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?”
CHAPTER V—“THE BOYS OF THE DRAFT”
“My goodness, Ruth Fielding!” demanded Helen, after reading the characteristic letter from Jennie Stone, “if she can go to France why can’t we?”
Helen’s changed attitude did not surprise her chum much. Ruth was quite used to Helen’s vagaries. The latter was very apt to declare against a course of action, for herself or her friends, and then change over night.