Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/276



was a hot day in August, and it was hotter in the linen room of the Menthaven Hospital than it was anywhere else on the New England shore. At least so thought Netty Lamed, as she sank back in her chair,—if one can sink back in a wooden chair,—and exclaimed:—

"Thank heaven, the last of those stockings is darned."

Sarah Lincoln and her cousin, Netty Larned, in a fit of mingled patriotism and romance, had undertaken the charge of the linen room in the Menthaven Hospital for the summer. Their cousin, Clara Winthrop, was superintending the diet kitchen, and Rebecca Jones and Mrs. Kate Seeley, and several more of Menthaven's "first ladies," were nursing in the wards. It was in the second year of our war; just at the time when the fever of enthusiastic work for the soldiers and the cause was at its greatest and most unreasonable height among the women of the North. Not to be sacrificing one's