Alice Emerson - Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross; Doing Her Best For Uncle Sam

Tom Cameron came home on a furlough from the officers’ training camp the day that the boys of the first draft departed from Cheslow. It stabbed the hearts of many mothers and fathers with a quick pain to see him march through the street so jaunty and debonair.

“Why, Tommy!” his sister cried. “You’re a man! ”

“Lay off! Lay off!” begged her twin, not at all pleased. “You might have awakened to the fact that I was out of rompers some years ago. Your eyesight has been bad.”

Indeed, he was rather inclined to ignore her and “flock with his father,” as Helen put it to Ruth. The father and son had something in common now that the girl could not altogether understand. They sat before the cold grate in the library, their chairs drawn near to each other, and smoked sometimes for an hour without saying a word.

“But, Ruthie,” Helen said, her eyes big and moist, “each seems to know just what the other is thinking about. Sometimes papa says a word, and sometimes Tom; and the other nods and there is perfect understanding. It – it’s almost uncanny.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said the more observant girl of the Red Mill. “We grew up some time ago, Helen. And you know we have rather thought of Tom as a boy, still.

“But he is a man now. There is a difference in the sexes in their attitude to this war which should establish in all our minds that we are not equal.”

“Who aren’t equal?” demanded Helen, almost wrathfully, for she was a militant feminist.

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