, and everything was polished and scrubbed and dusted within
an inch of its life. When we arrived, we scraped our shoes before we
kissed Aunt Anne, and when we departed, we felt that she literally
swept us out--. We had hours for everything, and nobody thought of
doing as she pleased. It was always as Aunt Anne pleased, and the
meals were always on time, and nobody was ever expected to be late, and
if she was late she was scolded or punished; and nobody ever dared
throw a newspaper on the floor, or go out to the kitchen and make
fudge, or pop corn by the sitting-room fire. Yet Aunt Anne was so
efficient that her house-keeping was the admiration of the whole State.

"But we loved Aunt Mary's. She would come smiling down the stone walk
to meet us, and she would leave the morning's work undone to wander
with us in the fields or woods. And we had some of our meals under the
trees, and some of them in the house, and when we made taffy, and it
stuck to things, Aunt Mary smiled some more and said it didn't matter.
And we loved the freedom of our life, and we went to Aunt Mary's as
often as we could, and stayed away when we could from Aunt Anne's.

"And that's the way with America. It isn't perfect, it isn't
efficient, but it is a lovely place to live in, because in a sense we
can live as we please.

"Did you ever know a man who wanted to go back to slavery? As a slave
he was fed and clothed and kept by his master, with no thought of
responsibility--. Yet it was freedom he wanted, even though he had to
go hungry now and then for the sake of it--"

"I like law and order," Hilda said. "We don't always have it here."

"I'd rather be a gipsy on the road," had been Jean's passionate
declaration, "and free, than a princess with a 'verboten' sign at all
the palace gates."

* * * * * *

There were wisps of gauze, too, in her memory book, a red cross,
drawings in which were caricatured some of the women who worked in the
surgical dressing rooms.

"Emily," Jean asked, as she showed one of the pictures to her friend,
"do such women come because it's fashion or because they really feel--?"

"I fancy their motives are mixed," said Emily, "and you mustn't think
because they wear high heels and fluff their hair out over their ears
that they haven't any hearts."

"No, I suppose not," Jean admitted, "but I wonder what they think the
veils are for when they fluff out their hair.

"And their r