“Why don’t you rent the house for the summer?” suggested Helen practically. “You know that Westport is getting to be quite a summer-resort since the new hotel was built on the bluff.”
“No such good luck for us, I’m afraid,” answered Nathalie dejectedly, “but I’ll look up Lillie and see what—” But Helen had hurried away in answer to a call for the captain of the Red Cross Squad. Nathalie stood a moment watching her friend, as she helped one of the “white-veiled” girls into her white head-covering, starred with its cross, and then went slowly out of the booth.
As her eyes swept over the lawn in search of Lillie her glance fell upon the little flag with its Red Cross insignia floating cheerily from the top of the booth she had just left, as if in a salute to its companion cross placed below on the front, so that its arms stretched outward, dividing the booth into two sections.
Ah, here was the poster drawn by Barbara Worth representing a Red Cross nurse standing by an invalid chair, in which sat a soldier boy with bandaged eyes. The girl’s face saddened at its implication, and then she had bent forward and was reading the placard persuasively held forth by the nurse, on which was written:
“Please buy a Liberty bond of me,
It’s for the soldiers across the sea,
Bravely fighting to make the world free,
Wounded, and dying, for you and me.”
But now her eyes were held by the poster of a white-robed figure,—representing the Spirit of Liberty which had heralded the pageant of the day before,—waving a flag victoriously above her head, while holding a shield with the Biblical quotation:
“I have fought a good fight ... I have kept the faith.”
The face of this water-color sketch of Freedom, although bearing no resemblance to Nita’s, was so bright with hope that it thrilled the girl’s heart with the suggestion that the Allies, by their faith in God and their desire to do right, would finally win a victory over sin and wrong.
At this moment she heard the voice of Nita as she called her to come and see the display of small dolls, miniature Red Cross nurses, to be used as weights, door-holders, or pincushions, which were on sale. But some real dolls, as Nita called them, proved more interesting to Nathalie, because they were the work of a shut-in, as her bit towards winning the war, and because they were impersonations of some of the crowned heads of the allied nations. They were queer little things, stiff and stilted-looking, although several were excellent imitations, especially those of their majesties, King George and Queen Mary, and the little Princess Marie of Belgium.
The girl could not forbear giving Shep—a big, tawny-colored collie belonging to the Morrow twins—a love-pat, as he stood in front of the booth with red-hanging tongue and patient resignation in his brown eyes, while several young nurses fussed over him. They were trying to fasten a strip of white cloth around the center of his body, with a red cross on each side, in imitation of a war-dog who had served with a Red Cross hospital in France, and who had become famous by his acts of bravery, running into shell-holes and dug-outs in search of wounded soldiers.