"He asked many questions about you and said that he hopes mightily to see you before he sails. I told him that was highly improbable as Commencement is to be so late this year owing to the enforced vacation in January when over half the school was in quarantine on account of mumps and measles. That was the first he had heard of it, and he said to congratulate you for him on your lucky escape."
I am glad that Barby wrote in detail as she did, for I have not had a line from Richard in three months. Evidently he did not get my last letter, for in that I told him all about that quarantine, and the fun we girls had who escaped the contagion, but who were kept in durance vile on account of the others.
I wish I had been at home when he surprised them. I wish I were a boy and could do what he is doing. It would be simply glorious to go winging one's way into battle as he will do. It's one thing to give your life for your country in one exalted moment of renunciation, and quite another to give it in little dribs of insignificant sacrifices and petty duties, the way we stay-at-home girls have to do. It is maddening to have the soul of an "Ace" who would dare any flight or of a "Sammie" who would endure any trench, and then have nothing but a pair of knitting needles handed out to you.
Another letter from Barby this week. Of course I knew the war would come close home in many ways, but I hadn't expected it would get that little mother-o'-mine first thing. This is what she writes:
"It is quite possible that I may be in Washington by the last of May. Mrs. Waldon has written, begging me to come and stay with her while Catherine goes back to Kentucky for a visit. She writes that she is 'up to her ears' in the Army and Navy League work, and that is where I belong. She says I should be there getting inspiration for all this end of the state, and lending a hand in the grand drive they are planning for. Her letter is such a veritable call to arms that I feel that I'll be shirking my duty if I don't go. Tippy says there is no reason why I shouldn't go. She can get Miss Susan Triplett to come up from Wellfleet to stay with her till you come home.
"Her patriotic old soul is fired with joy at no longer being under the ban of a 'neutral' silence. When it comes to her powers of speech, Tippy on the war-path is a wonder. I wish the Kaiser could hear her when she is once thoroughly warmed up on the subject. She'd be in the first soup-kitchen outfit that leaves for the front if it wasn't for her rheumatism. As it is, she is making the best self-appointed recruiting officer on the whole Cape.
"I have written to your father, asking him if he can find me a place where I can be useful on one of the hospital ships; I can't nurse, but there ought to be many things I can do if it's nothing more than scrubbing the operating rooms and sterilizing instruments. And maybe in that way I could see him occasionally. Of course it isn't as if he were stationed on one particular ship. I believe he could manage it then, but being needed in many places and constantly moving he may not want me to go. In that case I shall join Mrs. Waldon. She says she can put me into a place where every hour's work will count for something worth while."
It made the tears come to my eyes when I read that. Little Barby, out in the world doing things for her country! Since I have grown to be half a head taller than she, and especially since my office training last summer and Father's leaving her in my care, I've been thinking of her as little Barby. She's never done anything in public but read her graduating essay. The tables are turned now. It is she who is going out on a stony road in her little bare feet, and she's never been shod for such going. But she's got the spirit of the old Virginia Cavaliers, even if she didn't inherit a Pilgrim-father backbone as the Huntingdons did. She'll never stop for the stones, and she'll get to any place she starts out to reach. I'm as proud of her as I am of Father. I've simply got to do something myself, as soon as school is out.
