At least, so Ruth at first thought. Then, before she had been there two days, she chanced into another department upon an errand and came face to face with Mrs. Rose Mantel, the woman in black.
“Oh! How d’do!” said the woman with her set smile. “I heard you were coming here to help us, Miss Fielding. Hope you’ll like it.”
“I hope so,” Ruth returned gravely.
She had very little to say to the woman in black, although the latter, as the days passed, seemed desirous of ingratiating herself into the college girl’s good opinion. But that Mrs. Mantel could not do.
It seemed that Mrs. Mantel was an expert bookkeeper and accountant. She confided to Ruth that, before she had married and “dear Herny” had died, she had been engaged in the offices of one of the largest cotton brokerage houses in New Orleans. She still had a little money left from “poor Herny’s” insurance, and she could live on that while she was “doing her bit” for the Red Cross.
Ruth made no comment. Of a sudden Mrs. Mantel seemed to have grown patriotic. No more did she repeat slanders of the Red Cross, but was working for that organization.
Ruth Fielding would not forbid a person “seeing the light” and becoming converted to the worthiness of the cause; but somehow she could not take Mrs. Mantel and her work at their face value.
Gradually, as the weeks fled, Ruth became acquainted with others of the busy workers; with Mr. Charles Mayo, who governed this headquarters and seldom spoke of anything save the work—so she did not know whether he had a family, or social life, or anything else but just Red Cross.
There was a Mr. Legrand, whom she did not like so well. He seemed to be a Frenchman, although he spoke perfect English. He was a dark man with steady, keen eyes behind thick lenses, and, unusual enough in this day, he wore a heavy beard. His voice was a bark, but it did not seem that he meant to be unpleasant.
Legrand and a man named José, who could be nothing but a Mexican, often were with the woman in black—both in the offices and out of them. Ruth took her meals at a restaurant near by, although she roomed in the Y. W. C. A. building, as she said she should. In that restaurant she often saw the woman in black dining with her two cavaliers, as Ruth secretly termed Legrand and José.