Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 36

Ethel Blue roused and was about to ask what was the matter when Dorothy, scarcely visible in the dim light, made a sign for silence.

Both girls sat up in their cots and listened. Nearer and nearer came the sound. It seemed too heavy for a man's breathing,--yet--they had been talking about Indians before they went to bed--perhaps Indians breathed more heavily than white men. No man would come at such an hour with a good purpose--perhaps bad men breathed more heavily than good men. Ethel Blue clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Dorothy crawled down into the bed and drew the cover over her head.

At that instant a roar boomed through the tent. Every girl sat up in her bed with a sharp, "What's that?" There were stirrings in the other tents; but the roar came again right there beside Ethel Blue's cot, and so near that it seemed in her very face.

"It's something awful!" she thought, chilled with fright; and then, "I won't let my imagination run away with me. It may not be as bad as it sounds. If it does hurt me I can bear it!"

Slowly she pushed back her blanket and looked down whence the clamor had come. The roar was followed by a tearing sound and a noise of struggle.

"Oh, girls," cried Ethel Blue, "it's a cow! It's nothing but a cow! Poor old thing, she's caught her horns under the edge of the tent and she can't get loose."

Dorothy's head came out from its covering.

"A cow!" she breathed with relief and sank back, weak but thankful.

"She's going to pull the tent down!" screamed Della.

"Can't you shoo her out, Ethel Blue?" asked Ethel Brown. "You're nearest."

Ethel Blue was well aware that she was nearest. She was startlingly near. But the cow seemed to want to withdraw quite as much as the girls wanted her to, and that encouraged Ethel Blue to help her. Leaning out of her cot she lifted the edge of the tent as far as she could with one hand and with her slipper in the other slapped the cow on her forehead as a hint that backwards was her next best move.

With a gasp of disgust the invader departed and the girls heard Miss Roberts, who had been aroused from her tent, driving her away. In fact, everybody was wide awake by this time.

"Let's get up," suggested Della. "I've never seen the sun rise and this is a good chance."

Evidently the girls in the other tents were holding a caucus to the same effect and there shortly appeared a s.h.i.+vering group of campers. Ethel Brown was the only one who seemed not to think the happening good fun, but she was ashamed to seem cross when everybody else was in good humor, and when Miss Roberts set her to work on the breakfast preparations she soon forgot that she had not made a brave showing before the marauder.

Dorothy was pale but gave no other sign of having been especially disturbed. After breakfast came the packing up and setting of the camp in order and then two of the girls who had been studying signalling, wig-wagged across the lake for the launch to come for them.

"Since we've made such an early start we might as well go back early,"

decided Miss Roberts, "because to-night is the exhibition of the School of Physical Education, you remember, and those of you who are in it will be glad of the extra time for rehearsing."

The girls left with the feeling that they had had almost as memorable a time as if the camp had been attacked by Indians. Now that it was over they were glad the cow had happened in. Ethel Blue had a real glow when she recalled that although she had been badly scared she had pulled herself together and really driven the cow away, and Dorothy felt that since her nightmare had once had so laughable an ending perhaps it would not come again.

Because of their early rising all the girls took a nap in the afternoon.

"You want to put spirit into your folk dances to-night," Mrs. Morton replied to the Ethels' remonstrances against this hards.h.i.+p. "I want my girls to move with life and not as if they were half asleep."

"Sleep now and you won't sleep then," added Helen, who was taking the last st.i.tches on a pierrot dress which Ethel Blue was to wear.

The seats in the pit of the Amphitheatre were all removed so that the audience was crowded into the benches on the sloping sides. The parents of the boys and girls who were to take part were present in force and the members of the Boys' Club and Girls' Club who were not to take part sat together in solid blocks at the front.

A grand procession of all the partic.i.p.ants opened the program.

"There's Roger," cried his grandmother.

"Tom Watkins is with him and James is just behind," Grandfather Emerson informed his wife after looking through his gla.s.s.

"Some one of those funny pierrots is Ethel Blue, but you can't distinguish her."

"She is to march with Dorothy, and Ethel Brown and Della are to be together in the b.u.t.terfly dance."

"And Helen?"

"She is in one of the folk dances. She must be in this division wearing gymnasium suits."

"Or in the next one; that first detachment looked to me as if it was made up of teachers of gymnastics who are taking a normal course here."

The program continued with a set of exercises by the smallest members of the Boys' Club who executed a flag drill with precision and general success, although d.i.c.ky wandered from the fold when Cupid Watkins trotted his bowlegged way on to the stage looking for some member of his human family. Nevertheless, d.i.c.ky won the applause of the audience by seizing Cupid in his arms and planting a kiss on the cross-piece of his muzzle before leading him off on his search.

The b.u.t.terfly dance was charming, the little girls waving in exact time to the music the filmy wings that hung from shoulder and wrist. Mrs.

Morton never succeeded in making out Ethel Brown and Della but the whole effect was delicately graceful. Ethel Blue and Dorothy were equally indistinguishable among the pierrots who stamped and whirled and stretched arms and legs with funny rapid motions.

Ethel Brown had a part in a dance in which rubber b.a.l.l.s were bounced in time with a difficult series of steps. Helen and Margaret and Tom Watkins were in one of the folk dances, and Roger and James, with some other large boys and young men, ill.u.s.trated various wrestling holds in a fas.h.i.+on both graceful and exact. On the whole, the audience seemed to think the program was well worth their commendation.

Into this busy week was crowded yet one more event of especial interest to the Morton household and its friends--the annual circus of the Athletic Club. Roger had been playing baseball on the second team all summer and this team was asked to take part in a burlesque game which was to be one of the numbers on the program. There had been much practicing in private and Roger had come home one day with a black eye which seemed to promise that when he made his slide for base in the show it would be a spectacular performance.

The baseball teams, absurdly dressed, and taking d.i.c.ky and Cupid with them for mascots, had a float to themselves in the procession that wound about the grounds in the early part of the afternoon. The Superintendent of Grounds and Buildings led the way in his buggy and behind him came a detachment of Chautauqua police, one man strong. The special features were led by another buggy, this one drawn by a mule wearing a pair of overalls on his front legs.

A pretty pink and white float was filled with small children from the Elementary School; another was laden with a host of Girls' Club members in the pierrot costume of the Exhibition dance. Ethel Blue and Ethel Brown were among them, Ethel Brown wearing Della's dress because Della preferred to ride with Dorothy on the float with the Model Cooking Cla.s.s.

James Hanc.o.c.k was in the baseball team with Roger but Tom Watkins provided the legs for one of the herd of three ostriches which walked with dignity behind the floats. The line ended with a flock of bicycles all aflutter with ribbons and pennants.

The performance was on the baseball field and it began as soon as the parade arrived and the trousered mule was securely tied. Small boys laden with popcorn and ice cream cones went through the grandstand with their wares, a policeman wearing a badge of giant size kept order, and a solemn-faced announcer presented the numbers of the program. There were several comic dances, some funny songs, a contortionist who twisted himself into such knots that the announcer expressed doubts as to whether he would ever straighten out enough to leave Chautauqua when the season was ended, a snappy banjo quartet, excellent horizontal bar work, and Roger's baseball team.

The baseball team took the prize awarded by the Men's Club for the best exhibit. The _Daily_ of the next morning described their playing as "distinctly original," and mentioned especially the superb slide to base made by Roger Morton, who, as short-stop, picked b.a.l.l.s out of the sky with no apparent difficulty.

It was when the Mortons reached home, aching with laughter at the jokes which the clown pretended to get off and didn't, that they were surprised to find awaiting them a telegram from Captain Morton, Ethel Blue's father.

"Leaving Vera Cruz to-day," it read. "Reach Chautauqua next Thursday.

Love."

CHAPTER XIX

"MY BRAVE LITTLE GIRL!"

THE Mortons had been talking all summer about having a family picnic, but there had been so many things to do every day for every one of the household that there never had seemed to be any opportunity. Now, however, all the chief events of the season were out of the way and once more their thoughts turned to a day out of the grounds.

"Let's go to Barcelona," suggested Roger a day or two after the circus.

"What's Barcelona?" questioned Ethel Brown.

"Don't you remember Grandmother told us about the fis.h.i.+ng village on Lake Erie when we were coming over on the trolley?"

"Helen remembers that because there is some history about it," laughed Ethel. "I know she'll vote for Barcelona."

"I would--I'm crazy to see it--only it seems as if we ought to wait for Uncle Richard to come so that he can go with us."