"Wise man," said Mrs. Hargrave, nodding. "What else?"
"He told them that love of country was not boasting about where you came from, and telling everybody how high the corn grows in New York, or how blue the grass is in Kentucky or things about places like that. He says that is nothing but bragging. But he said what people needed was to love all their country, east and west and south and north, to try to understand one another and to pull together for the United States.
"And he said that if every one of those girls who married and had children would teach them this as hard as ever they could, some day the states would really be united, and wiser laws would be made, and all the young Americans would love their country and be willing to live for her. He said it is harder to live faithfully for anything than to die for it because it takes so much longer."
"Bless my soul!" said Mrs. Hargrave again. "Go on!"
"That's all," said Helen. "I don't see what else I can do except teach some children of my own about it, do you, Mrs. Hargrave?"
"I think that would be the finest thing you could do," said the childless old lady. "Quite the finest! Are you going to college?"
"I want to," said Helen, "if we can afford it. We are saving up for it all the time."
"How do you save?" asked Mrs. Hargrave. She was certainly a curious old lady.
"Well," said Helen, "I wear my hair docked, and that saves a lot in hair ribbons, only this fall mother says I must let it grow. When mother takes me to buy a coat, we look at two good ones that will last two winters, but perhaps one has pretty braid or something on it, that makes it cost more. Then if one of us looks as though we wanted it the other one whispers, 'Rah rah rah, college ah,' which is our own college yell, and we take the plain one.
"Lots of ways it looks to be harder on mother than it is on me. I know she goes without so many things she would love—lectures and concerts and all that. I just hate that part!"