“Girls! Betty! Pearl! Are you there?” There came no answer. “Have to wait,” she told herself.
She fell to wondering about that mysterious face, and what in time she should do about it.
She and Pearl were fortunate in having as a day teacher a splendid patriotic woman. That very day they had come upon her sitting on the grassy bank of their island that overlooks Portland harbor. They had dropped to places beside her, and together for a time they had listened to the bang-bang of fireworks and the boom-boom of cannons, had watched flags on ships and forts and towers flapping in the breeze. Then Pearl, who was at times very thoughtful, had said:
“It makes me feel all thrilly inside and somehow I think we should be able to do something for our country, something as brave and useful as Betsy Ross, Martha Washington and Barbara Fletcher did.”
“You can,” the teacher had said quietly. “You can honor these by helping to make this the finest land in the world in which to live.
“One thing more you can do, wherever there is an old fort, a soldiers’ home, or a monument dedicated to our hallowed dead, you can help prevent their being defaced or defiled or used for any purpose that would bring a reproach upon the memory of those who lived and died that we might be free.”
“I wonder,” Ruth said to herself, “what sort of den I came upon just now in this grand old fort?”
Then, very quietly, very solemnly, she made the resolve that, come what might, the whole affair should be gone into, the mystery solved.
“If only they would come!” she whispered impatiently.
“Ruth! Ruth! Is that you?” sounded out in a shrill whisper from the right.