Sara Lee colored.

"Perhaps I am," she said; "but not the sort of thing you think. I just
don't see the use of it, that's all. Aunt Harriet, how long does it
take to become a hospital nurse?"

"Mabel Andrews was three years. It spoiled her looks too. She used to
be a right pretty girl."

"Three years," Sara Lee reflected. "By that time--"

The house was very quiet and still those days. There was an interlude
of emptiness and order, of long days during which Aunt Harriet
alternately grieved and planned, and Sara Lee thought of many things.
At the Red Cross meetings all sorts of stories were circulated; the
Belgian atrocity tales had just reached the country, and were spreading
like wildfire. There were arguments and disagreements. A girl named
Schmidt was militant against them and soon found herself a small island
of defiance entirely surrounded by disapproval. Mabel Andrews came once
to a meeting and in businesslike fashion explained the Red Cross
dressings and gave a lesson in bandaging. Forerunner of the many
first-aid classes to come was that hour of Mabel's, and made memorable
by one thing she said.

"You might as well all get busy and learn to do such things," she stated
in her brisk voice. "One of our _internes_ is over there, and he says
we'll be in it before spring."

After the meeting Sara Lee went up to Mabel and put a hand on her arm.