WAR RELIEF
Edwin Green occasionally had an attack of neuralgia that incapacitated
him for work for at least a day, so when Molly solemnly gave out the
news that her poor husband was suffering with one of his spells of
that painful malady, sympathy was expressed by servants, teachers, and
students. Blinds in the invalid's room were carefully closed and the
door locked, with the key in Molly's pocket. Instructions were sternly
given that nobody must disturb him. When he felt better he would ask for
what he wanted. Little Mildred was very sad that she was not allowed to
take him his "tup of toffee."
"I weckon he's a-gonter die, sho," she confided to Cho-Cho-San. "Only my
mother don't know it or she wouldn't be a-smilin' an' laughin' so
hard."
"I am going to work this morning at my war relief, even if we are to get
married to-morrow," declared Molly at breakfast. "If I let anything
short of death interfere I get into bad habits, and the work simply must
be done. They are crying out for more and more dressings."
"Let's all of us go help! We can turn out oodlums of work if we try,"
cried Judy.
"Not Nance!" insisted Molly. "I know she has a lot of little stitches to
put in before to-morrow."
"If you will excuse me, I will beg off," blushed Nance. "Andy is coming
in this morning for a few moments, besides."
"I tell you, you must stay at home to take care of poor dear Edwin,"
laughed Judy. "It would look terribly heartless for all of us to go
leave him."
"Oh, I forgot Edwin!" declared Molly, just as Kizzie came in with a
stack of waffles. The girl looked at her mistress in astonishment. What
was coming over her Miss Molly, "fergittin' of the boss and then
a-larfin' about it?"
"Shall I take Andy up to see him?" asked Nance soberly.
"Perhaps!"
"Hadn't we better take the kids along so their noise won't disturb poor
dear Brother Edwin?" suggested Judy, "Mildred and Cho-Cho and Poilu, the
puppy." Poilu was a diminutive mongrel, the love of Mildred's heart.
"Oh, Mother, please, please!" begged Mildred.
"I'm so 'appee! I'm so 'appee!" sang Cho-Cho as Molly smiled her
consent.
"They can play in the churchyard and will be good, I am sure," she
declared.
And so Nance was left to put in her finishing stitches, to receive her
lover and to take care of the fictitious case of neuralgia.
"Hot cloths on his head if he is in very great agony," Molly called back
as the gay throng started for the war relief rooms. "There is more
aspirin in the top drawer if he is in much pain."
Nance had a busy morning answering the 'phone, which rang many times
with inquiries for the popular professor. Mary Neil sent a box of candy
to Molly as a kind of consolation prize and Billie McKym sent Edwin a
pot of flowers. Lilian Swift sent a basket of fruit.
"If their friends rally around them so for an imaginary disease, what
would they do if something were really the matter?" thought Nance.
M. Misel and Andy met at the front door, Misel to inquire for the poor
ill man and Andy to catch a glimpse of his Nance. Misel had walked
slowly and painfully across the campus from his class room. Nance, from
the window, had watched him approaching and she could but admire his
patience as he made his crippled way.
"It must be worse to have to pretend to be lame than to be lame," she
said to herself. "I wonder if Andy is still fooled."
The two men came into the library together, Andy showing great
solicitude for the disabled foreigner. Misel was so extremely polite and
seemed so distressed at Edwin's illness that Nance could hardly believe
that Judy and the girls could be right in the discovery they had made
the night before. His manner was perfect, so respectful, so kindly and
courteous.
"I believe I am to wish you joy, Dr. McLean,--and I do so with all my
heart." Andy grinned his appreciation. "My wife and I were quite charmed
by Miss Oldham. I hear you are to go to the front to assist poor
stricken France. I admire the courage of your fiancee to contemplate
going with you."
"It would take more for me to stay away," whispered Nance softly.
"Ah, it is the spirit of the women which is what the Germans have to
fight!"
"Is not the spirit of the German women quite as courageous as ours?"
asked Nance, looking at Misel keenly.
"Ah! _Wonderschoen!_" his eyes glowed. Suddenly the fact that he had
dropped into German seemed to embarrass him. "That is--that is the
word for the German women, just as 'wonderful' is the one for the
Americans."
"Tell me about Edwin," interrupted Andy, as though he meant to put Misel
at his ease again. "Is he very ill?"
"Oh, very!"
"Can't I go up to see him?"
"Molly said he was not to be disturbed. These headaches just wear
themselves out. He will be all right to-night."
"But there is something to be done before it wears Edwin out as well as
itself," insisted the young doctor.
"Molly says not!" Nance shook her head at Andy as much as to tell him he
was talking too much, and that young man subsided until Misel had gone.
Then Nance revealed to her lover the whole nefarious plot.
"I had my doubts about that man from the first. I could not see how
anyone as lame as he was could have jumped up so briskly. The beast! How
could you be so polite to him?"
"Camouflage! Fighting the devil with fire!"
"I am glad old Ed took matters in hand so promptly. I tell you these
college professors show up pretty well in these times! Wilson and Green
forever!"
In the meantime the industrious war relief workers were hard at it. The
be-aproned and be-kerchiefed ladies of Wellington held their seances in
the basement of the little church. It was astonishing how large was
their output, but busy fingers had been steadily at work ever since word
had come from France that wounded men were dying for lack of surgical
dressings, and that word had come very soon after the breaking out of
the World War.
Women with earnest faces were bending over the long tables, some rolling
bandages; some tearing cotton cloth; some pulling threads for careful
cutting of gauze, later to be deftly folded in the prescribed shape. In
one corner, cotton batting was being fluffed up for the making of
fracture pillows. Huge baskets were being emptied by one group as they
stuffed the pillows, while others were being filled by the fluffers,
as Judy called the women whose duty it was to pick the cotton. Much
sneezing went on in this corner and he who wonders why, might try once
fluffing unrefined cotton.
"Let me make the tampons!" begged Jessie.
"I know why! Because they look like powder puffs," teased Edith.
The house party was received with enthusiasm by the Wellington workers.
There always seems to be more work than can be accomplished and then
workers come and by hook or crook the task is completed. All of our
girls had done some war relief work, so it was easy to set them to
their stints. Pretty Jessie could make tampons that were so soft and so
regular that they really did look like powder puffs. Katherine could
pick cotton as fast as Mother Carey can chickens and her advent caused
an increase of sneezing. Edith stuffed fracture pillows just to show
that she could go faster than her sister. Margaret rolled bandages with
a precision equal to her parliamentary ruling when she was presiding
officer. Otoyo and Judy and Molly folded the gauze into the neat little
six-inch squares. This is the most difficult part of the work, requiring
such accuracy that only the expert should choose that table. The edges
must come just together, no threads must be left on the gauze, the
corners must be turned under exactly enough and the finished articles
stacked in even piles.
Madame Misel came in with the work she had taken home to finish. Never
were such neat, wonderful dressings as hers. In the short time she had
been at Wellington she had accomplished the work of two women, bringing
in great stacks of the accurately-made dressings.
It was difficult for the girls to treat her with the courtesy they
knew it was policy to employ. Behind that calm mask they could now
detect the lying spy. Her expression was as demure as ever and she
spoke with the same hesitation that they felt was assumed, just as
her husband's halting gait was. Why they should have taken up that
particular disguise, Molly and her friends were at a loss to know.
Madame Misel was almost a beautiful woman. Animation would have made her
quite beautiful, animation and better dressing. Her hair was parted in
the middle and brushed as slick as glass, coiled in a tight knob at
exactly the wrong angle. She habitually wore an old-fashioned basque of
a bygone cut buttoned up close to the neck with a narrow band of white
collar, which but accentuated the severity of her garb. Her shoes were
broad and ugly with no heels, her skirt skimpy and badly hung.
Judy studied the countenance of the foreigner as she bent over her work.
The nimble fingers moved very rapidly as she folded the gauze.
"Gee, I'd like to sketch her!" Judy whispered to Molly. "A mixture of
Mona Lisa and the Unknown Woman and plain repressed devil!"
She whipped out her sketch book, which was never far from her, and with
a few strokes had Madame Misel's pose, then with a skill that was quite
wonderful had suggested her features. The model moved uneasily as though
conscious of scrutiny, but before she looked up Judy had closed her book
and was demurely folding gauze. Madame arose and walked away, standing
by the table where Margaret was rolling bandages. Judy again whipped
out her book and made a rapid impression of the unstylish figure in its
flat shoes and tight basque.
Just then little Mildred and Cho-Cho came screaming from the churchyard
where they had been playing happily. Mildred had in her arms the poor
little much-petted puppy. Blood was streaming from the creature's leg
and he was giving forth pathetic wails.
"A big dog done bitted him all up!" cried Mildred.
"Greatly dog 'ave 'urt little puppee!" said Cho-Cho-San.
"First aid to the injured!" exclaimed Judy, as she took the bleeding
canine in her arms. The pile of beautifully made dressings Madame Misel
had just brought in was on the corner of the long table. Without a
by-your-leave, Judy snatched up one from the top and bound it around the
poor gory leg. "There, you poor little precious! You may be part French
poodle, anyhow, and surely a wound is a wound."
Madame Misel put out a hand as though to stay her, but before she could
say anything Judy had the dressing wrapped around the puppy's little
leg.
"Too bad to take one so perfectly made, but I just grabbed the one
closest to hand. Now, Mildred, you and Cho-Cho can be Red Cross nurses
and little Poilu can be your wounded warrior. Take him out and nurse him
carefully. It isn't much of a place and no doubt with good care he will
be all well by to-morrow."
"I--think--it--would be--advisable to--apply--iodine to the
wound--is it--not so, Madame Brown? I shall be pleased to--go
to--my--house--and--procure some," faltered Madame Misel.
"I don't think it is really necessary," insisted Molly. "We shall be
going home presently and I can put some on then. You are very kind."
Enemy alien or not, Madame Misel was certainly very thoughtful to want
to take the trouble for the pet. Molly, ever ready to see the good in
persons, had a feeling that this quiet, pleasant woman could not be
shamming. Perhaps Misel was not what he should be, but not this wife,
who was so untiring in her labors of mercy.
When they started home, the roly-poly Poilu seemed to have recovered
entirely. He did not even limp, so he was spared the ordeal of having
the stinging iodine poured on the wounded leg. It was nothing more than
a scratch anyhow, Judy declared.
At midnight Edwin returned, letting himself quietly in the front door.
Molly was waiting for him, eaten up with curiosity about what had
transpired. He had been closeted with the Secret Service officials, who
considered the matter of the gravest importance. Two of the cleverest
and most cautious of the detective force were put on the job.
"They were no doubt on the train with me," he said, "but I have no idea
what they look like or what disguise they themselves will employ. At
least a dozen persons got off the train at Wellington Station and all of
them or none of them may have been Sherlock Holmeses."
"I hope your neuralgia is better," laughed Molly.
"Well, the joke of it is, I really did have neuralgia all day, not
severe enough to keep me from enjoying a very good luncheon with your
brother Kent and Jimmie Lufton at the Press Club, but quite bad enough
to keep you from having told a lie."
"Poor dear! I am so sorry for you to have suffered at all, but it is
certainly considerate of you to be instrumental in saving my soul. And
now, since to-morrow is the wedding day, we had better get all the sleep
we can."