Mary wrote her delight in Christina's good fortune, hinting just a little surprise that she should have won a prize where Mary herself had failed. Ellen wrote cautioning her sister not to set her heart on any one for the present. Wallace was young and they would likely be parted, and people saved themselves a great deal of pain if they did not make plans for the future.
Christina was too busy to think much of the future, the present was quite sufficient. For besides all the joyous social events and home duties, like all the other women of the village she was called upon to take up the burden of Red Cross work.
The Red Cross Society proved as great a blessing in the divided ranks of Orchard Glen society, as it did on many another field of battle. It provided a place where the Methodists and Presbyterians could meet on common ground and it was wonderful to see the gradual drawing together of the forces that had been rent asunder by the skirl of old Lauchie's bagpipes It was very heartening to see Mrs. Henderson, Tremendous K.'s wife, and Mrs. Johnnie Brown, the wife of the Methodist Sunday School Superintendent working side by side. It was impossible to keep from speaking when you were sewing on the same hospital shirt and gradually people began to forget that there were Methodists and Presbyterians in the world, remembering only that there were Germany and the Allies. And when Tremendous K. was asked by the Red Cross Society to get up a concert that winter to raise Red Cross funds, Methodists and Baptists came flocking back to the choir and they all sang, "O, Canada" and "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," together as though there had never been a piper in Orchard Glen.
But these harmonious heights were not reached without many a rocky bit of road for the Red Cross Society to travel.
When the Society was formed, a number of women came out from Algonquin to organise, though Mrs. Johnnie Dunn did not see why in common sense they couldn't form a society themselves without a lot of women from town trolloping out to show them how to do something they all knew how to do already. Nevertheless the ladies from town came and they organised centres in Dalton and Greenwood and Orchard Glen and in other places all through the country.
The Orchard Glen Red Cross Society was to meet once a week in the basement of the Methodist Church, it being the largest available space in the village.
Mrs. Sutherland was made President and Mrs. Sinclair Treasurer; and young Mrs. Martin was Secretary, with Christina Lindsay to assist and take the minutes when the children were so bad that nobody could manage them. There was a large executive committee besides, but all these officials were quite irrelevant, for Mrs. Johnnie Dunn was the real head and body and limbs of the society, and looked after all its business.
Then The Woman brought out the materials for sewing and knitting from Algonquin, and returned the garments when she thought they ought to be finished, and woe betide the unlucky Red Cross worker who was behind a day with a shirt or a pair of socks! For she decreed just how much was to be done each week, and no Prussian Militarist ever ruled with so high a hand.
"Just add another roll o' towelling to that order," she would command the Algonquin woman who was handing out her month's work, "there's a lot o' lazy lumps out at our corner that's sittin' pickin' their fingers for want o' somethin' to do."
The Society followed The Woman and the President was left far in the rear. Indeed Orchard Glen was rather proud of Mrs. Johnnie Dunn. She was so clever and made such a name for them in Red Cross circles. The valentine episode was forgotten with other pre-war trivialities and she was reinstated in her old place of leadership.