he stood in the road staring after us
as long as we were in sight.

Tish drove the car home after all, steering with one hand and taking the
wheel off a buggy on the way. I sat beside her and changed the gears,
and she blamed the buggy wheel on me, owing to my going into reverse
when I meant to go ahead slowly. The result was that we began to back
unexpectedly, and the man only saved his horse by jumping him over a
watering trough.

I have gone into this incident with some care, because the present
narrative concerns itself with the young man we met, and with the
secret in Tish's barn. At the time, of course, it seemed merely one of
the unpleasant things one wishes to forget quickly. Tish's arm was only
sprained, and although Aggie wore adhesive plaster around her ribs
almost all winter, because she was afraid to have it pulled off, there
were no permanent ill effects.

The winter passed quietly enough. Aggie and I made Red Cross dressings
for Europe, and Tish, tiring of knitting, made pajamas. She had turned
against the government, and almost left the church when she learned that
Mr. Ostermaier had voted the Democratic ticket. Then in January, without
telling any one, she went away for four days, and Sarah Willoughby wrote
me later that the Honorable J. C., her husband, said that a woman
resembling Tish had demanded from the gallery of the Senate that we
declare war against Germany and had been put out by the
Sergeant-at-arms.

I do not know that this was Tish. She returned as unannounced as she had
gone, and went back to her pajamas, but she was more quiet than usual,
and sometimes, when she was sewing, her lips moved as though she was
rehearsing a speech. She observed once or twice that she wanted to do
her bit, but that she considered digging trenches considerably easier
than driving a sewing machine twelve miles a day.

I remember, in this connection, a conversation I had with Mrs.
Ostermaier some time in January. She asked me to wait after the Red
Cross meeting, and I saw trouble in her eye.

"Miss Lizzie," she said, "do you think Miss Tish really enjoys sewing?"

"Not particularly," I admitted. "But it is better than knitting, she
says, because it is faster. She likes to get results."

"Exactly," Mrs. Ostermaier observed. "I'll just ask you to look at this
pajama coat she has turned in."

Well, there was no getting away from it. It was wrong. Dear Tish had
sewed one of the sleeves in the neck opening,