keep up with them. Button belonged
to Clara. He had taken care of her when she was a baby, and very gravely
picked her up each time she fell in the days when she was learning to
walk.

Stephen and David went to a school that was several miles away. They
wanted to take Clara with them. It was one of the old-fashioned,
ungraded schools, and the pupils were all ages. The snowdrifts were
high, and Stephen carried Clara on his shoulder. Clara sat very quiet
with her slate until the primer class was called. Then she stepped
before the teacher with the other little ones. The serious man pointed
to the letters of different words for each child, then he asked them to
spell short words like dog and cat. When Clara was asked to do the same,
she smiled at the teacher and said: "But I do not spell _there_!"

"Where do you spell?" he inquired.

"I spell in _artichoke_," she answered, looking very dignified.

"In that case," he laughed, "I think you belong with the scholars who
spell in three and four syllables." So after that, she spelled in the
class of her big brothers.

When Clara was twelve, she was very shy of strangers, and her parents
thought it might help her to get over it if she went away from home to
school in New York. She was a bright pupil and decided she would like to
be a teacher like her two sisters.

Clara made an excellent teacher, but was not very well and went to
Washington, D.C., to work. While there, the Civil War broke out, and
she offered her services as a nurse. Nobody doubted she would be good at
nursing, for when she was only ten years old, she took all the care of
her dear brother David, who was sick for nearly two years. She really
knew just exactly what sick people needed.

Clara worked in hospitals, camps, and battlefields all the time the four
years' war lasted. Sometimes she had to jump on to a horse whose rider
had been shot and dash away for bandages or a surgeon, and she was glad
enough that David had taught her to be such a fine horsewoman.

Clara helped every sick and wounded man she came across, and some people
thought she should only help the northerners. But she did not mind what
anybody said or thought. She made all the soldiers as comfortable as she
could. And she was delighted when, four years later, while she was in
beautiful Switzerland for a rest, she heard of the Red Cross Society.
This society helped every wounded person, no matter what color he was,
no matter what cause or c