Tish stood just inside the door, and Myrtle was just beside me. Aggie had collapsed on a hall chair. I have, I think, neglected to say that the farmhouse was furnished. Tish’s mother used to go out there every summer, and she was a great woman for being comfortable.
At last Mr. Culver came to the front door and spoke through it.
“Hello, inside there!” he called, in a furious voice. As no one replied, he then banged at the door, and from the sound I fancy the policeman was hammering also, with his mace.
“Open, in the name of the law!” bellowed the policeman.
“Stop that racket,” Tish replied sternly. “Or I shall fire.”
Of course she had no weapon, but they did not know this. We could hear Mr. Culver telling the policeman to keep back, as he knew us, and we had any other set of desperadoes he had ever heard of beaten for recklessness with a gun.
There was a moment’s silence, during which I heard Aggie’s knitting needles going furiously. She learned to knit by touch once when she had iritis and was obliged to finish a slumber robe in time for Tish’s birthday. So the darkness did not trouble her, and I knew she was knitting to compose herself.
Tish then stood inside the door, and delivered through it one of the most inspiring patriotic speeches I have ever heard. She spoke of our long tolerance, while the world waited. Then of the decision, and the call to arms. She said that the sons of the Nation were rising that day in their might.
“But,” she finished, “there are some among us who would shirk, would avoid the high and lofty duty. There are some who would profane the name of love, and hide behind it to save their own cowardly skins. To these ignoble ones there is but one course left open. Go. Put your name on the roster of your country as a free man, unmarried and without impediments of any sort. Then return and these doors will fly open before the magic of a blue card.”
It was at that time, we learned later, that the policeman, who was but a rough and untutored type, decided that Tish was insane—how often, alas, is genius thus mistaken!—and started off for the Knowles farm to bring help. Mr. Culver made no reply to Tish’s speech, and we learned later had gone away in the midst of it. Later on he was reported by Aggie, who looked out from an upper window, to be sitting under the chestnut tree where he had once rescued Tish’s black alpaca skirt, sulking and watching.