“Help you do what, child?” asked the woman in black, rather startled.
“I am going to begin one,” explained Mercy, “and I do wish, Mrs. Mantel, that you would show me how. I’m dreadfully ignorant about the whole thing, you know.”
There was a sudden silence all over the room. Mrs. Mantel’s ready tongue seemed stayed. The pallor of her face was apparent, as innocent-looking Mercy, with the yarn and needles held out to her, waited for an affirmative reply.
CHAPTER IV—“CAN A POILU LOVE A FAT GIRL?”
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.”