The Town Clerk smiled at this, and then he took the municipal copy of the Tribune from among other works of reference on a side table, folded back the page and handed the paper to the Mayor. “That youngest girl of yours has been going it.”
It was an unfortunate piece of phrasing on the part of one so accomplished as Aylett. Josiah started a little and then with an air of rather grim anxiety proceeded to read the Tribune.
There was three quarters of a column devoted to the doings of Miss Sarah Ann Munt; a sight which, with certain sinister recollections in his mind, went some way to assure Josiah that his worst fears were realized. But he had but to read a line or so to be convinced that there was no ground for pessimism. Miss Sarah Ann Munt, it seemed, had rendered such signal service to the Allied Cause that she had brought great honor upon herself, upon a name highly and justly esteemed in the city of Blackhampton, and even upon the country of her origin.
The Tribune told the thrilling story of her deeds with pardonable gusto. On the outbreak of war she had volunteered for service with the Serbian Army. Owing to her great skill as a motor driver, for which in pre-war days she had been noted, she had been attached in that capacity to the Headquarters Staff. She had endured the perils and the hardships of the long retreat; and her coolness, her daring and her mother wit had enabled her to bring her car, containing the Serbian Commander and his Chief of Staff, in safety through the enemy lines at a moment when they had actually been cut off. “It is not too much to say,” declared the Tribune whose language was official, “that the story of Miss Munt’s deeds in Serbia is one of the epics of the war. By her own personal initiative she did much to avert a disaster of the first magnitude. No single individual since the war began has rendered a more outstanding service to the Allied Cause. She has already been the recipient of more than one high decoration, and on page five will be found an official photograph of her receiving yet another last week in Paris from the hands of the Chief of the Republic.”
Josiah felt a little dizzy as with carefully assumed coolness he turned to page five. There, sure enough, was Sally, looking rather fine drawn in her close-fitting khaki, but with that half-wicked down-looking smile upon her that he knew so well. With her leggings, and her square chin and her “bobbed” hair which hung upon her cheeks in side pieces and gave her a resemblance to Joan of Arc she was like an exceedingly handsome, but as they say in Blackhampton, a rather “gallus” boy. The hussy! He couldn’t help laughing at the picture of her, it was so exactly how he best remembered her. The amused slightly defiant You-Be-Damned air was so extraordinarily like her.
“Blame my cats!” said the Mayor.
For several minutes it was his only remark.