A SLACKER?
Two weeks went by after the great night, two weeks of ceaseless
activity. The fame of Betty's lawn party had spread all over
Deepdale, and countless smaller affairs on the same order had been
given. As imitation is always the sincerest flattery, the girls were
delighted.
"For we have the fun of knowing we started it," Mollie had said.
"Yes," said Betty. "We've made people understand that the Red Cross
needs money, but, girls, there's another branch of the war work that
isn't receiving much attention."
"What's that?" queried Grace, interested. It was just like Betty to
have things entirely thought out before she said anything about them.
"I never saw anybody with so many plans as you, Betty. You make my
head swim."
"Well, there's the Y.W.C.A.," Betty explained. "It's doing wonderful
work, but it will need a great deal more money than it has now, to
keep it up in these war times."
"Goodness," said Amy. "I wish we'd thought about it sooner. The boys
are sure they're going to be called every day, and if we took time to
get up anything like the entertainment we had before, we couldn't
have them in it."
"Oh, we couldn't give an affair like that without the boys," said
Mollie decidedly, a fact which she would never have admitted in the
hearing of the young men themselves. "And I'd hate to give anything
tame, after the big success we had with the other one."
"That's just it," Betty pursued, holding a sock up to the light and
regarding it critically. "I met Mrs. Barton Ross to-day----"
"Oh, isn't she lovely?" Amy interrupted enthusiastically. "By the
time you've talked with her five minutes you're willing to promise
her anything in the world."
"Goodness, I wish I had a gift like that," said Grace. "I could talk
all day and nobody'd do _anything_ for me."
"That's gratitude, isn't it?" said Mollie, in an aggrieved tone.
"Here I walk two whole blocks out of my way, to buy you a box of
candy when you didn't even ask me to----"
"Did you say you bought that box of candy for me?" asked Grace
bitterly, eying the alluring box, where it lay in Mollie's lap.
"Every time I want one I have to look extra sweet and go down on my
knees."
"More ingratitude," sighed Mollie. "Didn't I hear the doctor say you
must stop eating so much ice cream and candy, if you wanted to keep
your marvelous complexion?"
"No, you didn't," retorted Grace, "for the simple reason, that I
haven't been to the doctor's for over two years."
"That's right, I guess it _was_ your mother," Mollie admitted,
wickedly helping herself to a delicious morsel.
"Goodness, my family's been prophesying that thing ever since I can
remember," Grace retorted, putting aside her knitting, and drawing
nearer to the candy box. "If I had listened to them I'd have worried
myself into all sorts of things by this time."
"Instead you'd rather _eat_ yourself into them," sighed Mollie
primly, handing over the box with an air of resignation. "Betty, what
was it you were saying?"
Betty chuckled.
"First of all, Grace is walking off with your wool," she said. "Look
out, Grace, you'll break it."
"It was about Mrs. Barton Ross, wasn't it?" asked Amy patiently.
"Oh, yes! Well, she suggested that we give the same performance over
again. Everybody liked it, and any number of people had spoken to her
about it, saying they'd like to see it over again. Of course we'd
have to leave out the booths and things; they would take too much
time to get ready, but we might give the sketch."
"Goodness, that's a regular compliment," gurgled Mollie, knitting
furiously. "Instead of--as Roy would say--'getting the hook,' they
ask us to do it all over again. I wouldn't have thought any audience
would stand for it."
"Well," continued Betty, "I told Mrs. Ross I'd talk it over with you
folks, and if we did it at all, it would be for the benefit of the
Y.W.C.A. Of course, we don't know how the boys will feel about it."
But the boys were perfectly willing to give the play again, declaring
that "if Deepdale could stand for it, they surely could."
Deepdale did stand for it to the amount of a sum that made Mrs.
Barton Ross open her eyes wide in delighted astonishment. The affair
was a huge success.
"I don't know how to thank you," she had said to Betty and Grace, who
had been appointed by the others to take the money to her. "You girls
have waked Deepdale up with a vengeance. We were always intensely
patriotic, but we hardly knew how to go about showing it, until you
came and pointed the way."
Mrs. Barton Ross was the manager of the local Y.W.C.A., and every one
in Deepdale both loved and respected her personally and as an
influence for good.
"I believe," said Betty, as the two girls left her and started for
home, "I'd like to join the Y.W.C.A. also if only to be near Mrs.
Barton Ross. When I've talked with her for a little while, I always
feel as if I'd been to church, or something like that."
And that was the way it came about. Not being satisfied with Red
Cross work alone, the Outdoor Girls joined the Y.W.C.A., and from
that time on their days were filled to overflowing.
"It's all very well to knit in the day time," Roy complained one
stormy evening, when the four couples of young folks had congregated
in Mollie's cheerful living-room; "but I don't see why you have to
keep it up all evening too. It gets me dizzy just to watch the
needles."
"Well, why don't you get busy and learn to knit yourselves?" asked
Mollie with a twinkle. "Percy Falconer was telling me that in one
place several men had gotten together, and formed a knitting club. Of
course, they're too old to join the army or the navy, so they thought
they'd do their bit that way."
"Yes, and they've even made up a knitting song," chuckled Betty. "And
while they knit, they sing."
"The little dears," said Frank disgustedly. "Well, thank heaven, I'm
not too old to fight."
"I imagine that's just the sort of club dear Percy would like to
join," remarked Allen, smiling. "It's easier to imagine him in a
corner by the fireside knitting socks for soldiers, than in any other
role."
Percy Falconer was the dude of Deepdale, whom the other vigorous and
hearty young folks pitied more than they despised.
"I wonder if he'll enlist," said Roy interestedly. "It's kind of hard
to picture old Percy washing his own dishes."
"Enlist!" snorted Frank. "Of course he won't. He'll wait till he's
drafted, and then pray every night that he'll be sick or something,
so he won't have to go. I know his kind."
"Oh, there'll probably be a lot that will try to dodge the draft by
dropping hammers on their toes, and cutting off their fingers and all
such clever and noble little things as that," said Allen.
"Oh, Allen, do you think so?" asked Amy, gazing at him with horrified
eyes over her knitting.
"Why, of course," Roy backed him up. "It won't happen so much among
our boys. The slum districts will get most of it. Some of those
suckers would do almost anything to get out of fighting."
"Goodness," said Betty, with a little shiver. "I should think it
would take lots more courage to hurt yourself than to take a chance
on getting shot in the trenches. I don't see how anybody can do it."
"Oh, they're doing worse things than that," said Allen with a
chuckle. "Hundreds of the scared ones are getting married in the hope
that they can get out of it that way."
"Jumping from the frying pan into the fire," grinned Roy.
"Or from one war to another," added Frank, while the girls made faces
at them.
"But isn't Congress going to pass some sort of law," asked Betty
earnestly--Allen reflected how very pretty she was when in
earnest--"that will make that kind of man serve first? It seems to me
I read something about it in the paper."
"Goodness, I don't even get time to read the paper any more," sighed
Amy. "I feel wicked if I stop knitting for five minutes."
"We'll allow you that much," said Allen graciously. "Why, yes, there
is a law like that pending, Betty, and I imagine there will be quite
a few happy homes broken up."
"Did you hear about Herb Wilson?" asked Roy suddenly.
Herbert Wilson was another of the Deepdale boys.
"No," was the answer. "What's he been doing now?"
"Why, he was spending the week-end at a house party when his folks
telegraphed him that his orders had come, and he was to report for
duty the next morning. Well, the poor old chap didn't even have time
to get home and say goodbye--had to rush off the next morning and was
sent down South. His mother came over to see mine, and, the way she
went on about it, you'd have thought Herb was going to be shot at
sunrise!"
"Herb ought to answer like the old negro my uncle had on his
plantation," remarked Allen with a smile. "'Marse,' he said, 'dar
ain't no chaince o' my bein' shot at sunrise--no, sah. I don' never
git up dat early.'"
They laughed, and Grace remarked casually:
"I admire that negro. He has my own idea exactly."
"You know, as far as I'm concerned I rather envy Herb," said Frank,
while the girls stared at him in surprise. "Not for being called away
without having time to say good-bye to his folks, of course, but for
receiving his orders. Waiting and expecting them every day is mighty
hard on your nerves, I can tell you."
"Gee, it's time we were moving, Grace," said Will, jumping up. He had
been silent for the greater part of the evening. "It's getting late
and you've done enough knitting for one day."
This was the signal for a general breaking up, and as the young folks
rose to say good-bye they stole furtive glances at Will.
What was the matter with him? they wondered. Will, who had always
been the life of a party before, and so intensely patriotic and
thoroughly American! Yet he was the only one among them who was not
shouldering his share of the nation's responsibility.
As Allen lingered after he and Betty had reached her home she spoke
her wonderment and worry.
"Allen," she said, a little troubled line between her brows, "do you
know what's the matter with Will? Is he, can he be--a slacker?"
"I don't know," said Allen, shoving his hands deep into his pockets
as he always did when anything was, as he expressed it, "too deep for
him." "I can't make him out at all, Betty. We'll just have to hope
for the best."
"That's all we can do," she answered, and gave a long-drawn sigh.