e that she should have won a prize where Mary herself had
failed. Ellen wrote cautioning her sister not to set her heart on any
one for the present. Wallace was young and they would likely be
parted, and people saved themselves a great deal of pain if they did
not make plans for the future.

Christina was too busy to think much of the future, the present was
quite sufficient. For besides all the joyous social events and home
duties, like all the other women of the village she was called upon to
take up the burden of Red Cross work.

The Red Cross Society proved as great a blessing in the divided ranks
of Orchard Glen society, as it did on many another field of battle. It
provided a place where the Methodists and Presbyterians could meet on
common ground and it was wonderful to see the gradual drawing together
of the forces that had been rent asunder by the skirl of old Lauchie's
bagpipes It was very heartening to see Mrs. Henderson, Tremendous K.'s
wife, and Mrs. Johnnie Brown, the wife of the Methodist Sunday School
Superintendent working side by side. It was impossible to keep from
speaking when you were sewing on the same hospital shirt and gradually
people began to forget that there were Methodists and Presbyterians in
the world, remembering only that there were Germany and the Allies.
And when Tremendous K. was asked by the Red Cross Society to get up a
concert that winter to raise Red Cross funds, Methodists and Baptists
came flocking back to the choir and they all sang, "O, Canada" and
"It's a Long Way to Tipperary," together as though there had never been
a piper in Orchard Glen.

But these harmonious heights were not reached without many a rocky bit
of road for the Red Cross Society to travel.

When the Society was formed, a number of women came out from Algonquin
to organise, though Mrs. Johnnie Dunn did not see why in common sense
they couldn't form a society themselves without a lot of women from
town trolloping out to show them how to do something they all knew how
to do already. Nevertheless the ladies from town came and they
organised centres in Dalton and Greenwood and Orchard Glen and in other
places all through the country.

The Orchard Glen Red Cross Society was to meet once a week in the
basement of the Methodist Church, it being the largest available space
in the village.

Mrs. Sutherland was made President and Mrs. Sinclair Treasurer; and
young Mrs. Martin was Secretary, with Christin