Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross Part 6

She told him-as she and Mr. Hammond had already agreed. The idea was to divide the cost in three parts and let Uncle Jabez invest to the amount of one of the shares if he would.

"But, you see, Uncle Jabez, Mr. Hammond does not feel as confident as I do about 'The Boys of the Draft,' nor has he the same deep interest in the picture. I want it to be a success-and I believe it will be-because of the good it will do the Red Cross campaign for funds."

"Humph!" grunted the miller. "I'm bankin' on your winnin' anyway." And perhaps his belief in the efficacy of Aunt Alvirah Boggs' prayers had something to do with his "buying into" the new picture.

The screening of the great film was rushed. A campaign of advertising was entered into and the fact that a share of the profits from the film was to be devoted to Red Cross work made it popular at once. But Uncle Jabez showed some chagrin.

"What's the meanin' of it?" he demanded. "Who's goin' to give his share of the profits to any Red Cross? Not me!"

"But I am, Uncle Jabez," Ruth said lightly. "That was my intention from the first. But, of course, that has nothing to do with you."

"I sh'd say not! I sh'd say not!" grumbled the miller. "I ain't likely to git into a good thing an' then throw the profit away. I sh'd say not!"

The film was shown in New York, in several other big cities, and in Cheslow simultaneously. Ruth arranged for this first production with the proprietor of the best movie house in the local town, because she was anxious to see it and could not spare the time to go to New York.

Mr. Hammond, as though inspired by Ruth's example, telegraphed on the day of the first exhibition of the film that he would donate his share of the profits as well to the Red Cross.

"'Nother dern fool!" sputtered Uncle Jabez. "Never see the beat. Wal! if you'n he both want to give 'way a small fortune, it's your own business, I suppose. All the less need of me givin' any of my share."

He went with Ruth to see the production of the film. Indeed, he would not have missed that "first night" for the world. The pretty picture house was crowded. It had got so that when anything from the pen of the girl of the Red Mill was produced the neighbors made a gala day of it.

Ruth Fielding was proud of her success. And she had nothing on this occasion to be sorry for, the film being a splendid piece of work.

But, aside from this fact, "The Boys of the Draft" was opportune, and the audience was more than usually sensitive. The very next day the first quota of the drafted boys from Cheslow would march away to the training camp.

The hearts of the people were stirred. They saw a faithful reproduction of what the boys would go through in training, what they might endure in the trenches, and particularly what the Red Cross was doing for soldiers under similar conditions elsewhere.

As though spellbound, Uncle Jabez sat through the long reel. The appeal at the end, with the Red Cross nurse in the hospital ward, the dying soldier's head pillowed upon her breast while she whispered the comfort into his dulling ear that his mother would have whispered--

Ah, it brought the audience to its feet at the "fadeout"-and in tears!

It was so human, so real, so touching, that there was little audible comment as they filed out to the soft playing of the organ.

But Uncle Jabez burst out helplessly when they were in the street. He wiped the tears from the hard wrinkles of his old face with frankness and his voice was husky as he declared:

"Niece Ruth! I'm converted to your Red Cross. Dern it all! you kin have ev'ry cent of my share of the profit on that picter-ev'ry cent!"

CHAPTER VII-ON THE WAY

Tom Cameron came home on a furlough from the officers' training camp the day that the boys of the first draft departed from Cheslow. It stabbed the hearts of many mothers and fathers with a quick pain to see him march through the street so jaunty and debonair.

"Why, Tommy!" his sister cried. "You're a _man!_"

"Lay off! Lay off!" begged her twin, not at all pleased. "You might have awakened to the fact that I was out of rompers some years ago. Your eyesight has been bad."

Indeed, he was rather inclined to ignore her and "flock with his father," as Helen put it to Ruth. The father and son had something in common now that the girl could not altogether understand. They sat before the cold grate in the library, their chairs drawn near to each other, and smoked sometimes for an hour without saying a word.

"But, Ruthie," Helen said, her eyes big and moist, "each seems to know just what the other is thinking about. Sometimes papa says a word, and sometimes Tom; and the other nods and there is perfect understanding.

It-it's almost uncanny."

"I think I know what you mean," said the more observant girl of the Red Mill. "We grew up some time ago, Helen. And you know we have rather thought of Tom as a boy, still.

"But he is a man now. There is a difference in the s.e.xes in their att.i.tude to this war which should establish in all our minds that we are not equal."

"Who aren't equal?" demanded Helen, almost wrathfully, for she was a militant feminist.

"Men and women are not equal, dear. And they never will be. Wearing mannish clothes and doing mannish labor will never give women the same outlook upon life that men have. And when men encourage us to believe that our minds are the same as theirs, they do it almost always for their own selfish ends-or because there is something feminine about their minds."

"Traitor!" cried Helen.

"No," sighed Ruth. "Only honesty.

"Tom and his father understand each other's thoughts and feelings as you and your father never could. After all, in the strongest a.s.sociation between father and daughter there is the barrier of s.e.x that cannot be surmounted. You know yourself, Helen, that at a certain point you consider your father much of a big boy and treat him accordingly. That, they tell us, is the 'mother instinct' in the female, and I guess it is.

"On the other hand, I have seen girls and their mothers together (we never had mothers after we were little kiddies, Helen, and we've missed it) but I have seen such perfect understanding and appreciation between mothers and their daughters that it was as though the same soul dwelt in two bodies."

Helen sniffed in mingled scorn and doubt over Ruth's philosophy. Then she said in an aggrieved tone: "But papa and Tom ought not to shut me out of their lives-even in a small way."

"The penalty of being a girl," replied Ruth, practically. "Tom doesn't believe, I suppose, that girls would quite understand his manly feelings," she added with a sudden elfish smile.

"Cat's foot!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the twin, with scorn.

Tom Cameron, however, did not run altogether true to form if Ruth was right in her philosophy. He had always been used to talking seriously at times with Ruth, and during this furlough he found time to have a long and confidential talk with the girl of the Red Mill. This might be the only furlough he would have before sailing for France, for he had already obtained his commission as second lieutenant.

There was an understanding between the young man and Ruth Fielding-an unspoken and tacit feeling that they were "made for each other." They were young. Ruth's thoughts had never dwelt much upon love and marriage.

She never looked on each man she met half-wonderingly as a possible husband. She had never met any man with this feeling. Perhaps, in part, that was, unconsciously to herself, because Tom had always been so a part of her life and her thoughts. Lately, however, she had come to the realization that if Tom should really ask her to marry him when his education was completed and he was established in the world, the girl of the Red Mill would be very likely to consider his offer seriously.

"Things aren't coming out just as we had planned, Ruth," the young man said on this occasion. "I guess this war is going to knock a lot of plans in the head. If it lasts several years, many of us fellows, if we come through it safely, will feel that we are too old to go back to college.

"Can you imagine a fellow who has spent months in the trenches, and has done the things that the soldiers are having to do and to endure and to learn over there-can you imagine his coming back here and going to school again?"

"Oh, Tom! I suppose that is so. The returned soldier must feel vastly older and more experienced in every way than men who have never heard the bursting of sh.e.l.ls and the rattle of machine guns. Oh, dear, Tommy!

Are we going to know you at all when you come back?"

"Maybe not," grinned Tom. "I may raise whiskers. Most of the poilus do, I understand. But you could not really imagine a regiment of Uncle Sam's soldiers that were not clean shaven."

"We want to see it all, too-Helen and I," Ruth said, sighing. "We are so far away from the front."

"Goodness!" he exclaimed. "I should think you would be glad."

"But some women must go," Ruth told him gravely. "Why not us?"

"You-- Well, I don't know about you, Ruth. You seem somehow different. I expect you could look out for yourself anywhere. But Helen hasn't got your sense."

"Hear him!" gasped Ruth.