The Search. Grace Livingston Hill

people down at the station this morning saying good-bye. I never realized either what a useless thing I am. I haven’t even anybody very dear to send. I can only knit.”

      “Well, that’s a good deal. Some of us haven’t time to do that. I never have a minute.”

      “You don’t need to, you’ve given your son,” said Ruth flashing a glance of glorified understanding at the woman.

      A beautiful smile came out on the tired sorrowful face.

      “Yes, I’ve given him,” she said, “but I’m hoping God will give him back again some day. Do you think that’s too much to hope. He is such a good boy!”

      “Of course not,” said Ruth sharply with a sudden sting of apprehension in her soul. And then she remembered that she had no very intimate acquaintance with God. She wished she might be on speaking terms, at least, and she would go and present a plea for this lonely woman. If it were only Captain La Rue, her favorite cousin, or even the President, she might consider it. But God! She shuddered. Didn’t God let this awful war be? Why did He do it? She had never thought much about God before.

      “I wish you would let me come to see you sometime and take you for another ride,” she said sweetly.

      “It would be beautiful!” said the older woman, “if you would care to take the time from your own friends.”

      “I would love to have you for one of my friends,” said the girl gracefully.

      The woman smiled wistfully.

      “I’m only here holidays and evenings,” she conceded, “I’m doing some government work now.”

      “I shall come,” said Ruth brightly. “I’ve enjoyed you ever so much.” Then she started her car and whirled away into the sunshine.

      “She won’t come, of course,” said the woman to herself as she stood looking mournfully after the car, reluctant to go into the empty house. “I wish she would! Isn’t she just like a flower! How wonderful it would be if things had been different, and there hadn’t been any war, and my boy could have had her for a friend! Oh!”

      Down at the Club House the women waited for the fair young member who had charge of the wool. They rallied her joyously as she hurried in, suddenly aware that she had kept them all waiting.

      “I saw her in the crowd at the station this morning,” called out Mrs. Pryor, a large placid tease with a twinkle in her eye. “She was picking out the handsomest man for the next sweater she knits. Which one did you choose, Miss Ruth? Tell us. Are you going to write him a letter and stick it in the toe of his sock?”

      The annoyed color swept into Ruth’s face, but she paid no other heed as she went about her morning duties, preparing the wool to give out. A thought had stolen into her heart that made a tumult there and would not bear turning over even in her mind in the presence of all these curious people. She put it resolutely by as she taught newcomers how to turn the heel of a sock, but now and then it crept back again and was the cause of her dropping an occasional stitch.

      Dottie Wetherill came to find out what was the matter with her sock, and to giggle and gurgle about her brother Bob and his friends. Bob, it appeared, was going to bring five officers home with him next week end and they were to have a dance Saturday night. Of course Ruth must come. Bob was soon to get his first lieutenant’s commission. There had been a mistake, of course, or he would have had it before this, some favoritism shown; but now Bob had what they called a “pull,” and things were going to be all right for him. Bob said you couldn’t get anywhere without a “pull.” And didn’t Ruth think Bob looked perfectly fine in his uniform?

      It annoyed Ruth to hear such talk and she tried to make it plain to Dottie that she was mistaken about “pull.” There was no such thing. It was all imagination. She knew, for her cousin, Captain La Rue, was very close to the Government and he had told her so. He said that real worth was always recognized, and that it didn’t make any difference where it was found or who your friends were. It mattered what you were.

      She fixed Dottie’s sock and moved on to the wool table to get ready an allotment for some of the ladies to take home.

      Mrs. Wainwright bustled in, large and florid and well groomed, with a bunch of photographer’s proofs of her son Harry in his uniform. She called loudly for Ruth to come and inspect them. There were some twenty or more poses, each one seemingly fatter, more pompous and conceited looking than the last. She stated in boisterous good humor that Harry particularly wanted Ruth’s opinion before he gave the order. At that Mrs. Pryor bent her head to her neighbor and nodded meaningly, as if a certain matter of discussion were settled now beyond all question. Ruth caught the look and its meaning and the color flooded her face once more, much to her annoyance. She wondered angrily if she would never be able to stop that childish habit of blushing, and why it annoyed her so very much this morning to have her name coupled with that of Harry Wainwright. He was her old friend and playmate, having lived next door to her all her life, and it was but natural when everybody was sweethearting and getting married, that people should speak of her and wonder whether there might be anything more to their relationship than mere friendship. Still it annoyed her. Continually as she turned the pages from one fat smug Wainwright countenance to another, she saw in a mist the face of another man, with uplifted head and sorrowful eyes. She wondered if when the time came for Harry Wainwright to go he would have aught of the vision, and aught of the holiness of sorrow that had shown in that other face.

      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