“My ammunition are hard words only,” laughed Ruth. “I want to tell them that they are not doing their share for the Red Cross.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mercy. “Humph! Well, Ruthie, you have come at an unseasonable time, I fear. Mrs. Mantel is here.”
“Mrs. Mantel!” murmured Ruth.
“The woman in black!” exclaimed Helen. “Well, Mercy, what has she been saying?”
“Enough, I think,” the other girl replied. “At least, I have an idea that most of the women in the Ladies’ Aid believe that it is better to go on with the usual sewing and foreign and domestic mission work, and let the Red Cross strictly alone.”
CHAPTER III—THE WOMAN IN BLACK
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Helen Cameron, with some anger, “that they have no interest in the war, or in our boys who will soon begin to go over there? Impossible!”
“I repeat that,” said Ruth. “‘Impossible,’ indeed.”
“Oh, each may knit for her own kin or for other organizations,” Mercy said. “I am repeating what I have just heard, that is all. Girls! I am just boiling!”
“I can imagine it,” Helen said. “I am beginning to simmer myself.”