CHAPTER I


HOW IT STARTED

Ethel Morton, called from the color of her eyes Ethel "Blue" to
distinguish her from her cousin, also Ethel Morton, whose brown eyes
gave her the nickname of Ethel "Brown," was looking out of the window at
the big, damp flakes of snow that whirled down as if in a hurry to cover
the dull January earth with a gay white carpet.

"The giants are surely having a pillow fight this afternoon," she
laughed.

"In honor of your birthday," returned her cousin.

"The snowflakes are really as large as feathers," added Dorothy Smith,
another cousin, who had come over to spend the afternoon.

All three cousins had birthdays in January. The Mortons always
celebrated the birthdays of every member of the family, but since there
were three in the same month they usually had one large party and
noticed the other days with less ceremony. This year Mrs. Emerson, Ethel
Brown's grandmother, had invited the whole United Service Club, to which
the girls belonged, to go to New York on a day's expedition. They had
ascended the Woolworth Tower, gone through the Natural History Museum,
seen the historic Jumel Mansion, lunched at a large hotel and gone to
the Hippodrome. Everybody called it a perfectly splendid party, and