The shocked silence continued for no more than a minute. Mrs. Mantel was
a quick-witted woman, if she was nothing else commendable. But every
member of the Ladies' Aid Society knew what Mercy Curtis' question
meant.
"My dear child," said the woman in black, smiling her set smile but
rising promptly, "I shall have to do that for you another day. Really I
haven't the time just now to help you start any knitting. But later----
"I am sure you will forgive me for running away so early, Mrs. Curtis;
but I have another engagement. And," she shot a malignant glance at Ruth
Fielding, "I am not used to being taken to task upon any subject by
these college-chits!"
She went out of the room in a manner that, had she been thirty years
younger, could have been called "flounced"--head tossing and skirts
swishing with resentment. Several of the women looked at the girl of the
Red Mill askance, although they dared not criticize Mercy Curtis, for
they knew her sharp tongue too well.
"Mrs. Pubsby," Ruth said quietly to the pleasant-faced,
Quakerish-looking president of the society, "may I say a word to the
ladies?"
"Of course you may, Ruthie," said the good woman comfortably. "I have
known you ever since you came to Jabez Potter's, and I never knew you to
say a dishonest or unkind word. You just get it off your mind. It'll do
you good, child--and maybe do some of us good. I don't know but
we're--just a mite--getting religiously selfish."
"I have no idea of trying to urge you ladies to give up any of your
regular charities, or trying to undermine your interest in them. I
merely hope you will broaden your interests enough to include the Red
Cross work before it is too late."
"How too late?" asked Mrs. Crothers, rather snappishly. She had
evidently been both disturbed and influenced by the woman in black.
"So that our boys--some of them your sons and relatives--will not get over
to France before the Red Cross is ready to supply them with the comforts
they may need next winter. It is not impossible that boys right from
Cheslow will be over there before cold weather."
"The war will be over long before then, Ruthie," said Mrs. Pubsby
complacently.
"I've heard Dr. Cummings, the pastor, say that he is told once in about
so often that the devil is dead," Ruth said smiling. "But he is never
going to believe it until he can personally help bury him. Our
Government is going about this war as though it might last five years.
Are we so much wiser than the men at the head of the nation--even if we
have the vote?" she added, slyly.
"It does not matter whether the war will be ended in a few weeks, or in
ten years. We should do our part in preparing for it. And the Red Cross
is doing great and good work--and has been doing it for years and years.
When people like the lady who has just gone out repeat and invent
slanders against the Red Cross I must stand up and deny them. At least,
such scandal-mongers should be made to prove their statements."
"Oh, Ruth Fielding! That is not a kind word," said Mrs. Crothers.
"Will you supply me with one that will satisfactorily take its place?"
asked Ruth sweetly. "I do not wish to accuse Mrs. Mantel of actually
prevaricating; but I do claim the right of asking her to prove her
statements, and that she seems to decline to do.
"And I shall challenge every person I meet who utters such false and
ridiculous stories about the Red Cross. It is an out-and-out pro-German
propaganda."
"Why, Mrs. Mantel is a member of the Red Cross herself," said Mrs.
Crothers sharply.
"She evidently is not loyal to her pledge then," Ruth replied with
bluntness. "The lady is not a member of our local chapter, and I have
failed yet to hear of her being engaged in any activity for the Red
Cross.
"But I want you ladies--all of you--to take the Red Cross work to heart
and to learn what the insignia stands for."
With that the earnest girl entered upon a brief but moving appeal for
members to the local chapter, for funds, and for workers. As Helen said
afterward, Ruth's "mouth was opened and she spake with the tongues of
angels!"
At least, her words did not go for naught. Several dollar memberships
were secured right there and then. And Mrs. Brooks and Mary Lardner
promised a certain sum for the cause--both generous gifts. Best of all,
Mrs. Pubsby said:
"I don't know about this being shown our duty by this wisp of a girl.
But, ladies, she's right--I can feel it. And I always go by my feelings,
whether it's in protracted meetings or in my rheumatic knee. I feel we
must do our part.
"This gray woolen sock I'm knitting was for my Ezekiel. But my Ezey has
got plenty socks. From now on I'm going to knit 'em for those poor
soldiers who will like enough get their feet wet ditching over there in
France, and will want plenty changes of socks."
So Ruth started something that afternoon, and she went on doing more and
more. Cheslow began to awake slowly. The local chapter rooms began to
hum with life for several hours every day and away into the evening.
In the Cameron car, which Helen drove so that a chauffeur could be
relieved to go into the army, the two girls drove all about the
countryside, interesting the scattered families in war work and picking
up the knitted goods made in the farmhouses and villages.
In many places they had to combat the same sort of talk that the woman
in black was giving forth. Ruth was patient, but very insistent that the
Red Cross deserved no such criticism.
"Come into Cheslow and see what we are doing there at our local
headquarters. I will take you in and bring you back. I'll take you to
the county headquarters at Robinsburg. You will there hear men and women
speak who know much more than I do about the work."
This was the way she pleaded for fairness and public interest, and a
ride in a fine automobile was a temptation to many of the women and
girls. An afternoon in the rooms of a live Red Cross chapter usually
convinced and converted most of these "Doubting Thomasines," as Helen
called them.
Working with wool and other goods was all right. But money was needed. A
country-wide drive was organized, and Ruth was proud that she was
appointed on the committee to conduct it. Mr. Cameron, who was a wealthy
department store owner in the city, was made chairman of this special
committee, and he put much faith in the ability of the girl of the Red
Mill and his own daughter to assist materially in the campaign for
funds.
"Get hold of every hardshell farmer in the county," he told the girls.
"Begin with your Uncle Jabez, Ruthie. If he leads with a goodly sum many
another old fellow who keeps his surplus cash in a stocking or in the
broken teapot on the top cupboard shelf will come to time.
"The reason it is so hard to get contributions out of men like Jabez
Potter," said Mr. Cameron with a chuckle, "is because nine times out of
ten it means the giving up of actual money. They have their cash hid
away. It isn't making them a penny, but they like to hoard it, and some
of 'em actually worship it.
"And not to be wondered at. It comes hard. Their backs are bent and
their fingers knotted from the toil of acquiring hard cash, dollar by
dollar and cent by cent. It is much easier to write a check for a
hundred dollars to give to a good cause than it is to dig right down
into one's jeans and haul out a ten-dollar note."
Ruth knew just how hard this was going to be--to interest the purses of
the farming community in the Red Cross drive. The farmers' wives and
daughters were making their needles fly, but the men merely considered
the work something like the usual yearly attempt to get funds out of
them for foreign missions.
"I tell ye what, Niece Ruth, I got my doubts," grumbled Uncle Jabez,
when she broached the subject of his giving generously to the cause. "I
dunno about so much money being needed for what you're callin' the
'waste of war'!"
"If you read those statistics, compiled under the eyes of Government
agents," she told him, "you must be convinced that it is already proved
by what has happened in France and Belgium--and in other countries--during
the three years of war, that all this money will be needed, and more."
"I dunno. Millions! Them is a power of dollars, Niece Ruth. You and lots
of other folks air too willing to spend money that other folks have
airned by the sweat of their brows."
He offered her a sum that she was really ashamed to put down at the top
of her subscription paper. She went about her task in the hope that
Uncle Jabez's purse and heart would both be opened for the cause.
Not that he was not patriotic. He was willing--indeed anxious--to go to
the front and give his body for the cause of liberty. But Uncle Jabez
seemed to love his dollars better than he did his body.
"Give him time, dearie, give him time," murmured Aunt Alvirah, rocking
back and forth in her low chair. "The idea of giving up a dollar to
Jabez Potter's mind is bigger than the shooting of a thousand men. Poor
boys! Poor boys! How many of them may lack comforts and hospitals while
the niggard people like Jabez Potter air wakin' up?"
Ruth's heart was very sore about the going over of the American
expeditionary forces at this time, too. She said little to Helen about
it, but the fact that Tom Cameron--her very oldest friend about the Red
Mill and Cheslow--looked forward to going at the first moment possible,
brought the war very close to the girl.
The feeling within her that she should go across to France and actually
help in some way grew stronger and stronger as the days went by. Then
came a letter from Jennie Stone.
"Heavy," as she had always been called in school and even in college,
was such a fun-loving, light-hearted girl that it quite shocked both
Ruth and Helen when they learned that she was already in real work for
the poor poilus and was then about to sail for France.
Jennie Stone's people were wealthy, and her social acquaintances were,
many of them, idle women and girls. But the war had awakened these
drones, and with them the plump girl. An association for the
establishment and upkeep of a convalescent home in France had been
formed in Jennie's neighborhood, and Jennie, who had always been fond of
cooking--both in the making of the dishes and the assimilation of the
same--was actually going to work in the diet kitchen.
"And who knows," the letter ended in Heavy's characteristic way, "but
that I shall fall in love with one of the _blessés_. What a sweet name
for a wounded soldier! And, just tell me! Do you think it possible? Can
a poilu love a fat girl?"