Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/323

Rh slyly out from behind their curtains now and then, at occasional passing neighbors, and making little cattish criticisms of them, found themselves instead spending hours under the same roof with those neighbors, working with them on the same set of pajamas, the same pair of slippers, the same comfort-bag, and, (miraculous result of the Kaiser's ambitions) actually sharing such intimacies as what they ate for breakfast, how much flour, sugar or butter they used a week, and exchanging recipes for wheatless biscuits, butter-less cake, and meat substitutes.

Even Augusta Morgan went to sew one morning a week in the town-hall. She sat apart a little haughtily at first. But as time went on she unbent gradually. There was more ability among the Ridgefield women than you'd imagine, she told Eunice after her third morning in the town-hall. That slack-appearing Mrs. Smith was really quite nice when you got to know her, and that girl whom Silas Brown had up and married ten years ago wasn't half as scatter-brained as she looked. For the few women whose sons or brothers, husbands—or perhaps lovers—were actually wearing the olive-drab, Augusta Morgan felt a sympathy so keen that she was afraid it would be noticed. The memory of her soldier-boy, so long gone now, made her throat ache when she regarded these other women hoping as she had once hoped, trying to be brave and of good cheer, as she had once tried to be brave and of good cheer.

Upon this particular midsummer afternoon the young lady left alone in the town-hall, after placing the stacks of bandages and piles of dressing in various labeled boxes, opened a small door under the