“Well, what if it is?” Jean had flung back at her hotly.  “Having things in place isn’t the end and aim of happiness.  Just because a house is swept and garnished isn’t any sign that it is a blissful habitation.  When I was a child I used to visit my two great-aunts in Maryland.  I loved to go to Aunt Mary’s, but I dreaded Aunt Anne’s.  And the reason was this.  Everything in Aunt Anne’s house went by clock-work, 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 rings,” she went on.  “You see, when they all have on white aprons and veils you can’t tell whether they are Judy O’Grady or the Colonel’s lady—­so they load their hands with diamonds.  As if the hands wouldn’t tell the tale themselves.  Why, Emily, if you and Hilda were hidden, all but your hands, the people would know the Colonel’s lady from Judy O’Grady.”