"What are we going to do first?" they asked Roger who took the invitation to them.

"Helen has called a meeting for this afternoon at five o'clock. We'll decide on something then."

"Where's it going to be?"

"Up in the ravine just before you get to Higgins Hall. Dorothy's going to make some sandwiches."

"Oh, Dorothy's going to belong."

"Sure thing. Our household can't do without her since Grandfather was sick. I asked Mother if Mary couldn't make us some sandwiches, but she said Mary was awfully busy to-day, and Dorothy said if the club was to help people she'd help Mary by making the sandwiches."

"Good old Dorothy! She's begun to be a United Server before the club has really got to working."

"I don't see why I can't come in on the sandwich business," said James. "I'm a dandy ham slicer."

"Come over, then. Dorothy's making them now on the back porch."

So it happened that there was almost a meeting of the club before the time actually set for it, but after all there was not a quorum, according to James, while at five o'clock every active member was present, though the members of the Advisory Board were detained by other engagements.

The ravine extended back from the lake toward the fence. Through it ran a brook which the dry weather had made almost non-existent, but its course was marked by an abundant growth of wild flowers, including the delicate blue of the forget-me-not.

"Let's have the forget-me-not for our flower," suggested Margaret as soon as they were settled on the bank under the tall trees. "We mustn't pick any of these, of course, but they won't be hard to find at home, and they'll be easy to embroider if we ever need to make badges or anything of that sort."

"Perhaps in the course of a few years we'll be advanced enough to have pins," said Helen, "and forget-me-not pins will be lovely. Even the boys can wear them for scarf pins—little ones with just one flower."

Roger and James approved this suggestion and so the matter of an emblem was decided not only without trouble but before the meeting had been called to order.

"We certainly are a harmonious lot," observed James when some one mentioned this fact.

"What I want to do," said Ethel Brown, "is to give a vote of thanks to Dorothy and James and Ethel Blue for making the sandwiches."

"Good idea; they're bully," commended Roger. "I move, Helen, that the people just mentioned be elected official sandwich makers to the club."

"Don't call the president by her name," objected James. "Don't you have parliamentary law in your school?"

"No; plenty without it."

"We do. We have an assembly every morning—current events and things like that and sometimes a speaker from New York—and one of the scholars presides and we have to do the thing up brown. You wouldn't call Helen 'Helen' there, I can tell you."

"What ought I to say?"

"'Miss President,' or 'Madam President.'"

This was greeted by a howl of joy from Roger.

"'Madam' is good!" he howled, wriggling with delight. "I do know how to put a motion, though. I'll leave it to Ethel Blue if I didn't set her idea on its legs last night by putting through a unanimous vote for Helen for president."

"You did, but you don't seem to be giving the president a chance to call the meeting to order now."

"I apologize, Madam President," and again Roger rolled over in excessive mirth.

"The meeting will come to order, then," began Helen. "Is that right, James?"

"O.K. Go ahead."

"Madam President," said Margaret promptly, "do you think it's necessary for us to be so particular and follow parliamentary law? I think it will be dreadfully stiff and fussy."

"Oh, let's do it, Margaret. I want to learn and you and James know how, so that's a service you can do for me. And Helen ought to know if she's going to be president," Roger urged.

"Here's where you're wrong at the jump-off, old man. You ought not to speak directly to Margaret. You ought to address the chair—that is, Helen."

"What are you doing yourself, then, talking straight to me?"

"Bull's-eye. Margaret was all right, though, Madam President. She addressed the chair. What does the chair think about Margaret's question?"

"I think—the chair thinks—" began Helen, warned by James's amused glance, "that Margaret is right. It won't do us any harm to obey a few parliamentary rules, but if we are too particular it'll be horrid."

"It's a mighty good chance to learn," growled Roger. "I want to make old James useful."

"If you talk that queer way I'll never open my mouth," declared Ethel Blue in a tone of lament.

"Then I move you, Madam President, that we don't do it," said James, "because this club is Ethel Blue's idea and it would be a shame if she couldn't have a say-so in her own club."

"I'm willing to compromise, Helen—Madam President," went on Ethel Blue, giggling; "I say let Roger be parliamentary if he wants to, and the rest of us will be parliamentary or unparliamentary just as we feel like it."

Applause greeted this suggestion, largely from Dicky, who was glad of the opportunity to make some noise.

"There's a motion before the house, Madam President," reminded James.

"Dear me, so there is. What do I do now?"

"Say, 'Is it seconded?'" whispered James.

"Is it seconded?"

"I second it," came from Margaret.

"It is moved and seconded by the Hancocks that we do not follow parliamentary rules in the United Service Club."

Helen had felt herself getting on swimmingly but at this point she seemed to have come to a wall.

"Are you ready for the question?" prompted James in an undertone.

"Are you ready for the question?" repeated Helen aloud.

"Let her rip," advised Roger.

"All in favor say 'Aye.'"

Margaret and James said "Aye."

"Contrary minded——"

"No," roared Roger.

"No," followed Ethel Blue meekly.

"No," came Ethel Brown in uncertain negative.

Helen didn't know just how to handle this situation.

"Three to two," she counted. "They don't agree," and she turned helplessly toward James.

"Right you are," he acknowledged. "Why don't you ask for Ethel Blue's motion?"

"But I didn't make a motion," screamed Ethel Blue, deeply agitated.

"Same thing; you said you were willing to compromise and let Roger be parliamentary if he wanted to and the rest of us do as we liked."

"I think that's a good way."

"Do you make that motion?" asked Helen, prompted by James.

"Yes, I make that motion," repeated Ethel Blue.

"Hurrah for the lady who said she'd never talk 'that queer way,'" cheered Roger.

"It isn't so bad when you know how," admitted Ethel Blue.

"Is that motion seconded?" Helen had not forgotten her first lesson.

"I second it." It was Roger who spoke.

"Question," called Margaret.

"It is moved and seconded that we all do as we like except Roger and that he talk parliamentary fashion all the time."

Thus the president stated the motion.

"Oh, say," objected Roger. "I call that unfair discrimination."

"Not at all," retorted the president. "You were the one who wanted to learn so it's only fair that you should have the chance."

"I can't do it alone."

"Perhaps some of us will be moved to do it, too, once in a while. You see the president ought to know how. These Hancock experts here said so."

"You haven't asked for the 'Ayes' and 'Nos' yet," reminded Margaret, and this time Helen sent it through without a hesitation.

"The next thing for us to decide," continued the president when Ethel Blue's motion had passed without a dissenting voice, "is what we are going to do. Of course we can't undertake any really big things here at Chautauqua where we have all our time pretty well filled and where we are studying things that we ought not to slight because they may help us out later in our plans for service. So I think what we must look out for is little things that we can do to be helpful. Does anybody know of any?"

"I know of one," offered James promptly. "Tomorrow is Old First Night. That's the only time in all the summer when there is a collection taken on the grounds. All the money they get on Old First Night is used for the benefit of the general public. The Miller Tower, for instance, was an Old First Night Gift, and part of the Arts and Crafts Studios was paid for by another one, and the Sherwood Music Studio."

"Great scheme," remarked Roger. "You take your contribution out of one pocket and put it into the other, so to speak. Where do we come in?"

"They want boys to collect the money from the people in the Amphitheatre. That's something you and I can do."

"Is there anything that girls do on Old First Night?"

Ethel Brown turned to Margaret as authority because the Hancocks had been at Chautauqua many summers.

"There never has been anything particular for them to do but I don't know why we couldn't offer to trim the stage. I believe they'd like to have us."

"How shall we find out?"

"I'll telephone to the Director to-night, and if he says 'Yes,' then we can go outside the gate to-morrow afternoon and pick wild flowers and trim the stage just before supper."

"You boys will have to go too," said Helen; "we'll need you to bring back the flowers."

"Right-o," agreed James. "Anybody any more ideas?"

"We'll have to keep our eyes open as things come along," said Ethel Blue. "There ought to be something every day. There's Recognition Day, any way."

"We're all too big for Flower Girls; they have to be not over ten; but Mother went to the 1914 Class meeting this afternoon and one of the members of the class proposed that they should have boys as well as girls—a boys' guard of honor—so there's a job for our honorary member, Mr. Richard Morton."

"If they have a lot of kids they'll want some big fellows to keep them straight and make them march right," guessed James; "that's where you and I come in, Roger, thanks to your mother and grandfather and my father being in the class."

"How about us girls?"

"The graduating class can use all the flowers they can lay their hands on, so we can bring them all we can carry and I know they'll be glad to have them," said Margaret.

"Can't we help them decorate?"

"They always do all the decorating themselves, but the evening before Recognition Day there's going to be a sale of ice cream for the benefit of the fund the C.L.S.C. people are raising to build a veranda on Alumni Hall and we can help a lot there."

"Where's that going to be?"

"There'll be hundreds of lanterns strung between the two halls, the band will play, and they'll have tables in the Hall of Philosophy."

"And we'll wait on the tables."

"We'll carry ice cream and sell cake and tell people how awfully good a chocolate cake that hasn't been cut yet looks so they'll want a piece of that to take home to one of the children who couldn't come."

"Foxy Margaret!"

"It'll be true."

"I suspect it will. My mouth waters now."

"You'll excuse my turning the subject, Madam President," said James excitedly, "but there are some of the jolliest little squirrels up over our heads. I've been watching them ever since we came and I believe I've learned a thing or two about them."

"What!"

They all threw themselves on their backs and stared up into the trees.

"They have regular paths that they follow in going from tree to tree. Did you see that fellow jump? He went out on the tip of that long twig and leaped from there. He just could grab the branch that sticks out from that oak. I believe that must be the only place where it is near enough for them to make the leap, for I've seen at least twenty jump from that same twig since I noticed them first."

"Twenty! How do you know it wasn't one leaping twenty times to show off to us?"

"It was more than one, anyway, for there was a chap with a grand, bushy tail and another one with hardly any tail at all."

"Cats," hissed Ethel Brown tragically.

"Very likely, since shooting isn't allowed here. Last summer I saw a cat catch a chipmunk right over there by that red cottage."

"Did she kill him?"

"Not much! Mr. Chip gave himself a twist and scampered back into his hole in the bank. I tell you the stripes on his back looked like one continuous strip of ribbon he went so fast!"

"Poor little fellow. Any more sandwiches left?" queried Roger. "No? Too bad. Let's adjourn, then. Madam President, I move we adjourn."

"To meet when?"

"When the president calls us," said Ethel Blue.

"And we'll all have our eyes and ears open so as to give her information so she'll have something to call us for."

Picking up the honorary member and setting him on his shoulder Roger led the procession back to the lake front, and so ended the first meeting of the United Service Club which was to fill so large a part in the lives of all its members for several years to come.