"I—couldn't I be useful over there?"
Mabel smiled rather grimly. "What can you do?"
"I can cook."
"Only men cooks, my dear. What else?"
"I could clean up, couldn't I? There must be something. I'd do anything I could. Don't they have people to wash dishes and—all that?"
Mabel was on doubtful ground there. She knew of a woman who had been permitted to take over her own automobile, paying all her expenses and buying her own tires and gasoline.
"She carries supplies to small hospitals in out-of-the-way places," she said. "But I don't suppose you can do that, Sara Lee, can you?"
However, she gave Sara Lee a New York address, and Sara Lee wrote and offered herself. She said nothing to Aunt Harriet, who had by that time elected to take Edgar's room at Cousin Jennie's and was putting Uncle James' clothes in tearful order to send to Belgium. After a time she received a reply.
"We have put your name on our list of volunteers," said the letter, "but of course you understand that only trained workers are needed now. France and England are full of untrained women who are eager to help."
It was that night that Sara Lee became engaged to Harvey.