the girls and women who attended her Monday-night talks in the Alliance's parlors. She made personalities pulsing and alive for Reba out of those distant countries, which a few weeks ago had been mere names in a history-book to her—irregular, pastel-shaded shapes on a geography map, which Miss Billings used to make her bound and name the chief exports of. It was Miss Park who made out of England something big and strong, like an older brother, sternly protective of the weak and persecuted; of France something inspiring and lovable—like a younger brother perhaps—fun-loving but ready at the first call, smiling but steady in the face of terrific odds; of Belgium, little Belgium, something bleeding, suffering, in distress—a child lost, a child blinded, a child with both hands cut off! Oh, Reba shuddered, felt the horror at last. She, Rebecca Jerome, admired, loved and pitied vague masses of people she had never seen!
Aunt Augusta scornfully remarked at the end of Reba's fourth Sunday-letter home (she wrote, as before, persistently every week), "Reba's putting on great airs—presuming to get heated up over this war-business. She knows about as much about it, I guess, as a cat! There'll be no living with that girl. She thinks she's being pretty smart, I suppose, with her exclamation-points about Belgium and France!"
But even though Reba did use an exclamation-point or two when she wrote home about the war, it did not obliterate her interest in her own personal pursuit. She was still consumed with eagerness for her own small adventure. Reba Jerome developed no sudden quixotism, no extravagant passion to throw herself into the world-struggle. Her interest in the war was
