"I want you and the Ethels and Dorothy," she said to Helen; "and if your friends, Della and Margaret, would come with you it would give me greatest pleasure."

So the girls, all dressed in white, and wearing the forget-me-not pins that Grandfather Emerson insisted on giving them for the occasion, clustered around the young teacher, and the three boys, a forget-me-not in each scarfpin, held the ribbons that pressed gently back the cordial friends who were happy in FrÄulein's happiness.

It was the Club that decorated the house with brown sedges and stalks of upstanding tawny corn and vines of bittersweet. And it was the Club that sang a soft German marriage song as the bride and groom drove off toward the setting sun in Grandmother Emerson's car.

Life seemed rather flat to the members of the U. S. C. after the wedding. For the last two months they had been so busy that every hour had been filled with work and play-work, and now that there was nothing especial scheduled for every waking moment it seemed as if they had nothing at all to do.

"We'll have to ask Roger about his house," laughed James who came over with Margaret one afternoon and confessed to the same feeling.

"Not yet," answered Helen.

"Helen is full of ideas up to her very eyebrows, I believe," said Ethel Blue. "She's just giving us a holiday."

"Mother said we needed one," assented Helen. "After we've had a few days' rest we can start on something else. There's no need to call on Roger yet awhile."

"Why not? My idea is a perfectly good one," insisted Roger, strolling in.

Just at this minute Mary entered with a note for "The Secretary of the United Service Club."

"For you, Ethel Blue," said Roger, handing it to his cousin.

Ethel Blue slipped a cutter under the edge while the others waited expectantly, for the address indicated that the contents was of interest to all of them.

"What does this mean?" she cried as she read. "What is it? Is it true?"

She was so excited that they all crowded around her to see what had taken away her power of explanation.

The letter was signed "Justine Millerand."

"Mademoiselle," cried all who could see the signature.

"She says," read Ethel Blue, finding her strength again, "'Here is the Belgian baby you asked for. She is two years old and her name is "Elisabeth," after the Queen of Belgium!'"

"Is that all?"

"That's all."

"But she says, 'Here is the Belgian baby.' Where is the Belgian baby?"

They turned toward Mary who had remained in the room.

"There's a Red Cross nurse in the reception room," she explained. "She said she'd rather you read the letter first."

They made a rush for the door. Roger reached it first and ushered the nurse into the living room. She was dressed in her grey uniform and sheltered under her cape the thinnest, wannest mite of humanity that ever the Club had seen outside of the streets of a city slum.

"Mademoiselle Millerand said you had asked for a Belgian baby," she began, but she was interrupted by a cry from the entire throng.

"We did; we did," they exclaimed so earnestly that any doubts she may have felt about the cordiality of their reception of her nursling were banished at once.

"Your mother?" she asked.

"I don't believe Mother really expected it to come, any more than we did," replied Helen frankly, "but she will love it just as we will, and we'll take the very best of care of her."

She offered her finger to Elisabeth, who clutched it and gazed solemnly at her out of her sunken blue eyes.

Ethel Blue in the back of the group gave a sob.

"She'll pick up soon when she has good food every day," the nurse reassured them, and then she told them of her own experiences.

She had been, it seemed, in the same hospital with Mademoiselle in Belgium. Out on the field one day a bit of shrapnel had wounded her foot so that she was forced to come home. Mademoiselle had asked her to bring over this mite "to the kindest young people in the world," and here she was.

The baby's father and mother were both dead, she went on. That she knew.

"Are you sure her name is Elisabeth?" asked Dorothy.

"That's what she calls herself."

By this time Elisabeth had made friends with every one of them and was sitting comfortably on one of Roger's knees while Dicky occupied the other and made acceptable gestures toward her.

"She'll be happy here," said the nurse, and rose to explain her visit to Mrs. Morton.

Like the girls, Mrs. Morton had not expected that Mademoiselle would respond to their request for a Belgian baby and she was somewhat taken back by its appearance.

"I can see that you did not look for her," the nurse suggested, "but when you are on the spot and are seeing such hideous distress every day and a chance opens to relieve just one little child, it is more than you can resist. I know that is why Mademoiselle Millerand sent her."

"I quite understand," responded Mrs. Morton cordially. "Elisabeth shall have a happy home in Rosemont."

"And a baker's dozen of fathers and mothers to make up for her own," said James.

"And we're grateful to you for bringing her," said Ethel Blue, offering her hand.

It was after the nurse had had a cup of tea and had returned to New York that Helen called the Club to order formally.

"The Club has got its work cut out for it for a long time to come," she said. "I don't think we have any right to bring this baby over to America and then send it to an orphanage, though that would be the easiest way to do."

"We'll never do that," said Margaret firmly.

"If we are going to take care of it it means that we'll have to earn money for it and give it our personal care. Now, all in favor of accepting Elisabeth as our Club baby, say 'Aye.'"

There was a hearty assent.

"There are no contrary-minded," declared the president. "From now on she belongs to us."

"And here's my forget-me-not pin to prove it," said Ethel Blue, fastening it on the baby's dress.

"Just what we'll have to do about her we must think out carefully and talk over with our mothers," went on Helen. "But this minute we can accept our new club member and cry all together, 'Three cheers for Elisabeth of Belgium.'"

And at the shout that followed, Elisabeth of Belgium gave her first faint smile.