"Did you know this was the Bishop's house you're in front of?" he whispered, glancing up at the veranda to make sure that he was not overheard.

"Which is the house, the wooden part or the tent?" asked Ethel Brown.

"When he first came here forty years ago there were only one or two houses and for a summer or two everybody lived in tents."

"What fun!" cried Ethel Blue.

"The seasons weren't very long then, only two weeks, so nobody minded if things weren't very comfortable. The Bishop and Mr. Miller had these combination arrangements built because they had lots of guests and needed larger places."

"I wonder if there are any people here now who came that first summer?"

"Yes, indeed, my father was here then. He was a little kid in skirts."

"Naturally he doesn't remember anything about it."

"No, but my grandmother brought him and she often tells me about it. You just wait till Old First Night. There are often twenty people who stand up when they ask how many present were here at the first session. The Chancellor, that's Bishop Vincent, was here, of course, and his son, he's the president now, and the Executive Secretary of the C.L.S.C.—"

"That's Miss Kimball. We know her. We just met her," and they told their new friend all about it.

"You're sure in luck," was his comment.

"Old First Night is the anniversary of the very first meeting, I suppose."

"Just you wait and see," hinted James promisingly. "Grandmother thinks it's the most interesting thing that happens all summer."

"How long have we got to wait?" asked Ethel Blue who liked to have things happen right off.

"Till the first Tuesday in August."

"That won't be for a long time. Isn't anything interesting going to happen before then?"

"Oodles of things. Next week all the clubs begin and a little later there'll be a pageant, and the Spelling Match is great."

"Why?" questioned Ethel Blue in a doubtful tone that made the others smile.

"You can see what Ethel Blue thinks about spelling," laughed Helen. "Why is it such good fun?"

"Oh, it's fun to see the grown-up people trying it just as if they were kids. They don't let anybody under fifteen go in. Mr. Vincent, the president, says young people are 'such uncomfortably good spellers.'"

"Ethel Blue wouldn't agree with him."

"It's true, though, because when you're in school you're getting practice every day, and the grown-up people don't get so much practice. They look up words in the dictionary instead of remembering the right way to spell them."

"It must be funny to see grown-up people fail, but I suppose they give them the hardest words there are."

"They take the words out of the Home Reading Course books for the next year. Miss Kimball told you about the Home Reading Course, didn't she?"

"Oh, we knew before," the girls all cried in chorus. "Our grandmother is a graduate."

"And Aunt Marion is in this year's class."

"And so is Grandfather."

"My father is, too," said James. "He's a doctor, you know, and he says that if he didn't read that he wouldn't know anything but bones and fevers."

"What does he mean?" asked Ethel Brown, who liked to have everything perfectly clear.

"He means he wouldn't read anything but his medical journals and he'd 'go stale.'"

"Is your father coming on Recognition Day?"

"He's coming if nobody has a smashed head or smallpox just at the wrong time. He says he wouldn't miss it for anything. The Recognition Day procession marches along this path we're on."

"When will Recognition Day be?" asked Ethel Brown.

"The middle of August."

Ethel Blue groaned.

"Everything is so far off!" she exclaimed.

"Here's the hotel—the Hotel AthenÆum," and James nodded toward a large building with a tower and with a veranda on which guests were sitting looking out upon the lake.

"The band concerts are right here all summer. The band plays up on the hotel piazza and the people walk around below here and sit on the grass. It looks pretty when the girls have on pretty dresses."

"Are there lots of girls here?" asked Helen.

"About five million," returned James cheerfully. "I've got a sister who's going over to call on you as soon as she sees you on your porch. That's the only way people can make calls here. Everybody's out all the time going to lectures and classes so you have to catch them when you see them."

"You're neighbors so we'll see her right off," said Helen hopefully. "What's this building?"

"This is the Arcade. There are some shops in it and doctors and things. The women all learn to embroider here—see, round this corner on the piazza is where the teacher stays. Mother goes there all the time, and my married sister. You know they joke at Chautauqua women for embroidering right through lectures and concerts. Somebody wrote some rhymes about it once."

"Let's have them."

"I never fail to oblige when I'm asked for them. Listen. It's dedicated 'To the Wool-Gatherers.'

"Right here on this open space is where they used to have the lectures forty years ago," James went on, somewhat abashed by the applause he received. "It's called Miller Park now."

"What became of the hall?"

"There never was any hall. There was a raised platform and the people sat in front of it and when it rained they had to put up their umbrellas."

"The trees have grown since, I suppose."

"There were trees there then, but they thinned them out to make room. The first houses were built around the edge of the open place. Those over there are some of the original articles."

The girls saw a row of small cottages rising side by side, their porches almost touching.

"They aren't bad looking," said James patronizingly, "but the Institution doesn't allow houses to be built so close together now."

"Why not?"

"They say that there's no reason why a cottage shouldn't be as good looking on a small scale as a big house and no house can look its best if it's jammed up into another one's lap, so now they require people to leave some land around them."

They had crossed Miller Park and passed between two houses to a walk that ran along the lakeside.

"Here's our house, right here," said James, "and there's Margaret on the porch now."

"And Dorothy," cried the Ethels together.

Margaret Hancock ran down the steps at her brother's call and asked her new friends to stay a while.

"If you don't mind making the first call," she laughed.

She was a clear-eyed girl, not as pretty as Helen, but with a frank expression that was pleasant to see. "Nobody stands on ceremony at Chautauqua," she went on, "and if you want to see anybody you've got to seize her right where you find her."

They all laughed, for she had used almost the same words as her brother.

"You see how the Hancock family holds together," said James.

"This is Dorothy Smith."

Margaret introduced the young girl on the porch to Helen, for she was already speaking to the Ethels.

"Helen, Helen," they cried, "this is our friend Dorothy we told you about."

Helen looked with interest at the girl who had seemed to know all about Chautauqua as her new acquaintances reported her conversation. She saw a girl about the age of the Ethels but not so tall and lacking in their appearance of vigor. Otherwise she was not unlike them, for she had curly brown hair and her nose was just the least bit "puggy," to use Roger's descriptive word. Her eyes, however, were unlike either Ethels', for they were gray. She had easy manners with a pretty touch of shyness that seemed to Helen quite remarkable since she had travelled all over the United States.

"I wouldn't miss the Girls' Club for anything," she was saying. "I learned how to make lots of things there last summer, and at Christmas time I sold enough to pay my club fee this year, and more too."

Helen looked at her with renewed interest. Here was a girl two years younger than she and she was earning money to pay for her pleasures this summer. It gave her something to think about.

"You and I must join the Young Women's Vacation Club," said Margaret to Helen. "They say they are going to have picnics and plays and great fun. It's a new club."

"I certainly shall. What kinds of things did you learn to make?" Helen asked Dorothy.

"I put almost all my time on baskets. Mother said she thought it was better to learn how to do one thing very well than to do a lot of things just middling well; so I learned how to make ten different kinds of baskets and trays."

"All different shapes?"

"Different materials, too; wicker and splints and rushes and some pretty grasses that I found across the lake one afternoon when Mother and I went over to Maple Springs on the steamer."

"I know they were beauties," said Helen heartily.

"They were," confirmed Margaret. "I saw some of them. I thought the prettiest of all was that small tray made of pine needles."

"Pine needles!" exclaimed James. "How could you work with them? I should think they'd come bristling out all the time."

"They were needles from the long-leaved pine that grows in the South. I got them in North Carolina when Mother and I were there the winter before."

"And you sold a lot of them?" ventured Helen, who was not quite sure that it was polite to ask such a question but who was eager to know just how Dorothy had managed.

"It was easy," explained Dorothy simply. "Mother and I were in a town in Illinois last winter. Mother was teaching embroidery in an art store, so she got acquainted with the ladies who were getting up a bazar at Christmas time and they let me sell my things there on commission."

"On commission? What's that?" asked Ethel Blue to Helen's relief, for she did not like to acknowledge that she did not know.

"On commission? Why, I made a table full of baskets and when they sold them they kept one-tenth of the price for their commission. It was like paying rent for the table you see and a salary to a clerk to sell it. That's the way Mother explained it to me," ended Dorothy rather shyly, for James was staring at her with astonishment that a girl and not a very old girl either should know as much as that about business.

"Hullo, here comes Roger," he exclaimed. "Let's hear what he's been up to," and he left the porch by his usual method—over the rail—and joined his new friend before he reached the house. As they strolled off the girls heard scraps of conversation about "baseball," "first and second crew" and "sailing match."

"Are you all going to the Amphitheatre this evening?" asked Margaret as the Mortons prepared to leave.

"I think Mother will let us go to-night because it's our first night and we're crazy to see everything," replied Ethel Brown, "but she says we've got to go to bed early here just as we do at home or else we'll get thin instead of fat this summer."

"Mother lets me go whenever there are pictures," said Margaret. "Often there are splendid travel lectures that are illustrated. I love those. And once in a while I go to a concert in the evening, but usually I go to the afternoon concerts instead."

"Do you suppose we'll ever be big enough to go to bed just as late as we want to?" Ethel Blue asked Helen as they went up the steps of their own house.

"Even Roger doesn't do that. I remember Father's telling me once that he used to growl about going to bed early when he was a boy and that when the time finally came when he could go to bed as late as he liked he didn't care anything about it and used to go early half the time."

"I don't believe I shall be that way," sighed Ethel. "How queer grown people are!"

But since they had these curious and insistent ideas about the need of repose she eagerly took advantage of any break in the routine such as was offered by the chance to go to the Amphitheatre that evening. It was a wonderful sight, the immense open building, the glittering organ, the brilliant electric lights, and, facing the thousands of people that made up the audience, a slender woman with a marvellously rich voice, who sang negro melodies and told negro stories that brought laughter and tears.

After the recital was over the whole audience went to the lakeside, and there watched the lighting of the signal fires that for years have flashed to the country around the news that another Assembly has opened. Higher and higher the flames roared at different points along the shore. Point Chautauqua, across the water, saw the beacon and flashed on the news down the lake until fires far beyond the sight of the people on the Assembly grounds told their story to the dwellers near-by and the glare of the sky passed it farther afield.

"Isn't it just too wonderful," whispered Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown, and Ethel Brown answered, "I can't believe we're really here."