"Good gracious, Pat, black or white?"
"I'm really very serious, Daddy, and Mrs. Townsend from the Red Cross says we can make it a beautiful work! One family is assigned to each of us. We give as much time as we can spare and do everything we can--amuse the children, take 'em out, make things easier for the mothers so's they can rest and get strong again! You see these are families that have been sick. Mine is Mrs. K-a-s-u-b-o-w-s-k-i," she read from a card.
Pat had, in her way, expressed the scout orders. To each of the older scouts had been assigned a family that had suffered from the epidemic. Each girl was to work under the direction of the District Nurse and in coöperation with the Red Cross. She was to give brief reports of each visit. And knowing that these girls could, in the homes to which they were sent, win trust where older women often met suspicion and unfriendliness, the Red Cross hoped to build up through their services, a sympathy and understanding that would benefit everyone and draw more closely the bonds of common interest.
In her youthful mind Pat did not sense any such vision; she only knew that her scout orders directed her to go and do all she could for a family whose name she simply could not pronounce; that her card stated that there was a Rosa, aged seven, a Josef, age six, a Stephanie, aged three and a baby Peter; that everyone of them had been desperately ill, including the father and mother; that only within the last two or three weeks had the father been able to go back to work and that upon the poor mother, still weak from the ravages of fever, had fallen the burden of making the meagre savings tide them over.
Pat called them all her "Kewpies." Her first two visits left her discouraged, the children were dirty and quarrelsome, the mother unfriendly. But, gradually, armed with picture books and toys, Pat won the liking of the little ones; at the next visit she gave them cakes of soap which Renée had carved to resemble dogs and pigs and promised them more if they would use these "all up"; warm sunshine permitted a long walk and outdoor play and Mrs. Kewpie, gratefully realizing that for an hour she was absolutely without chick or child, caught a much-needed moment of rest!
Renée had not been given a family by the Red Cross. At first she was disappointed, then, wholeheartedly, she fell to helping Pat. Aunt Pen and Daddy, too, were deeply interested. Almost every evening the "Kewpies" were discussed at the "pow-wow." Aunt Pen was aghast that Mrs. Kewpie could speak only a word or two of English!
"How can she be expected to bring up good American citizens--let alone be one herself?" she asked heatedly.
Through Rosa Pat learned that poor Mrs. Kewpie would really like to talk and read English. Her husband had learned it at his shop, the older children were learning it at school; less and less they were talking the only language she had ever known! She felt, with the quick instinct of her mother's heart, that they were growing away from her into a world of interests where she could not follow. No one had ever offered to teach her this new, strange tongue! She was afraid of the teachers in Rosa's school! She misunderstood and resented the approaches of the few English-speaking women she had met; proud herself, she had thought them patronizing and officious! But Pat was just a girl!
So Pat, quite unconsciously, began making a good American citizen out of Mrs. Kewpie. She found that the picture books she brought the children interested the mother, too--not because of the pictures alone but because the mother could make out, through them, the meaning of the words beneath them. When Pat told of this at home Aunt Pen thought of the beautiful plan of making for Mrs. Kewpie a primer out of pictures. Every evening, for a week, the entire Everett family worked industriously with scissors and paste, compiling what Aunt Pen laughingly called: "Everett's First Lessons in the American Language."
"She'll know all about this country of ours when she's graduated from this book," declared Mr. Everett, proudly smoothing down a colored picture of the Capitol at Washington.