Meanwhile the war was in every one's mind. The whole country realized the desirability of trying to obey President Wilson's request for neutrality in word, thought, and deed. The subject was forbidden at school where the teachers never referred to the colossal struggle that was rending Europe and the children of varied ancestries played together harmoniously in the school yard. If at the high school FrÄulein and Mademoiselle were looked at with a new interest by their scholars no word suggestive of a possible lack of harmony was uttered to them, and their friendship for each other seemed to increase with every day's prolongation of the war.

In the Morton family war discussion was not forbidden and the events of the last twenty-four hours as the newspapers reported them were talked over at dinner every evening. Mrs. Morton thought that the children should not be ignorant of the most upheaving event that had stirred the world in centuries, but she did not permit any violent expressions of partisanship.

"You children are especially bound to be neutral," she insisted, "because your father and Ethel Blue's father are in the service of our country, and a neutrality as complete as possible is more desirable from them and their families than from civilians."

A new idea was blossoming in the young people's minds, however. They had grown up with the belief that armament was necessary to preserve peace. Great men and good had said so. "If we are prepared for war," they declared, "other nations will be afraid to fight us." Captain and Lieutenant Morton had agreed with them, as was natural for men of their profession. They did not believe in aggression but in being ready for defense should they be attacked.

Now it seemed to Roger and Helen as they read of the sufferings of invaded France and the distress of trampled Belgium that no country had the right to benefit by results obtained through such cruel means.

"Just suppose a shell should drop down here just as we were walking along," imagined Roger as he and Helen were on their way to school. "Suppose Patrick Shea's cornfield there was marched over before the corn was harvested and all these houses and churches and schools were blown up or burned down and all the people of this town were lying around in the streets dead or wounded!"

"When you bring it home to Rosemont it doesn't sound the way it does when you read in the histories about a 'movement' here and a 'turning of the right flank' there, and 'the end of the line crumpling up.' When the line crumples up it means fathers and brothers are killed and women and children starve—"

"Think what it would be to have nothing to eat and to have to grub around in the fields and devour roots like the peasants in the famine time in Louis XIV's reign."

"And think about the destruction of all the little homes that have been built up with so much care and happiness. Mary told me her sister bought a chair one month and a table at another time when she and her husband came across bargains," said practical Ethel Brown who had caught up with them. "They've furnished their whole house the way we children have added to our kitchen tins and plates; and then everything would be broken to smash by just one of those shells."

"The people who've been spreading the gospel of peace for years and years needn't be discouraged now, it seems to me," observed Roger thoughtfully, "even if it does look as if all their talk had been for nothing. These horrors make a bigger appeal than any amount of talk."

"Grandfather Emerson says that perhaps universal peace is going to be the result of the war. It seems far off enough now."

"It will be dearly bought peace."

"Hush, there goes Mademoiselle. I wonder when she's going to sail."

"Why don't you ask her to-day? The Club must give her some kind of send-off, you know."

"I wonder if she'd mind if we went to New York to see her start?"

"It won't be hard to find out. We can tell her that we won't be offended if she says 'No.'"

"If she's willing we might take that opportunity to go over the ship. I've always wanted to go over an ocean steamer."

"Perhaps they won't let anybody do it now on account of the war. It will be great if we can, though."

The Service Club learned more geography in the course of its studies of the war news than its members ever had learned before voluntarily. The approach of the German army upon Paris was watched every day and its advance was marked upon a large map that Roger had installed in the sitting-room. When the Germans withdrew the change of their line and its daily relation to the battle front of the Allies was noted by the watchful pencil of one or another of the newspaper readers.

Thanks to the simplicity of the pattern which the Club had adopted for its own they were enabled to make a large number of gay garments in a wonderfully short time. From several further donations of material they made wrappers for children of fourteen, twelve, ten, down to the babies, adding to each a belt of the same color as the band so that the garments might serve as dresses at a pinch. They found that with the smaller sizes they could cut off a narrow band from the width of the cloth at each side, and that served as trimming for another garment of contrasting color.

When they had constructed a goodly pile of long wrappers they fell upon the short sacques, and before many days passed a mound of pink-banded blue and blue-banded pink, and red-banded white and white-banded red rose beside their machines. Della wrote that she was using her mother's machine and was learning how better and better every day. Thanks to their lessons at Chautauqua Margaret and Helen sewed well on the machine already. Ethel Brown and Ethel Blue and Dorothy basted on the bands and the belts and added the fastenings. It was their fingers, too, that feather-stitched and cat-stitched the petticoats that came into being with another donation of flannelette. Dorothy was glad when any new material was cotton as every yard that they used helped the South to rid itself of its unsold crop.

"Ladies are going to wear cotton dresses all winter, they say," she told the Club at one of its meetings. "Mother is going to let me have all my new dresses made of cotton stuff and she's going to have some herself."

"We wear cotton middies all winter," protested the Ethels who felt as if Dorothy felt that they were not doing their share to help on the cause she was interested in.

"When Aunt Marion gets your new dancing school dresses couldn't you ask her to get cotton ones?"

"I suppose we could. Do you think they'd be pretty enough?"

"Some cotton dresses that are going to be worn on the opening night of the opera at the Metropolitan are to be on exhibition in New York in a week or two."

"If cotton is good enough for that purpose I guess it's good enough for your dancing class," laughed Helen.

"Mother says they make perfectly beautiful cottons now of exquisite colors and lovely designs. Don't you think it would be great if we set the fashion of the dancing class?"

"Let's do it. Mother says silk isn't appropriate for girls of our age, anyway."

"If you can be dressed appropriately and beautifully at the same time I don't see that you have anything to complain of," smiled Helen.

With the short time that the girls had at their command every day it did not seem as if they would be able to do much with the garments that came in to be made over. There were not many of these because the boys had been instructed after the first day to ask that alterations and mending be done at home, but there were a few dresses like Mrs. Lancaster's that were on their hands. Mrs. Smith came to their help when this work bade fair to be too much for them.

"I'll ask Aunt Marion and Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Hancock and Mrs. Watkins to lunch with me some day," she promised Dorothy, "and after luncheon we'll have an old-fashioned bee and rip up these dresses and then we can see what material they give us and we can plan what to do with them."

The scheme worked out to a charm. The elders enjoyed themselves mightily and the resulting pile of materials, smoothly ironed and carefully sorted gave Margaret and Helen a chance to exercise their ingenuity. Mrs. Watkins took back to town with her enough stuff for two, promising to help Della with them, and the suburban girls, with the assistance of the grown-ups, made six charming frocks that looked as good as new.

It was early in October that Helen rushed home from school one day with the news that Mademoiselle was going to sail at the end of the week.

"We must begin to-day to make up a good-bye parcel for her," she cried.

"Red Cross nurses are allowed a very small kit," warned Mrs. Morton.

"We can try to make things so tiny that she won't have to leave them behind her when she goes on duty, but even if she does she can give them to somebody who can make them useful."

"I'll make steamer slippers to begin with," said Ethel Brown.

"How?" asked Ethel Blue.

"You get a pair of fleecy inner soles—they have them at all the shoe stores—and then you cut a top piece of bright colored chintz just the shape of the top part of a slipper and you sew it together at the back and bind the edges all around."

"How do you put the top and the sole together?"

"The edge of the sole is soft enough to sew through. You turn the top inside out over the sole and sew the binding of the chintz on to the edge of the sole over and over and when you turn it right side out there you are with gay shoes."

"They'll fill up a bag, though," commented Ethel Blue. "I should think you might make a pair just like that only make the sole of something that would double up. Then they'd go into a case and be more compact."

"That's a good idea, too," agreed Ethel Brown. "What could you use for a sole?"

"Soft leather would be best. I imagine you could get a piece from the cobbler down town. Or you could get the very thin leather that they used at Chautauqua for cardcases and pocket books—the kind Roger uses—and stitch two pieces together."

"Why wouldn't a heavy duck sole do?" suggested Mrs. Emerson.

"If you stepped on a pin it wouldn't keep it out as well as leather," objected her daughter.

"I believe I'll try a pair with a flowery chintz top and a duck sole covered with chintz like a lining to the shoe," said Ethel Blue slowly as she thought it out. "Then I'll make the case of two pieces of chintz bound together."

"One piece ought to be longer than the other so that it would be a flap to come over like an envelope."

This was Ethel Brown's contribution to the slipper building.

"You could fasten it with a glove snapper. I got some the other day for my leather work," said Roger. "I'll put them on for you."

"Why don't you Ethels make both kinds?" suggested Dorothy. "She'll find a use for them."

"If you girls will make it I'll contribute the silk for a bath wrap that she can throw over her warm one, just for looks, on the boat," said Mrs. Emerson. "I have one I use on sleeping cars and it rolls up into the smallest space you can imagine."

"Good for Grandmother!" cried a chorus of voices.

"Can we use our famous wrapper pattern?" asked Helen.

"I don't see why not. Mine has a hood but that isn't a difficult addition if you merely shape the neck of your kimono a little and then cut a square of the material, sew it across one end and round the lower end a trifle to fit into the neck hole you've made."

"How about longer sleeves, Mother?" asked Mrs. Morton.

"I think I would make them longer. And I'd also make an envelope bag of the same silk to carry it in on the return trip from the bath. You'll be surprised to find into how small an envelope it will go."

"Put a cord from one corner of the envelope to the other so that Mademoiselle may have her hands free for her soap and towel and other needfuls," advised Mrs. Smith, who had been listening to the suggestions.

"Wouldn't another envelope arrangement of chintz lined with rubber cloth make a good washrag bag or sponge bag?" asked Ethel Brown.

"Nothing better unless you put a rubber-lined pocket in a Pullman apron."

This hint from Grandmother Emerson aroused the curiosity of the young people.

"What is a Pullman apron? Tell us about it," they cried.

"Mine is made of linen crash," said Mrs. Emerson. "Dorothy will insist on your making yours of cotton chintz and it will be just as good and even prettier. Get a yard. Cut off a piece thirty inches long and make it fourteen wide. Bind the lower edge with tape. Turn up six inches across the bottom and stitch the one big pocket it makes into smaller ones of different sizes by rows of up and down stitching. Make a bag of rubber cloth just the right size to fit one of the larger pockets. Take the six inches that you cut off from your yard of material and bind it on both edges with tape. Stitch that across your apron about four inches above the top of the lower row of pockets. Divide the strip into as many pockets as you want to for hairpins and pins and neck arrangements, and so on."

"Your apron has two raw edges now," said Helen.

"Bind it on each side with tape. That will finish it and it will also fasten the edges of the pockets securely to the apron. Sew across the top a tape long enough to serve as strings."

"The idea is to roll all your toilet belongings up together in your bag, eh?"

"Yes, and when you go to the ladies' room on the train you tie the apron around your waist and then you have your brush and comb and hairpins and tooth brush and washrag all where you can lay your fingers on them in a second of time."

"I got my best tortoise-shell hairpin mixed up with another woman's once, and I never recovered it," said Mrs. Morton meditatively.

"It wouldn't have happened if you'd been supplied with a bag like this," said her mother.

"Mademoiselle's silk wrap must be grey to match her other Red Cross equipment," said Mrs. Emerson, "but I don't see why the chintz things shouldn't be as gay as you like."

"Pink roses would be most becoming to her style of beauty," murmured Roger who had come in.

"I don't know but pink roses would be becoming enough for slippers," agreed Ethel Blue so seriously that every one laughed.

"Let's get pink flowered chintz," said Ethel Brown. "You make the soft kind and I'll make the stiff kind and Dorothy'll make the apron and Helen will make the kimono. Who's got any more ideas?"

"I have," contributed Roger. "I'll make a case for her manicure set. I haven't got time this week unfortunately to tool the leather but I'll make a plain one that will be useful if it isn't as pretty as I can do."

"What shape will it be?"

"I got part of my idea from Grandfather Emerson's spectacle case that I was examining the other day. Ethel Blue's case for the soft slippers is going to be something like it."

"Two pieces of leather rounded at the lower corners and stitched together at the sides and with a flap to shut in the contents?" guessed Dorothy.

"Correct. I shall make the case about four inches long when it's closed."

"That means that you'd have one strip four inches long and the other, the one with the flap, six inches long."

"Once more correct, most noble child. It will be a liberal two inches wide, a bit more in this instance because I'm not much of a sewer and I want to be sure that I'm far enough from the edge to make it secure."

"You don't try to turn it inside out, do you?"

"No, ma'am. Not that mite of an object. You fit a tiny pasteboard slide into the case. Cover it with velvet or leather or a scrap of Ethel Blue's chintz—"

"'Rah for cotton," cheered Dorothy.

"—and on one side of this division you slip in the scissors and the file and the tweezers or the orange stick and on the other a little buffer with a strap handle that doesn't take up any room."

"How in the world do you happen to be so up in manicure articles?" queried Helen, amazed at his knowledge.

"Nothing strange about that," returned Roger. "Aunt Louise showed me hers the other day when I was talking to her about making one for just this occasion. Aha!"

"You could make the same sort of case without the pasteboard partition, for a tiny sewing kit," offered Ethel Blue, "and one of the envelope shape will hold soap leaves."

"I'd like to suggest a couple of shirtwaist cases," said Mrs. Smith. "They are made of dotted Swiss muslin that takes up next to no room and washes like a handkerchief. You'd better make Mademoiselle's of colored muslin or of colored batiste for she won't want to be bothered with thinking about laundry any oftener than she has to."

"What shape are the bags?"

"Find out whether she will take an American suitcase or a bag. In either case measure the size of the bottom. Take a piece of muslin twice the size and lay it flat. Fold over the edges till they meet in the centre. Then stitch the tops across, on the inside, of course, and hem the slit, and turn them right side out and that's all there is to it. They keep waists or neckwear apart from the other clothing in one's bag and fresher for the separation."

"Since I have my hand in with knitting," said Grandmother, "I believe I'll contribute a pair of bed-shoes. They're so simple that any one who can knit a plain strip can do them."

"Let's have the receipt."

"Cast on stitches enough to run the length of the person's foot. Fifty will be plenty for any woman and more than enough for Mademoiselle's tiny foot. It's well to have the shoe large, though. Knit ahead until you have a strip six inches high. Then cast off from one end stitches enough to make four inches and go ahead with the remainder for four inches more."

"That sounds funny to me," observed Ethel Brown. "Not exactly the shape of my dainty pedestal."

"You'll have made a square with a square out of one corner like this piece of paper. Now fold it along the diagonal line from the tip of the small square to the farthest edge of the big square and sew up all the edges except those of the small square. That leaves a hole where you put your foot in. Crochet an edge there to run a ribbon in—and you're done."

"I'm going to run the risk of Mademoiselle's laughing at me and give her a folding umbrella," said Mrs. Morton. "It will fit into her bag and at least she can use it until she goes to the front."

"All this sounds to me like a good outfit for any woman who is going to travel," observed Helen. "I'm almost moved to sail myself!"