Women with earnest faces were bending over the long tables, some rolling bandages; some tearing cotton cloth; some pulling threads for careful cutting of gauze, later to be deftly folded in the prescribed shape. In one corner, cotton batting was being fluffed up for the making of fracture pillows. Huge baskets were being emptied by one group as they stuffed the pillows, while others were being filled by the fluffers, as Judy called the women whose duty it was to pick the cotton. Much sneezing went on in this corner and he who wonders why, might try once fluffing unrefined cotton.
“Let me make the tampons!” begged Jessie.
“I know why! Because they look like powder puffs,” teased Edith.
The house party was received with enthusiasm by the Wellington workers. There always seems to be more work than can be accomplished and then workers come and by hook or crook the task is completed. All of our girls had done some war relief work, so it was easy to set them to their stints. Pretty Jessie could make tampons that were so soft and so regular that they really did look like powder puffs. Katherine could pick cotton as fast as Mother Carey can chickens and her advent caused an increase of sneezing. Edith stuffed fracture pillows just to show that she could go faster than her sister. Margaret rolled bandages with a precision equal to her parliamentary ruling when she was presiding officer. Otoyo and Judy and Molly folded the gauze into the neat little six-inch squares. This is the most difficult part of the work, requiring such accuracy that only the expert should choose that table. The edges must come just together, no threads must be left on the gauze, the corners must be turned under exactly enough and the finished articles stacked in even piles.
Madame Misel came in with the work she had taken home to finish. Never were such neat, wonderful dressings as hers. In the short time she had been at Wellington she had accomplished the work of two women, bringing in great stacks of the accurately-made dressings.
It was difficult for the girls to treat her with the courtesy they knew it was policy to employ. Behind that calm mask they could now detect the lying spy. Her expression was as demure as ever and she spoke with the same hesitation that they felt was assumed, just as her husband’s halting gait was. Why they should have taken up that particular disguise, Molly and her friends were at a loss to know.
Madame Misel was almost a beautiful woman. Animation would have made her quite beautiful, animation and better dressing. Her hair was parted in the middle and brushed as slick as glass, coiled in a tight knob at exactly the wrong angle. She habitually wore an old-fashioned basque of a bygone cut buttoned up close to the neck with a narrow band of white collar, which but accentuated the severity of her garb. Her shoes were broad and ugly with no heels, her skirt skimpy and badly hung.
Judy studied the countenance of the foreigner as she bent over her work. The nimble fingers moved very rapidly as she folded the gauze.
“Gee, I’d like to sketch her!” Judy whispered to Molly. “A mixture of Mona Lisa and the Unknown Woman and plain repressed devil!”
She whipped out her sketch book, which was never far from her, and with a few strokes had Madame Misel’s pose, then with a skill that was quite wonderful had suggested her features. The model moved uneasily as though conscious of scrutiny, but before she looked up Judy had closed her book and was demurely folding gauze. Madame arose and walked away, standing by the table where Margaret was rolling bandages. Judy again whipped out her book and made a rapid impression of the unstylish figure in its flat shoes and tight basque.