Ethel Morton's HolidaysSmith, Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke)
General
Ethel Morton's Holidays
Smith, Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke)
Children -- Societies and clubs -- Juvenile fiction; Holidays -- Juvenile fiction
"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.
"Look who comes here!" he exclaimed.
"Helen and Ethel Brown," guessed Roger. "Don't they look like those
soldiers we read about in 'Macbeth'--the fellows who marched along
holding boughs in their hands so that it looked as if Birnamwood had
come to Dunsinane."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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