The number of dainty devices of gold braid and red stars and silver
tassels that those same staid uniforms developed made plain forever that
the woman who chooses can make even a uniform distinctive and striking
and altogether costly. In short they went into the war with the same
superficial flightiness formerly employed in the social realms. They went
dashing here and there in their high-power cars on solemn errands, with
all the nonchalance of their ignorance and youth, till one, knowing some
of them well, trembled for the errand if it were important. And many of
them were really useful, which only goes to prove that a tremendous
amount of unsuspected power is wasted every year and that unskilled labor
often accomplishes almost as much as skilled. Some of them secured
positions in the Navy Yard, or in other public offices, where they were
thrown delightfully into intimacies with officers, and were able to step
over the conventionalities of their own social positions into wildly
exciting Bohemian adventures under the popular guise of patriotism,
without a rebuke from their elders. There was not a dull hour in the
little town. The young men of their social set might all be gone to war,
but there were others, and the whirl of life went on gaily for the
thoughtless butterflies, who danced and knitted and drove motor cars, and
made bandages and just rejoiced to walk the streets knitting on the
Sabbath day, a gay cretonne knitting bag on arm, and knitting needles
plying industriously as if the world would go naked if they did not work
every minute. Just a horde of rebellious young creatures, who at heart
enjoyed the unwonted privilege of breaking the Sabbath and shocking a few
fanatics, far more than they really cared to knit. But nobody had time to
pry into the quality of such patriotism. There were too many other people
doing the same thing, and so it passed everywhere for the real thing, and
the world whirled on and tried to be gay to cover its deep heartache and
stricken horror over the sacrifice of its sons.

But Ruth, although she bravely tried for several weeks, could not throw
herself into such things. She felt that they were only superficial. There
might be a moiety of good in all these things, but they were not the real
big things of life; not the ways in which the vital help could be given,
and she longed with her whole soul to get in on it somewhere.

The first Sabbath after her return from camp she happened int