“I can! I must!” the girl cried. “I know I’ll never see Tommy again. He—he’s going over there to—to be shot——”
“Don’t, dear!” begged Ruth, taking her chum into her arms. “You must not talk that way. This is war——”
“And is war altogether a man’s game? Aren’t we to have anything to say about it, or what the Government shall do with our brothers?”
“It is no game,” sighed Ruth Fielding. “It is a very different thing. And our part in it is to give, and give generously. Our loved ones if we must.”
“I don’t want to give Tom!” Helen declared. “I can never be patriotic enough to give him to the country. And that’s all there is to it!”
“Be a good girl, Helen, and brace up,” advised her father, but quite appreciating the girl’s feelings. There had always been a bond between the Cameron twins stronger than that between most brothers and sisters.
“I know I shall never see him again,” wailed the girl.
“I hope he’ll not hear that you said that, dear,” said the girl of the Red Mill, shaking her head. “We must send him away with cheerfulness. You tell him from me, Mr. Cameron, that I send my love and I hope he will come back a major at least.”
“He’ll be killed!” Helen continued to wail. “I know he will!”
But that did not help things a mite. Mr. Cameron went off late that night and reached the rendezvous called for in the telegram. It was in a port from which several transports were sailing within a few hours, and he came back with a better idea of what it meant for thousands of men under arms to get away on a voyage across the seas.