She handed the proofs back to the mother, so like her son in her ample blandness, and wondered if Mrs. Cameron would have a picture of her son in his uniform, fine and large and lifelike as these were.
She interrupted her thoughts to hear Mrs. Wainwright's clarion voice lifted in parting from the door of the Club House on her way back to her car: "Well, good-bye, Ruth dear. Don't hesitate to let me know if you'd like to have either of the other two large ones for your own 'specials,' you know. I shan't mind changing the order a bit. Harry said you were to have as many as you wanted. I'll hold the proofs for a day or two and let you think it over."
Ruth lifted her eyes to see the gaze of every woman in the room upon her, and for a moment she felt as if she almost hated poor fat doting Mamma Wainwright. Then the humorous side of the moment came to help her and her face blossomed into a smile as she jauntily replied: "Oh, no, please don't bother, Mrs. Wainwright. I'm not going to paper the wall with them. I have other friends, you know. I think your choice was the best of them all."
Then as gaily as if she were not raging within her soul she turned to help poor Dottie Wetherill who was hopelessly muddled about turning her heel.
Dottie chattered on above the turmoil of her soul, and her words were as tiny April showers sizzling on a red hot cannon. By and by she picked up Dottie's dropped stitches. After all, what did such things matter when there was war and men were giving their lives!
"And Bob says he doubts if they ever get to France. He says he thinks the war will be over before half the men get trained. He says, for his part, he'd like the trip over after the submarines have been put out of business. It would be something to tell about, don't you know? But Bob thinks the war will be over soon. Don't you think so, Ruth?"
"I don't know what I think," said Ruth exasperated at the little prattler. It seemed so awful for a girl with brains--or hadn't she brains?--to chatter on interminably in that inane fashion about a matter of such awful portent. And yet perhaps the child was only trying to cover up her fears, for she all too evidently worshipped her brother.
Ruth was glad when at last the morning was over and one by one the women gathered their belongings together and went home. She stayed longer than the rest to put the work in order. When they were all gone she drove around by the way of the post office and asked the old post master who had been there for twenty years and knew everybody, if he could tell her the address of the boys who had gone to camp that morning. He wrote it down and she tucked it in her blouse saying she thought the Red Cross would be sending them something soon. Then she drove thoughtfully away to her beautiful sheltered home, where the thought of war hardly dared to enter yet in any but a playful form. But somehow everything was changed within the heart of Ruth Macdonald and she looked about on all the familiar places with new eyes. What right had she to be living here in all this luxury while over there men were dying every day that she might live?