“Wait. Let us be calm,” urged Ruth, smiling as she laid off her things, preparatory to going into the large front room where Mrs. Curtis was entertaining the Ladies’ Aid Society.
“Is it all because of that woman in black?” demanded Helen.
“Well, she has been pointing out that the Red Cross is a great money-making scheme, and that it really doesn’t need our small contributions.”
“And she is a member herself!” snapped Helen.
“Well, she joined, of course, because she did not want anybody to think she wasn’t patriotic,” scoffed Mercy. “That is the way she puts it. But you ought to hear the stories she has been telling these poor, simple women.”
“Did you ever!” cried Helen angrily.
“It is well we came here,” Ruth said firmly. “Let me into the lions’ den, Mercy.”
“I am afraid they are another breed of cats. There is little noble or lionlike about some of them.”
Ruth and Helen were quite used to Mercy Curtis’ sharp tongue. It was well known. But it was evident, too, that the girl had been roused to fury by what she had heard at the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society.
The ladies of the church society were, for the most part, very good people indeed. But at this time the war was by no means popular in Cheslow (as it was not in many places) and the plague of pacifism, if not actually downright pro-German propaganda, was active and malignant.