“I heard you come upstairs alone, Mill dear,” Judge Thornton said, smiling like a shamefaced schoolboy. “Don’t tell your mother or Dick, will you, for we had better break it to them by degrees? But I sent a check today for two thousand dollars to the Red Cross Fund to be used in this war relief business, my dear. I had to do it, it was on my conscience. I know your mother and brother won’t like it; they have been scolding for a new motor car and I’ve said I couldn’t afford one. Really four persons ought to be able to get on with two automobiles, when a good many thousands are going without bread. We’ll stand together, won’t we, even if my little girl has to give up one of her debutante parties?”
Already Mildred’s arms were about her father’s neck so that he found it difficult to talk, for that and other reasons.
“I am so glad, so glad,” she kept whispering. “You know how tiresome Dick and mother feel I am because I don’t think we ought to keep on playing and dancing and frivoling, when this horrible war is going on and people are being wounded and killed every minute. If you only guessed how I wanted to use the little knowledge and strength I have to help.”
But the Judge now shook his head decisively and moved away.
“Nonsense, child, you are too young; such an idea is not to be thought of. We ought never to have let you attend those hospital classes, or at least I should not have allowed it. Goodness knows, your mother fought the idea bitterly enough! But remember, you promised her that you would give the same time to society that you have given to your nursing, and that is three years. You can’t go back on your word, and besides I won’t have you thinking so much about these horrors; you’ll be making yourself ill. War isn’t a girl’s business.” Certainly Judge Thornton was trying to be severe, but just beyond the door he turned back.
“I sent the check in your name, Mill dear, so you can feel you are doing a little something to help,” he added affectionately. “Good night.”
Afterwards, although tired (and it was quite two o’clock when she was finally in bed), Mildred Thornton found it almost impossible to sleep. At first she kept seeing a vision of herself as she appeared at the dance earlier in the evening. How stiff and solemn and out of place she had seemed, and how impossible it had been to make conversation with the young men her brother had brought forward and introduced to her! In the first place, they had not seemed like men at all, but like the fashionably dressed pictures in the magazine advertisements or the faultless figures adorning the windows in men’s furnishing stores.
Besides, they had only wished to talk of the latest steps in the new dances or the last musical comedy. And what a strange expression that young fellow’s face had worn, when she had asked him if he had ever thought of going over to help in the war! No wonder Dick had been so ashamed of her.
Then, having fallen asleep, Mildred began dreaming. Her father had been right, she must have been thinking more than she should about the war. Because in her dream she kept seeing regiment after regiment of soldiers marching across broad, green fields, with bands playing, flags flying and their faces shining in the sun. Finally they disappeared in a cloud of black smoke, and when this took place she had awakened unexpectedly.
Sitting up in bed with her long flaxen braids hanging over either shoulder, Mildred wondered what had aroused her at this strange hour? Then she remembered that it was the loud, clear ringing of their front door bell. Moreover, she had since become conscious of other noises in the house. Her brother had rushed out of his room and was calling to the man servant who had turned on the lights down in the front hall.