g-room at Ingleside was snowed over with drifts of white
cotton. Word had come from Red Cross headquarters that sheets and
bandages would be required. Nan and Di and Rilla were hard at work.
Mrs. Blythe and Susan were upstairs in the boys' room, engaged in a
more personal task. With dry, anguished eyes they were packing up Jem's
belongings. He must leave for Valcartier the next morning. They had
been expecting the word but it was none the less dreadful when it came.

Rilla was basting the hem of a sheet for the first time in her life.
When the word had come that Jem must go she had her cry out among the
pines in Rainbow Valley and then she had gone to her mother.

"Mother, I want to do something. I'm only a girl--I can't do anything
to win the war--but I must do something to help at home."

"The cotton has come up for the sheets," said Mrs. Blythe. "You can
help Nan and Di make them up. And Rilla, don't you think you could
organize a Junior Red Cross among the young girls? I think they would
like it better and do better work by themselves than if mixed up with
the older people."

"But, mother--I've never done anything like that."

"We will all have to do a great many things in the months ahead of us
that we have never done before, Rilla."

"Well"--Rilla took the plunge--"I'll try, mother--if you'll tell me how
to begin. I have been thinking it all over and I have decided that I
must be as brave and heroic and unselfish as I can possibly be."

Mrs. Blythe did not smile at Rilla's italics. Perhaps she did not feel
like smiling or perhaps she detected a real grain of serious purpose
behind Rilla's romantic pose. So here was Rilla hemming sheets and
organizing a Junior Red Cross in her thoughts as she hemmed; moreover,
she was enjoying it--the organizing that is, not the hemming. It was
interesting and Rilla discovered a certain aptitude in herself for it
that surprised her. Who would be president? Not she. The older girls
would not like that. Irene Howard? No, somehow Irene was not quite as
popular as she deserved to be. Marjorie Drew? No, Marjorie hadn't
enough backbone. She was too prone to agree with the last speaker.
Betty Mead--calm, capable, tactful Betty--the very one! And Una
Meredith for treasurer; and, if they were very insistent, they might
make her, Rilla, secretary. As for the various committees, they must be
chosen after the Juniors were organized, but Rilla knew just who should
be put on which. They w