the gate.

"Good afternoon, sir," he called to his grandfather, saluting, soldier fashion.

"Good afternoon, son. I stopped to tell you that those pumpkins are ready for you. If you'll hop in now we can go out and get them and I'll bring you back again."

"Good enough!" exclaimed Roger. "I'll tell Mother I'm going. She may have some message for Grandmother," and he vaulted back over the gate and dashed up the steps.

In a minute he was out again and climbing into the car.

"Where are the girls this afternoon?" inquired Mr. Emerson, as he threw in the clutch and started toward the outskirts of Rosemont where he had land enough to allow him to do a little farming.

"Helen and Ethel Brown have gone to the West Woods," replied Roger, accounting for his sisters. "Somebody told them that there was a wild grapevine there that still had yellow leaves bright enough for them to use for decorating tomorrow evening."

"I should be afraid last night's frost would have shriveled them. What are Ethel Blue and Dorothy up to?" asked Mr. Emerson.

Ethel Blue was Roger's cousin who had lived with the Mortons since her babyhood. Dorothy Smith was also his cousin. She and her mother lived in a cottage on Church Street.

"They must be over at Dorothy's working up schemes for tomorrow," Roger answered his grandfather's question. "I haven't seen them since luncheon."

"How many do you expect at your party?"

"Just two or three more besides the United Service Club. James Hancock won't be able to come, though. His leg isn't well enough yet."

"Pretty bad break?"

"He says it's bad enough to make him remember not to cut corners when he's driving a car. Any break is too bad in my humble opinion."

"In mine, too. How many in the Club? Ten?"

"Ten; yes, sir. There'll be nine of us tomorrow evening--Helen and the Ethels and Dorothy and Dicky and the two Watkinses and Margaret Hancock. She's going to spend the night with Dorothy."

"Anybody from school?"

"George Foster, the fellow who danced the minuet so well in our show; and Dr. Edward Watkins is coming out with Tom and Della."

"Isn't he rather old to come to a kids' party?"

"Of course he's loads older than we are--he's twenty-five--but he said he hadn't been to a Hallowe'en party for so long that he wanted to come, and Tom and Della said he put up such a plaintive wail that they asked if they might bring him."

"I suspect he hasn't forgotten how to play," chuckled Grandfather Emerson, speeding up as they entered the long, open stretch of road that ended almost at his own door. "Any idea what you're going to do?"

"Not much. Helen and Ethel Brown are the decoration committee and I'm the jack-o'-lantern committee, as you know, and Ethel Blue and Dorothy are thinking up things to do and we're all going to add suggestions. I think the girls had a note from Della this morning with an idea of some sort in it."

"You ought to get Burns's poem."

"On Hallowe'en?"

"We'll look it up when we get to the house. You may find some 'doings' you haven't heard of that you can revive for the occasion."

"We decided that whatever we did do, there were certain stunts we wouldn't do."

"Namely?"

"Swap signs and take off gates and brilliant jokes of that sort."

"As a Service Club you couldn't very well crack jokes whose point lies in some one's discomfort, could you?"

"Those things have looked like dog mean tricks to me and not jokes at all ever since I saw an old woman at the upper end of Main Street trying to hang her gate last year the day after Hallowe'en."

"Too heavy for her?"

"I should say so. She couldn't do anything with it. I offered to help her, and she said, 'You might as well, for I suppose you had the fun of unhanging it last night'."

"A false accusation, I suppose."

"It happened to be that time, but I had done it before," confessed Roger, flushing.

"You never happened to see the result of it before."

"That's it. I just thought of the people's surprise when they waked up in the morning and found their gates gone. I never thought at all of the real pain and discomfort that it may have given a lot of them."

"Your Club may be doing a good service to all Rosemont if it proves that young people can have a good time without making the 'innocent bystander' pay for it."

"We're going to prove it; to ourselves, anyway," insisted Roger stoutly, as he leaped out of the car and took his grandfather's parcels into the house.

"The pumpkins are in the barn," Mr. Emerson called after him. "Go down there and pick them out when you've given those bundles to your grandmother."

The big yellow globes were loaded into the car--half a dozen of them--and Mr. Emerson drove back to the house. As he stopped at the side porch for a last word with his wife he gave a cry of recognition.