ll
 
 
 
 ^A
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U.S.A.
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK - BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U.S.A. 
 
 BY 
 MARTHA BENSLEY BRUERE 
 
 Neto 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1919 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918 AND 1919, 
 BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 .191.9, 
 BY THE MACMITiAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up aid electrotyped. Published MaicV, 1 
 
 Norfaooti JJheas 
 
 J. S. Cushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U.S.A. 
 
 2134423
 
 Mildred Carver, U.S.A. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A I extremely pretty girl came through a long win 
 dow onto the veranda of a house set high above 
 Torexo Park. The house had been built 
 long ago by her grandfather, William Carver, a con 
 servative gentleman who felt that his wish to live 
 where he could look across the green summits of the 
 Catskills justified the spending of much money. Many 
 new people had come to live in the valley but no one 
 could forget that his house vast, dominating, ugly 
 had been the first upon the mountain side. To Mildred 
 Carver who stood looking down the mist lined valley, 
 the roofs of these newer houses were as familiar as the 
 dark woods that stood along the hills, or the roads shin 
 ing white in the blurred moonlight, as familiar even 
 as the lad who followed her through the window and 
 over to the edge of the veranda. 
 
 Mildred had seen Nicholas Van Arsdale every day 
 during the summer that was just fading; every day of 
 the summer before, and of the summer before that; and 
 every summer as far back in her eighteen years as she 
 could remember. The Van Arsdale cottage had been 
 built just over the shoulder of the hill soon after the last 
 inconsequent lightning rod was set on the tower of Wil 
 liam Carver s mansion. Memories of Nick at every 
 height from three feet to five feet nine; in every stage
 
 2 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 of growth from small boy stubbiness to slender, narrow- 
 footed, brown youth; in every costume from kilts to the 
 smartest of adult attire, were hung thick in Mildred s 
 mental gallery. 
 
 Up to this year their friendship had been a happily 
 commonplace affair, but now inexplicable things were 
 continually happening between them. A year ago they 
 would have spent the evening chattering with Ruthie and 
 Junior or playing billiards or trying new dance steps with 
 as many of the family as they could get to join them, 
 instead of sitting together in the far corner of the room 
 talking very young talk in tones pitched unconsciously 
 below the ears of Mr. and Mrs. Carver talk broken 
 by disconcerting silences which neither of them knew 
 how to fill. A year ago it wouldn t have occurred to 
 Mildred suddenly that the big living room "glared" and 
 that she must get out of it into something shadowy and 
 dim, it wouldn t have occurred to Nick that to follow 
 her to the veranda edge was something overwhelmingly 
 important and a very special privilege. 
 
 They stood together now this boy and girl above 
 the pulsating valley. They were not thinking much, nor 
 were they conscious of any particular feeling. The 
 Katydids were calling back and forth below them ; a 
 belated whip-poor-will had been wakened into complaint 
 by the moonlight; way off somewhere a hunting owl 
 cried lonesomely. There was menace in the mist creep 
 ing up from the valley and Nick edged closer to Mildred 
 in spite of the great house full of servants she seemed 
 suddenly to need protection. She leaned out into the 
 moonlight and Nick felt a faint prickling of the spine. 
 What had happened to make her so different? He knew 
 her well, he had known her all his life and yet she was 
 utterly strange !
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 3 
 
 A harsh regular noise troubled Nick which, after such 
 thought as he was capable of, he discovered to be the 
 sound of his own breath rushing in and out. He was 
 unable to think out this strange phenomenon because the 
 fragrance floating up from a bed of late tuberoses 
 troubled him. He could almost taste the perfume ! And 
 then the iridescent mist billowing up and down in the 
 moonlight made him feel dizzy. He wasn t conscious of 
 wanting to say or do anything, of having any impulses 
 or intentions, but he heard his voice, very hoarse and 
 hard, saying: 
 
 "Mildred, are you cold ?" 
 
 As the girl turned her head to answer, the moonlight 
 swept across her hair in tiny rainbows and before Nick 
 knew what he was doing, his arms flung themselves 
 around her and he kissed her on the lips. 
 
 "Nick!" she cried softly, "Nick oh, Nick!" and 
 struggled a little. 
 
 And then her arms, quite on their own initiative, lifted 
 and went round his neck and she raised her lips again; 
 and the little mist of pearl which had been slowly climb 
 ing up through the valley drowning out the tree trunks 
 till the leaves seemed floating in a silver sea, overflowed 
 the veranda edge and blotted out the young lovers.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 L\TE that night Mildred sat up in bed holding 
 both hands close against her hot cheeks. She 
 had set her trembling lips and kept her eyelids 
 down while Henriette brushed out her long blond hair 
 and braided it afresh; she had dipped in and out of her 
 great white tub in a daze, and let the maid pull the light 
 covers over her and switch off the light almost in silence. 
 But when the door had shut softly, she sat up with a 
 start, and now she held her flushed cheeks in her hot 
 hands and looked into the dark with smiling lips and soft 
 wide eyes that saw visions. 
 
 It hadn t felt the same oh, not at all the same ! - 
 as the time she had sprained her ankle and he had carried 
 her up from the boat house. No, this was quite differ 
 ent and much, much nicer. She had been too surprised 
 and excited out there on the veranda to feel as happy as 
 she really was. To marry Nick ! Well, why not ? Only 
 she had never thought of it before. Her cheeks were 
 cooling now and she clasped her hands over her knees. 
 She could see the mist settling down into the valley 
 again, shimmering like mother of pearl with the tree 
 tops sticking through. Yes, of course she was going to 
 marry Nick it was the most natural thing in the 
 world! A half submerged tree out there in the moon 
 light looked like a giant horse struggling through a 
 river a warrior s horse carrying a knight of the Round 
 Table. How she used to imagine herself a lady out of 
 the Idylls of the King Elaine usually, only it was 
 always Sir Gareth she dreamed about, contrary to the
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 5 
 
 precedent of the poem! It might be Sir Gareth on just 
 such a charger as the tree seemed to be ! And then her 
 power of picturing showed her Nick on Sheridan II; a 
 slim, straight figure in London riding clothes and the 
 trimmest of boots on a delicate footed bay with nothing 
 nearer the caparisoning of the jousts than a light bridle 
 and the merest suggestion of a saddle. Nick was a good 
 rider but he was not in the least like Sir Gareth, and he 
 preferred his motor to all the horses that ever galloped 
 over a thousand hills. But of course she couldn t expect 
 Sir Gareth there weren t any men like that now. Yes, 
 she and Nick would be married. She wondered idly 
 whether they would live here or at the Van Arsdale 
 house. Nick s mother was dead, so probably they would 
 go there. It didn t seem to matter much. 
 
 The mist had sunk further into the valley, and the 
 charger plunging through the silver stream turned out 
 to be nothing but a quite ordinary oak tree that almost 
 always had wormy acorns they d talked of cutting it 
 down ! Everybody expected her to marry usually 
 girls married soon after they were presented to society - 
 most of her cousins had. Only of course there was 
 Lucile she hadn t married. But then she had gone 
 into the Red Cross during the war and been in France 
 in a hospital. It was more interesting to hear her tell 
 about it than anything for all she had heard it so many 
 times. Why even Aunt Millicent was proud of her 
 and usually Aunt Millicent wanted everybody to be ex 
 actly like everybody else. And there was Agnes, she 
 had married a man that nobody knew. He taught some 
 thing somewhere, and she had heard her aunts say that 
 of course they must remember that Agnes mouth wasn t 
 good and she stooped and involuntarily Mildred 
 squared her shoulders.
 
 6 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 She looked through the window again. The moon 
 had set and a careless sort of a wind had driven all the 
 silver mist out of the valley. But there was a dull glow 
 over the hill ! It must be a fire ! She got out of bed and 
 ran to the window. It was a fire, she could see the 
 flames! It looked like the new house the Arnolds had 
 built. And then came the clang and rush of the fire 
 engines and at quick intervals the lights of motor cars 
 which she knew were carrying the boys of the Universal 
 Service up to help fight the fire. A motor started in the 
 lower drive below the house and the light sped away 
 through the trees. It sounded like Nick s little grey 
 racer but of course it couldn t be. 
 
 Mildred s cheeks were quite cool now and her new 
 emotion had run down like a clock. She went back to 
 bed and pulled up the covers. Certainly there wasn t 
 any reason why she should lie awake because she was 
 going to marry Nick! And throwing her blond braid 
 back on the pillow and tucking her hand under her cheek 
 she went placidly to sleep.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NICHOLAS VAN ARSDALE, in a state of 
 serene unconsciousness, had stepped from the 
 Carver s veranda into the encircling mist and 
 begun to feel his way down the path. To listen to his 
 pounding heart beats absorbed all his conscious atten 
 tion but he instinctively followed the descending road to 
 the lower drive where he bumped into a standing automo 
 bile. Walking around this in a beatific trance he felt his 
 way onward still with the feel of Mildred s lips on his. 
 What a wonderful thing to have happened! If anybody 
 had told him even this morning that he was in love with 
 Mildred he would have said no, he was not and 
 here he had been all the time and no more knowing it than 
 if there d be rain next week ! 
 
 So this was being in love ! Nick was eighteen, which 
 seemed to him a great number of years in which never to 
 have been in love before. Well, it was a great idea 
 being in love he had that to say for it at the start. Of 
 course, when he had thought of what it would be like, he 
 had had a picture of a sort of Spanish girl with a lace 
 thing on her head singing or dancing or something 
 like that. Great black eyes, you know, and short high- 
 heeled slippers like the girls on the stage. But now it 
 was Mildred! And he had been in love with her with 
 out knowing it at all ! It wasn t a bit like what he d 
 expected, but they d be married and do everything to 
 gether just as they always had only it would all be 
 different, of course being married. And he thought 
 
 7
 
 8 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 of his father and how he d probably give her all the jew 
 els his mother had had. Nick had sometimes imagined 
 it would be fun to give these things to a little Cinderella 
 sort of girl who had never had anything pretty but of 
 course Mildred was nicer than anybody else could be 
 only it had been pleasant to think of that little Spanish 
 Cinderella ! Well, when they were married 
 
 Nick interrupted himself by coming out on a knoll and 
 noticing that the mist was driving out of the valley and 
 that over toward the upper end of the Park a red glow 
 was striking up into the sky. As he stopped to watch 
 it, came the clang of the fire engines rushing up from the 
 village below. Nick knew that the Universal Service 
 boys stationed in Torexo must be tumbling into their 
 clothes and getting their cars out to follow. They 
 always got a chance to help in any sort of emergency 
 duty, even if their regular work was keeping the roads in 
 order and distributing the mail and dull things like that. 
 But fires were rare in Torexo. He didn t want to miss 
 this one even if he wasn t in the Service. He d get his 
 car, and then he remembered that he d gone to the 
 Carver s house in his motor. Why, that must have been 
 it he bumped into in the lower drive ! He stopped short 
 in sudden realization of the fact that he hadn t known his 
 own car when he saw it hadn t remembered that there 
 was such a thing in the world ! 
 
 " Well I should say I am in love! " he cried aloud and 
 turning ran back through the clearing air. 
 
 If Mildred and he could go together on this adventure ! 
 He peered up at her windows but there was no stir. The 
 whole house was dark. A flood of emotion engulfed 
 him Mildred ! He loved her and she loved him it 
 was the greatest thing in the world! Why, she was 
 probably thinking about him at this very minute !
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 9 
 
 He sprang into the car and was about to start the en 
 gine when he heard quick steps running down the road 
 from the house. Could it by any possibility be Mildred ? 
 He waited, his hand on the lever. They were strong 
 footsteps beating a rapid tremolo on the hard road. 
 Somebody was making good time. Nick s lamps threw 
 a steady white river before him and the invisible runner 
 blurred the foot beats together in a final burst of speed 
 and plunged into the light. It was Wicks, one of the 
 Carver s young footmen! 
 
 Nick straightened from the wheel in disappointment. 
 He had been sure it must be Mildred because he wanted 
 her to come. 
 
 " Oh, is it you, Mr. Nicholas, sir! " the man gasped. 
 " I saw the headlight and I thought I might catch it, sir. 
 If the fire s in the woods I might help. I did my service 
 in the Forestry and learned about fire fighting out west. 
 Are you going to it, sir? " 
 
 " Yes, jump in, Wicks." 
 
 They struck down into the valley. The mist was all 
 gone now and they followed clear roads in the soft dark 
 after moonset and rushed on toward the mounting 
 flames. 
 
 " I didn t know you d been in the Service, Wicks. 
 What did you do?" 
 
 " It was two years ago, Mr. Nicholas. I didn t choose 
 what I d like to do so they put me in the Forestry. I 
 cleared out the dead bushes and trees, sir, and the gang 
 boss d tell me how to girdle a tree that ought to come 
 down, and we got more kinds of bugs and worms that 
 eats trees than you d know there was, and sent em to 
 Washington. We done a lot of work trying to find out 
 what was killing the chestnuts, and planting other kinds 
 specially from China to see if they d get the blight."
 
 10 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 "Did they get it?" 
 
 " I don t know, sir, my year was up before they fo 
 out. But when I m off duty at the house I go into 
 woods here and see if there s anything more I can 
 out about them. I sent a new kind of fungus up to 
 Department last week." 
 
 Nick s lips formed themselves into a silent whistli 
 he forced his car up a steep grade. 
 
 You seem to have liked the Service." 
 
 "You bet!" 
 
 Nick grinned. It tickled his taste to find that 
 man whom he had thought merely a uniformed har 
 of plates and opener of doors, was an indepem 
 citizen collecting destructive fungi for the governm 
 the possible discoverer of the cure for the chestnut bli 
 which had so distressed his father and the other resid 
 of Torexo Park. 
 
 "If you like it so much why did you come back 
 be a footman? " 
 
 " Well, sir, it isn t that I want to. I d have give ; 
 thing to have gone into the Forestry regular. But 
 mother, she s in New York and she couldn t make 
 without me another year. You see I wouldn t be 
 ting anything for my first year in the Forestry but 
 keep and twenty a month. But some time I m going 1 
 to it, you bet." 
 
 Nick shot the car furiously up under the road- 
 trees and they tumbled out and ran toward the bun 
 house. 
 
 It was a modern house trying to look as though it \ 
 old. Artificially and needlessly it straggled along 
 ground pretending that it had been added to ell b) 
 through the generations instead of having been buili 
 at once by an expensive and fashionable architect.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 11 
 
 trees overhung the low gables in an affectionate ancestral 
 way carefully induced by a landscape gardener, and close 
 back of it rose a great white pine. Wicks, dashing on 
 ahead of Nick, groaned as he saw the sparks flying to 
 ward this tree. They were both stopped by a lad in 
 khaki uniform who ordered them back, but Wicks cried 
 out: 
 
 " I m Forestry Service two years back fought a 
 lot of fires better let me help." 
 
 The Service lad relaxed. 
 
 " Sure we need you ! There s the captain report 
 to him." 
 
 Nick tried to follow Wicks but the Service boy swung 
 out before him. 
 
 " See here, young feller, you get back to the line 
 see!" 
 
 "Confound you I m going to help let me by!" 
 
 You ever been in the Service ? " 
 
 " No, I haven t, but I can carry Mrs. Arnold s chairs 
 and tables out of that house as well as the rest of you. 
 You let me by ! " 
 
 The Service boy Nick recognized him as a young 
 westerner who assisted in the Torexo Post Office 
 kept crowding him back and the dispute threatened to 
 become a personal conflict when Nick felt his arm caught 
 and turning saw his father, who, having been roused 
 from his reading, had come up the hill on foot. 
 
 " Hullo, son, how did you get here ? I thought you 
 were dining with Mrs. Carver? " 
 
 At the memory, the boy caught his breath. Mildred 
 had been sitting on the other side of the table and he 
 had never dreamed of being in love with her! But he 
 was able to answer his father steadily enough : 
 
 " I was there, sir, but I saw the fire and came in my 
 car."
 
 12 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Pretty good work these young men are doing. 
 They re getting a lot of the furniture out but I don t 
 think they can save the house. Pity if the fire gets those 
 pines ! " 
 
 " O, Lord, I wish they d let me help ! I could carry 
 rugs as well as they can! What s the use of their keep 
 ing me out because they re in the Service? It isn t fair! 
 No, I m not going to butt in " (this to the young west 
 erner). Don t you dare wave your hand at me again, 
 though! I m as big as you are if you are nineteen and 
 I won t stand it ! " 
 
 Mr. Van Arsdale laughed and caught him by the arm 
 again. 
 
 " Here, you young hot head your turn will come 
 next year ! " 
 
 The crowd of neighbors swayed back and forth in the 
 light of the burning house. Some of them tried to 
 comfort Mrs. Arnold who sat on a little hillock crying 
 and clutching her wide-eyed children; for even if you are 
 rich enough to own an imitation ancestral home, and 
 socially important enough to have it set in Torexo Park, 
 you do have an occasional human feeling; and while your 
 control over your tear ducts is probably greater than that 
 of ordinary mortals, it is still not absolute. It was sur 
 prising how many more people there were in Torexo than 
 Nick knew and yet his father entertained everybody 
 at dinner at least once during the summer! He began 
 to recognize faces here and there which he had only seen 
 before under maids caps or above servants uniforms. 
 His talk with Wicks had somewhat widened the popula 
 tion of the place. It now included servants! The 
 people were in all sorts of haphazard costumes, but 
 blended into harmony by the setting and the light of the 
 fire like the peasant chorus in an opera. Here and there
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 13 
 
 some one would stand out from the chorus like a " prin 
 cipal " and Nick noticed that it was just as likely to be 
 somebody s chauffeur as " somebody " himself. 
 
 Nick ranged round the edges of the crowd trying again 
 and again to break into the ranks of the fire fighters and 
 being repulsed with increasing hauteur by the uniformed 
 Service boys lads whom he ordinarily disregarded 
 because they were different from himself ; as he had dis 
 regarded the boys who went to the public schools, instead 
 of having tutors or going to Groton; boys who had bicy 
 cles instead of automobiles; boys who worked in stores 
 or offices instead of playing polo. Now these boys in 
 the Service were disregarding him because they worked 
 and he didn t! 
 
 Nick and his father stayed till the house had been 
 mostly reduced to red coals. Mr. Van Arsdale would 
 have been glad to go earlier but he stayed to restrain his 
 son, whose ideas of authority as vested in any one but 
 himself were purely rudimentary. When at last Nick 
 was content to go, the older man sighed in relief. This 
 only child of his was most particularly dear, but life for 
 him had settled down into an easy routine which he re 
 sented having disturbed the routine of generations of 
 rich scholars whose investments, providently made in the 
 previous century, had gone on increasing automatically 
 in value so that they could pursue learning entirely for its 
 own sake. 
 
 " I guess I better take Wicks home too," Nick re 
 marked absently as they reached his automobile. 
 
 "Who s Wicks?" 
 
 " He s the Carvers footman. I brought him up with 
 me." 
 
 "Well, can t he get back by himself? It s not far." 
 
 " But you see, sir, he s been in the Service in the
 
 14 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Forestry and he s been fighting the fire. They let 
 him! " 
 
 Nick ran back for Wicks and his father sat in the 
 motor wondering. Did a footman s having been in the 
 Universal Service make him any less a footman? Put 
 any more obligation on Nick to drive him back in his car ? 
 Make it necessary for himself, Henry Van Arsdale, to 
 wait when he was anxious to get to bed ? 
 
 " Wicks is going to stay," said Nick, reappearing. 
 " He s out there where the wind s blowing too, watching 
 to put out sparks. He says he wouldn t feel right to go 
 when there s a chance of a forest fire getting started. He 
 thinks it s up to him because he worked for the United 
 States for a year." 
 
 And Mr. Van Arsdale wondered again at the attitude 
 of the footman toward the country and of his son toward 
 the footman. 
 
 Nick s little gray racer slid down into the dark of the 
 valley, the headlight picking out one tree after another 
 in autumn red or brown or deceptive spring-like green. 
 The boy was still railing at not having been allowed to 
 help at the fire and wholly occupied with his rebuff by the 
 Service men. The connection between his mind and the 
 event on the veranda seemed broken. 
 
 " Wait till next year, though then I ll be in it my 
 self then they can t keep me out just because I m not 
 in uniform. Just wait till next year! " 
 
 But suddenly the boy jammed in the brake and brought 
 the car to a stop with a jolt that nearly disemboweled it 
 and almost threw his father out. 
 
 " Dad," he whispered, turning a white face to his 
 father. " Dad, I can t go into the Service I d for 
 gotten Mildred and I are going to be married." 
 
 The elder man recovered himself a little testily. Vio 
 lence did not appeal to him.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 15 
 
 " What do you mean by nearly breaking my neck 
 like this?" 
 
 " Mildred and I are going to be married ! " 
 
 " Well, what of it? Everybody always supposed you 
 would be." 
 
 " But I can t go into the Service then." 
 
 The older man looked his son over speculatively. 
 
 " It looks to me as though you ve forgotten that you ve 
 got to go into the Service whether you want to or not. 
 They don t ask you whether you re going to be married, 
 or vaccinated or graduated or anything else they ask 
 you if you re eighteen years old and if you are you have 
 to go. In your normal frame of mind you know this as 
 well as I do. Mildred has got to go into the Service too. 
 And you ought to know, if you don t, that the law doesn t 
 recognize any marriage between people who haven t 
 served their year." 
 
 Nick drummed impatiently on the steering wheel. 
 
 " But I m going to marry Mildred." 
 
 " I haven t the slightest objection to your marrying 
 Mildred. She s a fine girl with a good little brain of her 
 own, and she wouldn t be marrying you for the money. 
 I imagine everybody would be pleased about it. But the 
 Universal Service isn t a thing you can dodge, my son. 
 Every excuse that can possibly be thought of has been 
 tried already and unless you are physically disabled or 
 mentally deficient and I m proud to say you re neither 
 you ve the choice of going into the Service or going 
 into jail, and incidentally losing your citizenship, and so 
 has Mildred. Don t be a fool, Nick." 
 
 " But, dad Mildred I asked her to marry me this 
 evening! " 
 
 That s all right the most natural thing in the 
 world! But after all, Nick, though I believe in early
 
 16 * MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 marriages, eighteen is a bit too young even from my 
 standpoint, and I think Frank and Mary Carver will agree 
 with me. I m glad Mildred is willing to marry you. It 
 greatly diminishes the chance of your making a fool of 
 yourself over some one you couldn t marry but I ll not 
 aid or abet any son of mine in being a slacker. If I 
 remember the date, both you and my future daughter-in- 
 law bless the dear child ! will be drafted in about 
 six weeks." 
 
 Nick started his car again and drove home in absolute 
 silence. His mind was oscillating between thoughts of 
 Mildred so wonderful as he found her under this new 
 emotion and thoughts of the Service which he had so 
 passionately desired back there at the fire.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MILDRED would have been glad to oversleep 
 the next morning but that was not a thing 
 countenanced by her mother. Mrs. Carver 
 was busily engaged in training her daughter in the vir 
 tues of princesses which seem to be much the same 
 whether these fortunate young persons have titles and 
 live in Europe or merely have breeding, birth and fortune 
 and live in America. So in spite of her new conscious 
 ness of importance as a girl who had given her promise 
 of marriage and so settled her life in its preordained 
 channel, Mildred came to the family table at the usual 
 time, ate just as hearty a breakfast as usual, put just as 
 much cream on her dish of late peaches and showed just 
 as fundamental an objection to oatmeal as she usually 
 did. 
 
 Mildred watched her mother, serene and trim as one 
 who is about to attack competently the country routine 
 of consulting her housekeeper, surveying her gardens and 
 instructing her secretary. Mrs. Carver was physically 
 no great contrast to her eldest daughter, a little darker, 
 a little less tall and slender, just a trifle less differenti 
 ated from the dead level of the race, as being one joint 
 further back on the parent stem. Mildred wondered if 
 her mother would be surprised to know she was going to 
 marry Nick. What would her father think? He was 
 a silent man, tall, blonde and, to the eye, English. A 
 shade finer than his wife in the details of culture, but 
 c 17
 
 18 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 very like her in type. Mildred looked like both her par 
 ents without any conflict of features. 
 
 Mr. Carver was just finishing his eggs in the imper 
 turbability born of the conscious ability to follow the com 
 mand of taking no thought of what he should eat or what 
 he should put on when Wicks came in with the morning 
 letters on a tray, a function which he performed in the 
 country, Waddell the butler being left in charge of the 
 New York house. There was a pile of letters for her 
 mother, a few for her father, two for her mother s sec 
 retary, Miss Price, a Wellesley girl, one for Junior s 
 tutor, Mr. Harmine. After all these had been laid be 
 side the plates, Wicks came back around the table, stopped 
 for an appreciable moment behind her chair, and then 
 with a hand that was not as steady as the hand of the per 
 fect footman should be, put beside her a large square 
 envelope, redirected from New York, and marked in the 
 upper left-hand corner : 
 
 Department of Universal Service 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 Mildred took the envelope uncomprehendingly and 
 opened it. A stiff printed announcement, large, for 
 midable, summoning her, Mildred Carver, by the 
 authority of the President and Congress of the United 
 States, as she was eighteen years old to enter the National 
 Service on the first day of October and to remain in it 
 for twelve months thereafter. She was to indicate on 
 the inclosed blanks the division of the Service she pre 
 ferred, and be ready for departure when she was notified. 
 It was signed by the Secretary of Universal Service. 
 
 Mildred looked up after what seemed to her a long, 
 long interval. Her eyes fixed themselves on the painting 
 by Constable over the old oak sideboard a scene of
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 19 
 
 assured and stable peace, sad-colored trees that had never 
 swung in any breeze, still cows immovable for all time 
 on the eternally sere grass ! They dropped to the great 
 silver urn below it and its rich flanking of serving dishes, 
 shifted to the fluttering silk curtains, woven and dyed to 
 suit the room; to the old carved chairs brought from 
 Holland, and the sunlight sifting over the rich colors of 
 the old rug brought from Persia, and in all the costliness 
 of her surroundings Mildred found no help. And her 
 father and mother were reading their letters as carelessly 
 as though nothing had happened! Ruthie and Junior 
 were disputing as to whose turn it was to use the tennis 
 court ! And here was this thing in her hand ! The only 
 difference was her consciousness that Wicks still stood 
 behind her chair. She turned and looked at him with 
 such frightened, entreating eyes that the footman leaned 
 forward instantly. 
 
 " Yes, miss. Can I get you anything, miss ? " and then 
 very low, " It won t be so bad as you re afraid of, miss, 
 believe me," and drew her chair back as she rose. 
 
 With this first stone in the pathway of true love con 
 cealed in the pocket of her sport skirt, Mildred waited all 
 the morning for Nick. But Nick wasn t in the habit of 
 coming to the house in the forenoon and he didn t now 
 even in the young of the established classes habits form 
 early and are hard to break. He didn t come in the early 
 afternoon either because his Universal Service order had 
 been in the same mail with Mildred s and his father and 
 he had been thrashing out the matter backward, for 
 ward and criss-cross. Mr. Van Arsdale found that the 
 old Dutch tenacity was not all dead in his line when he 
 tried to adjust his beloved son and heir to an absolute 
 command of which he didn t see the use. So that when 
 Nick did appear in the Carver house not only was it late
 
 20 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 in the day, but every cell in his brain and every nerve in 
 his body was set in resistance. He had caught the spent 
 bullet of his last night s emotion as a little ball of leaden 
 obstinacy, and came marching up the steps like a defiant 
 young Dutch burgher. 
 
 Wicks, an expressionless footman again, instead of a 
 fire fighter, led him to the library where tea was set, and 
 was still in the doorway as he walked straight to Frank 
 Carver, serenely dividing his attention between a cup of 
 tea, a cigar and an English magazine, and asked in all 
 seriousness for Mildred s hand. 
 
 It was a startling thing to happen in a modern house 
 hold. The footman stood gaping; Frank dropped his 
 cigar into his tea while his wife came quickly across to 
 him. Mildred, aghast, felt herself set back into the line of 
 past generations, as though all the successive births, mar 
 riages, and deaths of all the successive generations of the 
 Carvers, like the cycle of an insect s life from worm to 
 cocoon to butterfly to worm again, were an inevitable 
 chain that bound her. And yet according to all the ro 
 mance of her academic reading this was exactly the 
 proper thing for Nick to do. As Mildred looked at her 
 parents it struck her that they didn t seem so very much 
 surprised after all. Was it just what they had expected 
 of her then? 
 
 But her father was drawing her down on the arm of 
 his chair and saying exactly what she ought to have 
 expected exactly what she did expect down in the 
 subconscious part of her that determined things by feel 
 ing because it hadn t yet learned to think. Her father, 
 with her mother to back him up, told them that they 
 were very young a fact that Mildred could see Nick 
 resenting as bitterly as she did ; that they hadn t had any 
 experience, which they refused to admit; and that they
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 21 
 
 hadn t done their year in the Universal Service, which 
 hadn t struck either of them as important until the arrival 
 of the government orders that day. They must wait at 
 least a year for any sort of an engagement. In the mean 
 time they were expected to be just good friends as they 
 had always been. No, there wasn t any objection to Nick 
 he was a dear boy. If they wanted to talk of it 
 when they were older but in the meantime 
 
 And so Mildred and Nick went out on the veranda 
 again and vowed to each other that they would wait if 
 they must an inescapable Service and non-understand 
 ing parents interposing temporarily insuperable objec 
 tions. 
 
 In the six weeks before they were called to the Service 
 they tried hard to make an adventure of their clandestine 
 engagement, and every member of the household 
 helped them. 
 
 " Henriette ! Henriette ! " Wicks called frantically 
 from the servants door, " Whadda ya want to go that 
 way for? Didn t you see Miss Mildred going down that 
 path after lunch was through? Ah, come back, girl 
 have a heart ! " 
 
 "Weeks, the manners of a gentleman you have not! 
 Is it you cannot observe Mr. Nicholas behind the foun 
 tain? Till you remove from the door, can he approach 
 the tea house where Ma mzelle remains ? I ask you as a 
 gentleman? " 
 
 The contrite Wicks hastily followed the observing 
 Henriette out of sight and if they turned to see 
 through the curtain again, shall any one blame them ? 
 
 Mildred would drift languidly out of the breakfast 
 room and vanish with obtrusive carelessness down the 
 rhododendron path and there would be Nick waiting for 
 her at the seat by the spring. She always went to these
 
 22 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 meetings in high expectation. Did she not know from 
 books exactly how she ought to feel ? And since she had 
 a well trained imagination she took it for granted that 
 she really did feel as she thought she ought, although 
 when actually with him in the sentimental role of a be 
 loved object, there was nothing to talk of and little to do. 
 
 And the unexpected monotony of being surreptitiously 
 engaged to the dearest girl in the world so got on Nick s 
 nerves that he became daily more attentive and loverlike 
 lest Mildred should suspect his moments of ennui so 
 very affectionate in fact that she was eaten with self- 
 reproach at being unable to rise to his pitch. And when 
 in a fit of desperation he rushed down to New York and 
 bought her a ring set with a pink pearl, she cried as much 
 in disappointment at her own lack of emotional exaltation 
 as with pleasure at the lovely symbol. It was a hard, 
 bewildering time for them both. There were no gaps of 
 knowledge or experience or circumstance for their talk to 
 bridge; even in years they were too equal to strike fire. 
 They thought alike, they had done the same things, they 
 knew the same people, and now they had concerned them 
 selves in the same love affair! Why, they might have 
 been married twenty years ! But of course even if their 
 engagement did need considerable prodding to come up 
 to expectations, their marriage would make up for it. 
 Their only new interest was to go over the lists labeled : 
 " Open to recruits from cities of 500,000 inhabitants and 
 over," and decide which should be their first, second and 
 third choice. It was something which lent substance to 
 the rather attenuated unrealities of their love affair. 
 
 " You see, Mildred," said Nick rather dolefully, " the 
 work that is open to us is mostly in the country or at least 
 in the very small towns. There s work in the post offices 
 in all the cross roads ; and there s road making and trans-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 23 
 
 portation I suppose that would be fixing tracks and 
 sweeping cars and entrancing things like that and for 
 estry and agriculture and mines and all this column of 
 queer things like geodetics and hydrostatics, that I don t 
 know about, and of course there s the army and navy 
 and nursing but none of it smiles much to me. Arthur 
 Wintermute told me he registered for aviation. I don t 
 see how he could run an aeroplane he s never done a 
 thing in his life. He never goes anywhere without that 
 valet, Mapes, tagging along. I guess he thinks Mapes 
 can run the plane for him." 
 
 " I wonder," said Mildred slowly, " what it would be 
 like to really work to have to do something whether 
 you wanted to or not." 
 
 " Like nothing we know anything of," commented 
 Nick shrewdly, looking speculatively about. 
 
 They were sitting on the south veranda a long plane 
 sweeping past rows of windows and around the bulging 
 circle of the billiard room. Each chair had been set in 
 its proper place, each cushion plumped, each rug straight 
 ened that day but not by them. Before either of them 
 was awake the steps had been washed by some one else. 
 Some one else was rolling the tennis court over by the 
 road for them to play on ; some one else was bringing veg 
 etables up from the garden for them to eat. Nick s car, 
 cleaned and polished by some one else, stood in the drive. 
 Beside Mildred stood a tea table set with a service of sil 
 ver, and it was not necessary for them even to pour their 
 own tea for Wicks hovered in the offing to do it if re 
 quired. Certainly work was not one of the things they 
 knew anything about. 
 
 " Even if we chose the same thing we wouldn t be 
 together," said Mildred rather wistfully; "they always 
 send the boys and girls on different trains. Why, Alice 
 West never saw any one she knew the whole year ! "
 
 24 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " What did Alice choose? " 
 
 " She couldn t decide so they put her into one of those 
 botanical experiment stations and she spent most of her 
 time taking care of new sorts of beans and peas, measur 
 ing the water she gave them and keeping the temperature 
 just right and feeding them a lot of different stuff to see 
 what would happen. She told me she was a sort of plant 
 nurse. She liked it a lot though, and Tommy West told 
 me she was going to some college to learn about plant 
 chemistry only her mother doesn t want her to." 
 
 Nick s finger was traveling down the column specu- 
 latively. 
 
 " I d hate to work on a railroad or sort letters in a post 
 office. I suppose in the Forestry you d nurse the trees 
 the way Alice West did the beans and peas. No now 
 that I think of it, Wicks told me what you do in that 
 say, Wicks," he called, " come and tell us about the For 
 estry Service." 
 
 The footman was much embarrassed. It is one thing 
 to talk to a young gentleman, man to man, when you are 
 going to a fire with him in the middle of the night, and 
 quite another to stand in your distinguishing but not hon 
 orable uniform and tell a lovely young girl whom you 
 serve, and her quite obviously accepted lover about the 
 greatest year in your life and that so small a thing com 
 pared with what they may expect for themselves! But 
 after a moment Wicks forgot himself in telling what it 
 meant for him to be living with boys who had come from 
 every other part of the country to have been given the 
 sort of academic training he could have got in no other 
 way training in the structure of trees, in the cell the 
 ory of growth, in the lives of insects and their habits. 
 
 " Why, I just got to see how it was the world was goin 
 on trees and insecs and the way the rocks happened,
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 25 
 
 too. You can t never feel the same about anything 
 again." 
 
 And the thing that the footman didn t say in words, 
 but which was implied in every syllable and he became 
 very much less of a footman as he did it was the great 
 difference it made for him not to be working for any one 
 individual but for everybody together. 
 
 " Uncle Sam s a great old boss," he said. 
 
 When Wicks had become the footman again and car 
 ried away their tea, Nick went on studying the blanks 
 discontentedly. 
 
 "If they d let me run an automobile I d like it well 
 enough if the roads were decent." Then he stopped 
 suddenly. " I might do that ! " 
 
 "Do what?" " 
 
 " Road making it s got something to do with auto 
 mobiles anyway." 
 
 "Oh, Nick!" 
 
 " Well, I would like to know about them why they 
 wear out and everything, and from what Wicks says I 
 guess they d teach me that." 
 
 " But road making, Nick ! " 
 
 " Well, Mildred, I ve got to choose something, you 
 know." 
 
 They argued the matter for days and got more fun 
 being together because they had something new to talk 
 about. They could set their teeth into the fact that they 
 had to go into the Service whether they wanted to or not. 
 And just at the last moment when the blanks had to be 
 returned to the government, Nick did make road making 
 his first choice and Mildred registered for agriculture.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MILDRED stood before the dressing table in her 
 New York home fingering the government 
 order for her departure. Wicks had already 
 carried her bag down to the motor and Henriette stood 
 patiently holding out her traveling coat. But Mildred 
 was quite deaf to the low voices of her assembled kins 
 folk floating up from the lower hall, or to the rattle and 
 whirr of the motor trucks hurrying back and forth on the 
 north side of Washington Square. She knew it was time 
 to start but she was fully occupied in trying to wink the 
 tears out of her eyes and swallow the choke out of her 
 voice before she faced her relatives. It was with a vis 
 ible effort that she raised her firm little chin and let Hen 
 riette lay the coat over her shoulders. 
 
 She stopped again at the top of the stairs with her hand 
 on the long, curving mahogany rail and looked down. If 
 she had merely been going to China these relatives 
 wouldn t have been here to bid her good-by this, she 
 knew, was much more special. She got a sudden com 
 posite impression as though she saw them in perspective 
 for the first time. They had always been distinct indi 
 viduals to her before, Aunt Millicent, tall, stately and 
 a little ponderous, as one who entertains princes has a 
 right to be, Great-Uncle Andrew Carver, thin and droopy 
 as to mustache and shoulders but with an inevitable sar 
 torial perf ectness ; Winthrop, who had served in the army 
 in France and carried himself straight and square in spite 
 of his limp ; David and Lucille, who had been working in 
 
 26
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 27 
 
 a field hospital; beautiful married cousins in their thirties, 
 whose dinner tables were eminences to be longed after 
 hopelessly by generations of the children of the New- 
 rich; stately men cousins who took their wealth as a 
 means to a serene life and only made excursions into the 
 business world as one might visit the realm of an African 
 king Mildred saw them for the first time combined, a 
 race of tall, straight, clear-eyed people developed through 
 generations of wealth and culture out of the primitive 
 Anglo-Saxon race stuff. They were dressed with the 
 costly simplicity that is quite indifferent to fashion or dis 
 play, and they had the simple ways of those who have 
 never had to consider such taken-for-granted things as 
 manners. They did not ask if their ways were the best 
 ways of living and thinking and passing through the 
 world that went as an axiom. Socially and financially 
 they were a powerful group which, having been started 
 right in the way of investments, bodies, and minds, a 
 century or so back, had been so protected by a specially 
 developed environment, that they had had little need for 
 readjustment since. By the fact that she was going to 
 work Mildred felt herself almost as much outside the 
 family as Wicks waiting immobile to open the door for 
 her. 
 
 And the Carvers family looking up, were also aware 
 that Mildred was set apart from them. Hitherto she had 
 been merely " Frank s oldest girl," now she was the first 
 woman of their line to go to work. Her family saw her 
 as a slender girl with direct blue eyes under dark brows 
 that contrasted sharply with her light hair, a soft full 
 little mouth and a short high nose. She might have been 
 an English girl, so specialized was her type, so adapted 
 to a life where physical exertion was a matter of sport, 
 not money earning; to a life where financial security was
 
 28 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 not bought by cleverness or quick thinking, or work, but 
 was an inherited attribute; a life which made no special 
 personal demands beyond that of conforming to the group 
 standards. And she looked like most of her relatives, as 
 though the same heredity and environment had produced 
 the same result in all of them. The Carvers were alike, 
 they liked themselves, they usually married people of their 
 own type. 
 
 The Carvers saw Mildred as a family product as inev 
 itable as the blossom on a lily, but set subtly away by 
 herself. How would this flower bear transplanting? 
 Fundamental changes were foreign to the family habit. 
 The Carvers did not even follow the fashions in material 
 things much less in mental furnishings. They had 
 not been drawn out of Washington Square with the re 
 ceding tide of fashion. They did not need to depend on 
 the cachet of neighborhoods or costly houses. Finan 
 cially and socially they were secure. A Carver might do 
 as he liked. What did it matter to them that the tene 
 ments crawled up toward the Square? They hardly 
 noticed the stream of Italian immigrants that flowed out 
 of Macdougal Street on bright afternoons or the studios 
 of incoming artists that filled the south side of the 
 Square. They did not even protest against that last 
 brand of a fallen neighborhood the establishment of 
 a Social Settlement to uplift it. They felt themselves 
 quite detached from personal responsibility outside the 
 line of their blood kin. What more could possibly be 
 expected of them by the community than that their pink 
 magnolias bloomed richly every spring, that their window 
 boxes were set early, and the close clinging vines on the 
 front of their houses trimmed to advantage ? 
 
 Mildred ran swiftly down the long staircase and they 
 closed up around her with all sorts of fluttering bits of 
 consolation.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 29 
 
 " I haven t a doubt you ll find some things about it very 
 interesting just like being in Egypt or the Argentine." 
 
 " Poor dear, it s a shame ! I shan t vote for this ad 
 ministration again ! " 
 
 They certainly ought to use some discrimination in 
 the people they conscript. It s absurd to make Mildred 
 work just as though Frank weren t willing to make any 
 sort of a contribution instead." 
 
 " Do be careful, my dear, and not overdo. Try not 
 to break down your health." 
 
 " But you ll soon be back, my dear," cried one of her 
 aunts. " Don t take it so hard ! You ll forget that it 
 ever happened." 
 
 And the family chorus echoed : 
 
 " You ll forget that it ever happened ! " as she passed 
 through the door. 
 
 As the Carver motor drew up at the Grand Central 
 Station Nicholas Van Arsdale pushed up to it in a state 
 of solemnity not normal to him. 
 
 " I hoped," he cried nervously, " that you d miss the 
 train so I could rush Mildred after it in the racer got 
 it around the corner on purpose." 
 
 " Hullo, Nick," said Mildred, trying to look uncon 
 cerned and dabbing her eyes. 
 
 As they entered the depot, the great iron gates slid 
 open, an officer shouted, and scores of girls of eighteen 
 began to separate themselves from the crowd and move 
 toward the train. They were of every race, every com 
 plexion, every degree of prosperity to be found in New 
 York City. Mrs. Carver caught her hand to her lips as 
 she saw them. And as for the parents the good 
 burghers of Hamelin must have looked so, yes and have 
 lamented so, too, when the Pied Piper led their darlings 
 away.
 
 30 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " You d better let me go with Mildred to the gate," 
 suggested Nick. " There s no reason why you should 
 get into that crowd, Mrs. Carver." 
 
 Frank Carver caught his daughter to him with almost 
 a sob. It was against every tradition and feeling that 
 he should let her face an unsoftened world. 
 
 Nick, reaching to take Mildred s bag from the foot 
 man, found Wicks staring straight at his young mistress. 
 
 " I hope you ll like the Service as much as I did, miss," 
 he said, with his hand to his cap. 
 
 Mildred turned startled. 
 
 Thank you, Wicks," she said, looking into the pleas 
 ant eyes of the footman, and then after a moment holding 
 out her hand, grateful for her first greeting from a fel 
 low servant. 
 
 But Nick looked at the man with dropped jaw. Not 
 that there was any fault to be found with him, or with 
 his salutation, but it somehow startled him as though a 
 wall had fallen down. He caught Mildred by the arm 
 and pushed on toward the gate. 
 
 " Oh, if I were only going now instead of next week ! " 
 he said. 
 
 He flung a protecting arm around her shoulders as 
 though he could not bear to have the motley crowd press 
 against her, and as they moved forward, he whispered : 
 
 " Only a year and we ll both be back again only a 
 year to wait! " 
 
 And at the gate, quite oblivious to the self-restraint 
 customary to a Van Arsdale in the presence of the popu 
 lace, he kissed her softly and let her go.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 "T" WISH," said Aunt Millicent, very reproachfully, 
 to the younger members of her family whom she 
 
 A. blamed with the present subversive state of the 
 government, " I wish it had been her wedding! " 
 
 " Why ? " inquired her nephew David with apparent 
 naivete. 
 
 " Why ? In spite of the way you excuse all these 
 new things, David and just because they re new 
 usually you know as well as I do that girls like Mil 
 dred are brought up to be married. The pass things are 
 getting to! I m always relieved when one of our girls 
 is suitably disposed of ! I had believed that when Henry 
 Van Arsdale and his boy took to spending all their sum 
 mers at Torexo, something would come of it ! And now 
 look at this absurd Service ! " 
 
 " Now, why shouldn t she have a chance to work ? 
 Lucille liked her work in the Red Cross ! I seem to re 
 member that she preferred it to playing about with her 
 set." 
 
 " That s patriotic service it s entirely different." 
 
 Winthrop Carver, another of her nephews, joined the 
 defence. 
 
 " Well, isn t the Universal Service patriotic, Aunt Mil 
 licent?" 
 
 "What! Being a telephone girl or something like 
 that? It s nothing but a scheme of some of those Social 
 ists." 
 
 Winthrop, considering his aunt thoughtfully, was 
 
 31
 
 32 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 silent. She was magnificently indestructible in an un 
 changeable world. He had joined the Officers Reserve 
 Corps at the beginning of the war, had been wounded and 
 sent to a hospital in France, and then back to the front 
 till the finish; but he couldn t face his aunt in an argu 
 ment. 
 
 "Come on, Dave let s walk up," he said to his 
 cousin. 
 
 As the two went down the steps, pretty Anne Weston, 
 a cousin who married into Standard Oil " and quite 
 unnecessarily too," Aunt Millicent had said called to 
 them and beckoned her chauffeur : 
 
 " Ought you to walk with your leg? " 
 
 " Oh, I get over the ground all right. I can even 
 dance, and David will tell you it ought to be exercised." 
 
 David nodded and laughed. The war had caught him 
 when he hadn t been out of college long enough to have 
 settled into any of the dilettante occupations sport, 
 exploration or travel, that usually attracted the Car 
 vers. He had enlisted in one of the first hospital units and 
 served as an orderly, carrying stretchers, making beds, 
 scrubbing floors ; a beast of burden with a brain that grad 
 ually got to working on the problems of hospital organiza 
 tion, and which, in the terrible depletion of the staff under 
 disease, overwork and occasional shell fire, had raised 
 him to the position of unofficial manager and filled him 
 with such pride as neither his family, his fortune nor 
 his Phi Beta Kappa pin had ever raised in him before. 
 The managerial ability with which the first David Carver 
 had organized the trade with the " out islanders " in 
 spices and precious woods, awoke in his descendant, and 
 David passed the latter part of the war getting the biggest 
 result out of the intermittent supplies, the insufficient 
 hospital helpers, the problematical food, under conditions
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 33 
 
 of heartbreaking overcrowding and overwork. There 
 were times when he himself had done the cooking with 
 no other culinary training than a knowledge of the way 
 things ought to taste when they were done; and other 
 times when he administered an anaesthetic with his heart 
 jumping as high as his collar bone lest he give the victim 
 too much. The harassed hospital unit had learned that it 
 could always rely on David and had put burdens on him 
 accordingly, but long generations of sufficient feeding, 
 without overwork and with the most careful protection 
 from disease, had developed a reserve force which stead 
 ied him through the terrific strain. 
 
 The two young men swung out of the Square 
 straight young males of the Carver breed, keen eyed and 
 observant as though the unusual things that the general 
 keying up of the nation had required of them had de 
 veloped all sorts of latent cutting edges. 
 
 " Uncle David said you were going into the mill at 
 Northfield what s the idea ? " Winthrop asked his 
 cousin as they fell into step. 
 
 " Oh, Ames, who was head of it for twenty years, died 
 a while back, and there s no one in line for his place." 
 
 " Going to manage it yourself ? " 
 
 " I thought I d try it out. Cotton cloth is one of the 
 things that need to be made." 
 
 "What does your father say?" 
 
 David grinned. 
 
 " He doesn t understand it at all. He thinks the only 
 object of business is to make money and he knows I don t 
 need to go into it for that." 
 
 At the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, Win 
 throp looked up at the old brick house with its Gothic 
 windows. 
 
 " Don t you remember seeing Mark Twain come out 
 D
 
 34 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 of this house? He used to go plodding up the Avenue 
 as though it were a country road. I saw him try to cross 
 right in the face of the traffic once, like a perfectly irre 
 sponsible child all dressed up for company in his white 
 suit. A policeman jerked him out just in time and as he 
 set him very carefully down on the pavement I heard him 
 say, We can t afford to lose you yet awhile. Somewhere 
 he wrote that the man who saw that his country s politi 
 cal clothes were worn out and didn t agitate for a new 
 suit was a traitor! Well, we re wearing the new politi 
 cal suit he wanted right now and I d like to know if he d 
 be satisfied with the fit. If he were alive I think I d go 
 up those steps and ask him." 
 
 " It takes a war or a humorist to do anything with us 
 humans when we reach a fixed type, doesn t it? " 
 
 They went tramping on up the Avenue. After a 
 silence David said : 
 
 " It was pretty hard on Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank 
 - having Mildred go. They didn t look exactly happy." 
 
 Winthrop looked very grave, for he had a young sis 
 ter who would go into the Service in two years more. 
 
 " Quite a family ceremony they made of it," he said. 
 " Rather like a confirmation or a graduation or an en 
 gagement and when you come to think of it it was a 
 little like them all." 
 
 " Speaking of engagements," said David, " didn t we 
 hear some unofficial talk about Mildred and the Van 
 Arsdale boy? I ve a notion there s an understanding in 
 the family about it." 
 
 " I suppose so ! Isn t it just the sort of thing that 
 would suit the aunts down to the last shoe button ! But 
 I m sorry for those two kids. It isn t fair for the family 
 to take a clear case of puppy love and force a marriage 
 out of it, no matter how suitable it may seem to them."
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 35 
 
 " Well, the boy wasn t there today, anyhow, so perhaps 
 there isn t anything in it, and they may have a chance to 
 grow up first. They may be quite different people after 
 a year of work. I m curious to know what the Service 
 will do to a girl like Mildred." 
 
 As they tramped on up the Avenue the traffic tied itself 
 into knots and then miraculously untied itself again. The 
 great green busses lumbered past with their fresh faced 
 young conductors in the uniform of the Universal Serv 
 ice, country boys getting their first taste of city life under 
 government control. A young letter carrier stopped and 
 puzzled at the address on an envelope. Just as they 
 were passing he looked up imploringly and asked : 
 
 " Can either of you-all gentlemen make out this lady s 
 name f oh me ? Ah m not ahcustomed to all the languages 
 you-all have in New York City." 
 
 David looked at the envelope. 
 
 " It s Carvaretti Italian. She s probably in that 
 office building on the corner." 
 
 " Ah m obliged to you, suh. I saw by the way you-all 
 was walkin that you d been in the ahmy an I knew I 
 could ahsk any gentleman in the Service." 
 
 " Sounds like a Virginian accent," Winthrop com 
 mented as they went on. " Now, what s happening in 
 Prince Edward and Anne Arundel counties when all the 
 boys and girls go back there after having spent a year 
 with people who haven t any grandfathers, and having 
 done a lot of work not, in their code, to be expected of a 
 lady or gentleman? I imagine it will alter the atmo 
 sphere of the dear Southland very perceptibly." 
 
 " And won t a lot of Seattle and Tacoma youngsters 
 sent down there for a year stir the place up like an egg 
 beater?" 
 
 Fifth Avenue was peppered here and there with the
 
 36 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 various Service uniforms dodging in and out of tele 
 graph stations, riding on the hurrying trucks of the gov 
 ernment express and mail wagons, pushing about scrapers 
 in the streets, doing all the bits of unskilled labor that a 
 community does for itself through its government. The 
 work they were doing was in itself essential but with no 
 future of advancement or development in it. But it was 
 no longer done by the old and decrepit for whom it was 
 the last strand in the fraying rope of independence, nor 
 by the inefficient or discouraged middle-aged who had 
 been crowded into it without hope of escape, nor by the 
 unfortunate young forced into it by the immediate need 
 to earn money and finding it a blind alley in which they 
 were trapped but by well fed, well cared for young 
 people to whom it was nothing more than a training 
 school. And yet both Winthrop and David realized that 
 it was out of those terrible red miles that the world had 
 marched to victory in France, that this new Service of 
 peace which was filling Fifth Avenue had come as a 
 consequence of that terrible upheaval that the ideal that 
 all work could be a national service had begun to be real 
 ized. 
 
 North of Twenty-Third Street the flood of garment- 
 workers, their day s work done, bore down upon the two 
 men. There were literally tens of thousands of them, 
 filling the walks in a moving mass, overflowing into the 
 streets when the traffic permitted, tramping steadily 
 south with toes pointed too sharply out and feet clinging 
 flatly to the pavement. As a race they were as thor 
 oughly differentiated as the Carver family. But it was 
 a different specialization. Instead of being tall and clear- 
 skinned from generations of full feeding, care and pro 
 tection, they were undersized, sallow and stooping from 
 generations of poverty that meant low feeding and the
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 37 
 
 grinding indoor toil of the landless. Where the Carver 
 family were direct and slow in thought and speech because 
 their survival did not depend on quickness or cleverness, 
 the garment workers were verbally subtle and mentally 
 swift because of the long generations when success, even 
 life itself, had depended on quickness and subtlety. To 
 these thousands of garment-makers, work was nothing 
 better than a hard necessity. From the time they had 
 stood at their mothers knees to pull bastings, when they 
 rose to be machine operators, pressers, cutters, getting 
 good wages and then down the other side of the hill back 
 to the bastings again and finally working in dim shadowy 
 shops making over second-hand clothes, their object in 
 working had been to make money to live. There was no 
 thought of cutting and sewing and pressing because to 
 make clothes was a public service. They had not had any 
 training in democracy except to cast the ballot and that 
 was no more than the elder members of the Carver fam 
 ily had had ! 
 
 There was a striking absence of young men in the crowd 
 or it might have been different. Their sons who had 
 spent a year on railroads, or steamers, or in post offices, or 
 laboratories, or public hospitals, or agriculture, did not 
 look on the job of sitting all day driving parallel edges 
 of cloth through a power machine with any degree of 
 favor. The adventure of serving the community had 
 given them a definite distaste for work which, so far as 
 they could see, was being carried on chiefly for the ad 
 vantage of some firm. They showed an increasing ten 
 dency to go into industries that were better organized, 
 new blood was not coming into the garment trades and 
 the conditions were distinctly bad. 
 
 But neither was the new blood of the younger gener 
 ation of Carvers going into the traditional avocations
 
 38 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 of that family. Their young men and women, like the 
 sons and daughters of the needle workers, were being 
 driven out of their inherited environments. 
 
 As Winthrop and David passed the Hawarden Club 
 they saw their great-uncle Andrew Carver already at the 
 window, his perfect hat on his perfect head, his perfect 
 but chromatically repressed tie vanishing at exactly the 
 proper angle under his quietly distinguished waistcoat, 
 his pleasantly quizzical eyes fixed on them. Beside him 
 sat David s father, David Senior, and Henry Van Ars- 
 dale. The three were often together. Old Andrew had 
 been fond of the younger men when they were small boys 
 in kilts running about in the gardens at Torexo, fond of 
 them when their sons and daughters took their turn in 
 the family cradles; he was fond of them now that the 
 time when those cradles would be filled with their grand 
 children could not be far off. 
 
 " Why don t you put those two lads up for the club? " 
 asked Henry Van Arsdale. 
 
 Andrew Carver, drumming absently on his chair arm, 
 nodded to the boys through the window. 
 
 " Neither of the boys seems to care about joining." 
 
 " What ! " Henry Van Arsdale turned to his friend in 
 consternation, "not want to get into the Hawarden?" 
 
 " I felt just the way you sound about it till I had a talk 
 with my son," put in David Senior. " It s the con 
 founded Service at the bottom of it all levels off all the 
 things we used to care so much about." 
 
 "The Service? Oh, come now! Plenty of young 
 men want to get into the club even if our boys don t." 
 
 Andrew turned to them with a smile. " Have you 
 noticed the waiting list? " he asked significantly. 
 
 " Not recently." 
 
 They strolled over to the bulletin board eleven
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 39 
 
 names ! And there used to be a double column of them 
 as long as the board ! Henry Van Arsdale ran his finger 
 down the list. 
 
 " Not one under forty unless it s these two I don t 
 know." 
 
 " Well ? " queried Andrew as they came back. 
 
 "What does it mean?" 
 
 " They tell me that the clubs where engineers and 
 chemists and such like men belong are so crowded that 
 you can t find room to lunch! " 
 
 It was Apperson Forbes who volunteered the comment. 
 He was an elderly young man, as sartorially unexcep 
 tionable as Andrew Carver whose disciple he was. But 
 Apperson Forbes had inherited the New England 
 habit of developing bone, and his superlative clothes had 
 something the effect of being hung on a rack. His fea 
 tures were interestingly blocked in with vertical and hori 
 zontal lines straight up and down nose and chin, 
 straight across mouth, eyelids and brow and his hair, 
 which was more or less limited, went up square from, 
 his ears and across. Apperson Forbes had a theory, on 
 which he acted consistently, that there was no particular 
 advantage in being rich unless you could have more fun 
 than other people. Old Andrew was the only existing 
 Carver who appreciated the peculiar variety of fun that 
 appealed to Apperson and his subsequent frankness 
 about it he had a predilection for talking things out. 
 Did it not increase the amusingness of life? 
 
 " I know that David is trying to get into some club of 
 medical men and hasn t been able to make it yet," said 
 David Senior, as he settled slowly back into his chair. 
 " And now he s going into business." 
 
 " Oh, really ? I should think he d hardly started his 
 life yet!"
 
 40 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 David Carver shot a look of distaste at the unconscious 
 Apperson Forbes and Andrew grinned. 
 
 " I ve told my son," David Senior continued, " that 
 there isn t any reason why he should go into business 
 even if the income tax has been very much increased all 
 the stocks are paying well again. But he acted as though 
 I was a child he d got to instruct. Told me that just 
 looking at things didn t interest him any more. He in 
 sisted that so far as having one exciting thing happen 
 after another, nothing could seem dramatic after the war. 
 But he admitted that it was going to be more interesting 
 than anything ever was in the world before, to tidy up 
 the big mess, now the war s done, and get the world go 
 ing again. And he seemed to think it was up to him to 
 help on that job to take over the Northfield Mill, spe 
 cifically. It doesn t sound sane to me, but I guess I m 
 growing old." 
 
 Apperson Forbes ran a long rectangular finger across 
 his horizontal lips. " What fun does he think he ll get 
 out of that? Aren t there plenty of men \vith nothing 
 better to do than work? Somebody ought to preserve 
 the ah taste for ah entertainment. If a man 
 feels he s got to do something, politics is more amusing 
 than most here s Senator Train as an example of that." 
 
 "How do you do, Senator," cried Old Andrew, rous 
 ing himself. " How is the life of a statesman satisfying 
 you these days ? " 
 
 " Badly. Politics isn t the leisure class occupation I 
 found it before the war the younger generation keeps 
 us awake. How do, Henry Hullo, David Why, I 
 was going up the steps of the Capitol last week and there 
 was my Madeline using some sort of hydraulic apparatus 
 all pipes and sprays and motors, to wash them. I didn t 
 know the girl had been sent there, but she d just been pro-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 4i 
 
 moted to the District of Columbia Building Cleaning 
 Squad and very proud of it too ! Well, when that 
 young minx caught sight of me she called out that she d 
 been told to get everything off the steps that didn t belong 
 there and turned a stream on me that fairly washed me 
 off my feet. Fact! I d rescued my hat and was just 
 getting up when along came the officer in charge and 
 started to march her away for misconduct. Of course I 
 told him she was my daughter, so it was all right, and 
 begged him to say nothing about it. But he wouldn t! 
 He said he hadn t any discretion in the matter and that 
 he d be severely reprimanded if he let it pass. Well, I 
 couldn t let it go at that, so I went to headquarters and 
 explained who I was laid it on so thick that I was 
 ashamed of myself, and tried to get her off. They in 
 vestigated of course called up everybody from the 
 man who invented the hydraulic cleaner to the ghost of 
 the architect who built the steps, but there didn t seem to 
 be any question about the facts, so they stood by their 
 gang boss. Then I got mad told them it was a fine 
 country where a father couldn t do the punishing of his 
 own daughter if she needed it told them what I 
 thought about a senator not having any more influence 
 than the chief stair scrubber I m not sure I didn t try 
 to bribe everybody in sight, and the only satisfaction I 
 could get was the answer that as she wasn t working for 
 me but for the United States I had no responsibility in 
 the matter. So they disciplined her. But I don t think 
 she minded it half so much as I did." 
 
 As soon as the senator could make an excuse he went 
 in search of another group to tell his story to. Henry 
 Van Arsdale found himself wondering more and more 
 about Nick who had been summoned for the following 
 week. The boy had never shown any alarming predi-
 
 42 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 lection for work. Of course, he hadn t been encouraged 
 in it, but he didn t think he would have any difficulty in 
 keeping Nick in the state of idleness to which God seemed 
 to have called him. Did he want to keep him there? 
 He hesitated a little. The life he himself had led was so 
 safe and when Nick married Mildred but would he 
 marry her now ? A year of separation at this time might 
 stop it all and with Nick s six weeks experience of being 
 in love, and a taste for it developed, what other object 
 for his affections might he not find in a year ! Oh, that 
 the Service \vhich so distressingly multiplied the uncer 
 tainty of the future, just when it has settled itself suit 
 ably, had never been established ! 
 
 But still the talk went on around them. 
 
 " My son has been in the coast survey and it s got the 
 young beggar so he s bound to take up geodetics as a life 
 work." 
 
 " What do you suppose my daughter is up to? Going 
 into the advertising business! When she was working 
 in a post office in Utah she couldn t get a lot of things 
 she wanted they weren t there at all, and she felt it was 
 because they hadn t been properly advertised." 
 
 " And so she s going to see that they re advertised so 
 as to hit the bucolic brain? " 
 
 " The specialized bucolic brain of the Utah mountains 
 and because the people ought to have the things ! " 
 
 There was some laughter, but a lot of shamefaced pride 
 was growing up in these bewildered parents. 
 
 And while David Carver and Henry Van Arsdale 
 thought of their sons, old Andrew Carver saw a picture 
 of Mildred coming down the same stairs on which he had 
 seen her grandmother so many times. He saw her as 
 her grandmother had been, one of the luxuries of life, an 
 ornament, a grace, a rare flower grown in the hothouse
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 43 
 
 of family and tradition, a goldfish in a globe of wealth. 
 He could imagine her as she might have been in the sev 
 enties, in an open carriage with a tiny parasol to shade 
 her eyes, or in the full skirts and great sleeves that came 
 later or the little tight dresses of the new century, and 
 always beautiful and smart, a lady in the Carver inter 
 pretation of the word, a family product absolutely true 
 to type. But the companion picture to this showed him 
 Mildred pushed up against the hard facts of the world 
 that no woman of their line had been permitted to meet 
 for five generations, Mildred working just like the girls 
 in the shops or the offices or the factories, and it filled 
 him with no simple set of emotions. For Andrew Car 
 ver had acquaintances among women in various walks 
 of life and found that other characteristics besides those 
 distinctive of his kinswomen were also good. And 
 though part of him revolted at the thought of his grand- 
 niece being set into the unspecialized mass of humanity 
 that filled most of the world, another part of him could 
 see that the result might not be wholly bad. But Andrew 
 did not see Mildred s year in the Service as anything 
 more significant than an adventure, an experience, as 
 Frank might have taken her to Siam or taught her to run 
 an aeroplane. He had not sensed the possibility of work 
 as a changer of character though he appreciated the ef 
 fect of experience as an addition to charm. And as he 
 remembered the shadow of Mildred s eyelashes on her 
 smooth cheek, the soft upcurve of her lips, the trim little 
 brown shoe vanishing into the motor as she went away, 
 he concluded that the additional charm of experience was 
 quite unnecessary. But still Old Andrew, half somno 
 lent in the club window, recognized that while marriage 
 and he had heard Millicent speak of the Van Arsdale 
 boy would be a safe solution, still, even girls seemed
 
 44 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 to have a taste for adventure, and it was at least a ques 
 tion whether parents and relations had the right to pro 
 tect them against what they might enjoy so much.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MILDRED CARVER, climbing up the steps of 
 the tourist sleeper, entered a new world. 
 From the quiet serenity of the house in 
 Washington Square ; from her gracious soft-voiced kins 
 folk; from the tempered light and the restrained colors, 
 she came into an unshaded glare, striking across bare 
 cane seats and uncarpeted aisles, and lighting the gay 
 inharmonious clothes of the girls who filled every seat 
 from door to door. 
 
 Mildred s individuality, which she had just begun to 
 be conscious of as the Service detached her from her 
 family, was submerged again when she found herself 
 but one of forty girls of eighteen, in a car which was 
 itself but a single unit in a train of seven precisely similar 
 cars, all filled with precisely similar girls going on exactly 
 the same journey for the same purpose. 
 
 There was not much talking in the car. The girls 
 were all feeling the wrench of being cut off from the 
 various worlds they knew, and the people and things they 
 loved. But as the train hurried along the sense of ad 
 venture began to wrestle with their homesickness. Like 
 polyps cut off from the parent stem, they were set drift 
 ing independently in the great current. All the dreams 
 and trailing clouds of their childhood had brought them 
 to the edge of this adventure. They were taking the 
 first step toward what might be the realization of the old 
 golden dream of the Fairy Prince and the Magic Palace 
 and all the consequent little princelings ; or of the Career 
 
 45
 
 46 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 which must spell itself in Capitals; or of the wealth 
 which might be variously interpreted as four-rooms-and- 
 a-bath in Harlem or an estate on Long Island with 
 relays of automobiles and a landscape gardener imported 
 from Holland direct. 
 
 For all of them the tourist sleeper speeding northward 
 was the beginning of something and the car fairly quiv 
 ered with the expectation and suspense of it all. Thickly 
 beset with the weight of adult existence, these rows of 
 commonplace girls sat silently in their seats and looked 
 furtively about to take stock of their neighbors. 
 
 " Say, ain t it fun going away like this ? " 
 
 Mildred turned with a start to the girl beside her. 
 
 " My Ma she says it s ignorant to cry like the whole 
 family was laid in their coffins, but I bet she s doin it 
 herself yet. My Ma, she s that fond of me you wouldn t 
 believe there s five more she s got." 
 
 The girl straightened her too small white hat with its 
 too long black feather, pulled up the collar of her bright 
 blue waist and dried her eyes. 
 
 " This I gotta say about it anyway, a grand chance to 
 travel like we was livin uptown we got." 
 
 She opened her gay little bag and taking out her mirror 
 began quite frankly to whiten her large nose and redden 
 her full lips. 
 
 " Some time I guess we gotta keep traveling? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mildred slowly, " it s two days and a night 
 to Minneapolis." 
 
 The girl stopped with her powder puff in her hand and 
 looked her over carefully. 
 
 " Say, like uptown you talk yourself. Would you tell 
 me what your name is ? " 
 
 " Mildred Carver." 
 
 It wasn t an interpretation to the other girl. The
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 47 
 
 Carver family antedated the newer holders of the lime 
 light in the newspapers and she had never heard of them. 
 
 " Pleased to meet you ! My name s Miss Mamie Ep 
 stein. Say, ain t this like the Fourth Avenue? I didn t 
 know it ud be the same as goin home at six o clock only 
 you get a seat." 
 
 Mamie flattened herself against the window as they 
 crossed Harlem River. 
 
 " Up here I m going to live myself sometime. I m 
 going to get off the East Side." 
 
 And she looked with envious determination at the 
 group of mushroom apartment buildings carrying perma 
 nent painted signs, " FOUR ROOMS AND BATH - 
 ALL MODERN IMPROVEMENTS APPLY TO 
 JANITOR." 
 
 " My Ma she says I should stop knockin Orchard 
 Street, but she don t know, for nothing else but Russia 
 she ain t never seen. Say, over there before they had 
 the Revolution it was fierce ! If the Czar told you a egg 
 was black you dassent give him no argument. My father 
 said so himself. But I seen how it is uptown. My lady 
 friend s sister she married a uptown man. He don t 
 admit how one should be a wage slave and you can be 
 lieve me or not, my lady friend s sister she s got a whole 
 house. I seen it myself. She can talk refined like any 
 thing. Ever since I was to see her, I threw a hate on the 
 East Side. Leah ! I says, to my lady friend, we 
 ain t got to stand for no East Side forever. I guess 
 what Mary done we can do. Cheer up, I says, there s 
 plenty of rich uptown fellows left; their names is in the 
 papers every day. Ain t it, yes ? " 
 
 Mildred Carver was shocked. She was a well brought 
 up member of the upper class where if they didn t marry 
 for love they at least put up a consistent bluff about it.
 
 48 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 She had never dreamed of such conversational frankness 
 as this. Much heralded heiresses might indeed acquire 
 titles by way of the altar, but then much heralded heir 
 esses weren t considered exactly the proper thing by the 
 Carvers to whom money was a taken- for-granted posses 
 sion like two legs. To them it seemed as vulgar to talk 
 about the fortune one of their daughters might expect, 
 as to advertise the number of her teeth. Where every 
 body had plenty was it not base to marry for more? 
 With Nick s parting kiss still on her lips she could not 
 excuse Miss Mamie Epstein s sordid attitude toward 
 marriage. Why, marriage was just because you loved 
 somebody, and that was kind of a poem you said over 
 and over to yourself and never told anybody anything 
 about. Of course, merely being engaged was different! 
 
 Mildred was startled by a voice on the other side. A 
 girl with bobbed hair and a picture gown was leaning 
 across the aisle to her. Her hat with its stenciled band 
 was in her lap and her short hair was bound with an or 
 ange fillet. 
 
 " Don t you think we should organize a protest against 
 the way these windows stick ? I have tried to raise mine 
 and I can t make it budge. It s high-handed enough of 
 the government to conscript us against our will without 
 being suffocated the very first thing ! I don t think they 
 have any right to take away our liberty like this ! " 
 
 All that Mildred comprehended was that the girl 
 wanted the window open. 
 
 " Let me help you," she said, rising. 
 
 The protesting one s seat mate seemed a silent soul and 
 merely moved aside with a murmured, " Yes, ma am," 
 as the two girls struggled with the window. 
 
 " Suppose you let me do it." 
 
 A tall, square girl with a rough tweed jacket like a
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 49 
 
 boy s bent to get her shoulder under the top of the sash 
 and straightening, sent the window up with a bang. Then 
 she swung round into the aisle, thrust her hands into her 
 jacket pockets and stood balancing herself with her feet 
 wide apart. She had strong brown hair which rippled 
 away from her broad, low forehead. The heavy eye 
 brows above her gray eyes were black. She had a wide 
 sweet mouth, and very big, very white teeth. Her hands 
 and her feet were large, but there was a deft firmness 
 about her long fingers and about her big body, that made 
 one think of some great machine. 
 
 " There, that makes me feel free again ! " said the girl 
 with the bobbed hair. " Not that I was much too warm, 
 but it wasn t right not to have it come open if you wanted 
 it to. I suppose outrages like this will happen to us the 
 whole way. I know they will under this barbarous mili 
 taristic system ! " 
 
 Mamie Epstein leaned forward and spoke across the 
 car: 
 
 " You listen like you didn t want to come? " 
 
 "Want to? Of course not. Why should I want to 
 have my career interrupted like this ? I don t believe in 
 governments anyway. Oh, if they carry it much further, 
 they will find how powerless they really are when the 
 people all rise up as one man and say Stop ! 
 
 " Well, on work I can t say I m any more stuck than 
 you are. I been working and I guess I know. But for 
 working in the Service nobody ain t goin to look at you 
 sarcastic, cause they all got to do it, see ? It don t make 
 no difference if you got a million dollars or just ten 
 cents, you gotta work just the same." 
 
 The short haired girl shook with rage. 
 
 " It isn t the work at all. I glory in work. Only no 
 body ought to be in the position to make me do it. I 
 E
 
 50 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 want work that will express me. I d love it. It would 
 be the greatest privilege." 
 
 " Humm," said Mamie Epstein conclusively, " to praise 
 up work you ain t got no license. Gee, I can t shake 
 work too soon to suit myself." 
 
 The short haired girl turned to her window in evident 
 despair at making herself understood, and Mamie, quite 
 unsubdued, said to Mildred: 
 
 " I bet you ain t never worked? " 
 
 The remark was a question and Mildred hesitated. 
 
 " Well, no, I m afraid I haven t." 
 
 The tall girl lounged against the back of Mildred s seat 
 considering the girl in the picture gown thoughtfully. 
 
 " Where in New York do you live? " she asked quietly. 
 
 The picture girl shook her short hair and answered de 
 fiantly : 
 
 " I live with my brother he s an artist. We ve got 
 a studio apartment on the south side of Washington 
 Square. He s Arthur Forsythe, you probably know 
 his work." 
 
 " Oh, yes, doesn t he do those perfectly stunning 
 girls on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post? " 
 
 " But those are only pot boilers he throws off occa 
 sionally," cried Ellen Forsythe quickly. " His real work 
 is interpretative color arrangements, everybody is per 
 fectly mad about them they re wonderful." 
 
 " Where does he show them? " 
 
 " In the studio. He wouldn t think of letting a dealer 
 have them, the atmosphere wouldn t be right. They re 
 purely individual expressions." 
 
 " Expressions of what? " 
 
 " Why, of personality, of course ! " 
 
 " What do you do with them ? " 
 
 " Do Oh ! Good Gracious ! Why, surround your-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 51 
 
 self with them of course get inspired by them let 
 them permeate your being." 
 
 " But what do they look like ? " 
 
 "Look like! Look like! Well, that shows what the 
 bourgeoisie are! Don t you know that what they look 
 like depends entirely on how you feel ? " 
 
 Mamie Epstein s mouth had dropped open. Mildred 
 felt as though somebody was trying a new serve on her. 
 Only the tall girl had the self command not to be cowed 
 and asked though not quite so confidently : 
 
 " Are you an artist, too ? " 
 
 " I m going to be when this awful year is over." 
 
 It was Mamie Epstein who came to the rescue. She 
 couldn t place Ellen Forsythe in her scheme of the uni 
 verse. She knew Washington Square, because in mo 
 ments of affluence or during the incipient courtship of 
 some "gentleman friend," she occasionally took the bus 
 there for a ride uptown and back; she had seen not only 
 the awnings run out from the houses on the north side 
 but also the Italian-filled benches " like it was Hester 
 Street believe me." But she looked at Ellen Forsythe, 
 at her clothes of a kind quite unknown to her garment- 
 making circle and quite unpurchasable in shops, at her 
 short hair done in no fashion advocated by the Woman s 
 Page of the Sunday paper, at her flat heelless shoes, and 
 felt that she compared very unfavorably from a sartorial 
 standpoint with her own cheap smartness and yet her 
 accent was distinctly " swell." Mamie turned confi 
 dently to the two other girls : 
 
 " I bet you re uptown," she said. 
 
 " I live in Washington Square, too," said Mildred, 
 " not very far from Miss Forsythe." 
 
 "We live in 113th Street, up near the University. 
 My father s in the science department of Columbia. He s 
 Professor Ralph Ansel."
 
 52 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 "Oh!" said Mildred brightening, "then aren t you 
 Ruth Ansel ? And isn t it your brother that plays on the 
 same hockey team with Nick Van Arsdale? I thought 
 I d seen you at the games. I m Mildred Carver." 
 
 To Ruth Ansel the name conveyed all that Mamie Ep 
 stein and Ellen Forsythe would have liked to know. But 
 she did not show it. She too lived in a little aristocracy 
 of her own; not perhaps as exclusive or well established 
 as the one where Mildred belonged, but far more amus 
 ing. And these two aristocracies were contiguous, 
 there was constant intercourse between them, not on 
 equal terms Oh no ! Neither would have admitted 
 that. Both sides felt that the other must know that they 
 condescended both sides admitted it themselves, so it 
 must be true. 
 
 The four girls settled into a group and began a tenta 
 tive testing out of each other a sort of preliminary 
 alignment for what was coming. Already they were be 
 ginning to realize that whatever demands might be made 
 on them, no family nor friends could piece out their ef 
 forts, they must stand on their own feet. 
 
 To Mildred the idea of work was full of terrifying 
 allurement. What would it be like? What would they 
 find she was able to do ? Thinking over the eighteen 
 years of her life she realized her distinct limitations. She 
 could play a pretty good game of tennis. Her French 
 and Italian were fair. She had a certain amateurish but 
 very sincere interest in the little she knew of the physical 
 sciences. As for sewing, Henriette had done everything 
 of that sort for her. Of course she could drive an auto 
 mobile. She was conscious of being able to do that 
 excellently well and she knew about most of the things 
 that could happen to its interior. She had even helped 
 to put on the tires. How far would these acquirements
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 53 
 
 take her in the unexplored continent of the Service? 
 She had no idea what the dangers and delights of it 
 were, but she was perfectly willing to experience them. 
 Mildred did not know whether she was enthusiastic about 
 work or not, but she knew she was anxious to find out. 
 
 The whole car had begun to buzz. The forty girls 
 were becoming conscious of the bond of their new ad 
 venture and were eager to talk about it. No one would 
 have thought that they had so much in common, 
 for there was every sort of face, every sort of dress, and 
 every sort of manner. And they were further differen 
 tiated from each other by the loving care of their sor 
 rowing parents which had decked them with all kinds of 
 inappropriate finery for the occasion. Now as they be 
 gan to try and impress each other, all their little vanities 
 of person or place or possession cropped out. New and 
 mostly cheap traveling bags were opened ostentatiously. 
 Bracelets clinked, chains and beads were fingered. " My 
 father s business " " my married sister " " my rich- 
 off cousin " " our victrola " all were talked about 
 for the benefit of the car. And then the Universal Serv 
 ice sergeant began a slow progress of instruction from 
 seat to seat, dinner would be served them on the train, 
 the porter would make up the berths at nine o clock 
 the girl whose surname came first in the alphabet would 
 take the lower berth " hang your skirts on the hooks, 
 put your hats and shoes into the nets," a whole series 
 of things she told them that came as needed instruction, 
 for about three-fourths of the girls had never been in a 
 sleeping car before. The sergeant left behind her a trail 
 of giggling wonder. 
 
 When Mildred, wrapped in her little silk kimono, was 
 ready to slip into her berth she found Mamie Epstein 
 standing frightened in the aisle.
 
 54 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Up to that little shelf how should I get myself ? Sure 
 I think it shuts up on me! In the night if I roll over 
 what will I do? Rather I would sleep sitting up, believe 
 me!" 
 
 Mildred was anxious to let Mamie have the lower berth, 
 but the car sergeant was rigid in her discipline and Mamie 
 was forced to climb up the ladder to her place. But Mil 
 dred was conscious, as long as she stayed awake, of two 
 feet hanging down over the edge of the berth, and real 
 ized that Mamie, too frightened to lie down, was sitting 
 on the edge holding on with both hands. 
 
 They breakfasted at Buffalo. Everybody knows the 
 long, low Government eating room with lunch counters 
 around a great square. The hungry girls, each with her 
 government order in her hand, filed in and sat about on 
 the high stools. They were served by lads in khaki, also 
 in the government service, and Mamie Epstein, who had 
 a catholic taste in acquaintance, advanced conversation 
 ally upon the one who pushed their food toward them. 
 To her it seemed that introductions could just as well be 
 made by oneself as by anybody else better in fact be 
 cause obviously one knew oneself better. 
 
 " Gee, Charlie, this is fierce coffee cold too ! Say, 
 can t you give us eggs that s been nearer the stove than 
 what the ice-box is? " 
 
 Mildred blushed with embarrassment that one should 
 find fault with what was offered. But the boy turned 
 back to them laughing : 
 
 " Well, ma am," he drawled, " Ah reckon youah dispo 
 sition would cook most anything you was to apply it to. 
 Shall ah serve you a egg raw? " 
 
 After one blank moment, Mamie giggled, then seated 
 herself more firmly on the revolving stool. 
 
 " Smarty ! Believe me, it s some little trip from New
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 55 
 
 York and we ain t half there yet. , I could travel forever 
 just looking out of the window, but my lady friend here 
 let me make you acquainted with Miss Carver she 
 don t care about it a tall." 
 
 The young man held out his hand gravely to Mildred. 
 
 " It s an honah to meet you, Miss Ca vah. Ah you 
 also from New York City ? " 
 
 He lounged his six feet of Southern mountaineer 
 across the counter until the officer called him sharply to 
 his work; but at the next pause he turned back to talk 
 with them again, or rather to listen to Mamie Epstein who 
 chattered like a squirrel about everything in the world. 
 
 " Say, ain t he grand ? " cried Mamie when they were 
 back on the train. " Ain t his voice just swell ? The 
 way he kind of smooths all the words together like there 
 \vasn t any stops between them makes you feel like you 
 was Mrs. Vanderbilt. Understand me ? " 
 
 These Southerners," said Ellen Forsythe, " are really 
 an undeveloped race. They still believe in the subjec 
 tion of women. They haven t the slightest understand 
 ing of the feminist movement. All they think of is if 
 you re pretty or not. I think it s a great disadvantage 
 for a woman to be good looking. It just fogs the issue 
 all the time. Of course being artistic is entirely differ 
 ent. That s everybody s duty but just mere beauty is 
 hardly worth having." 
 
 Mamie looked her over carefully from her sloping 
 shoulders to her flat-heeled shoes and there was nothing 
 but disapproval in her look. 
 
 " You should worry," she said calmly. 
 
 The remark appeared to strain relations for a time 
 although it obviously emanated from a difference of 
 taste; Mamie striving personally to approach her ideal 
 of plump high colored compactness and Ellen Forsythe
 
 56 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 holding up before herself that willowy picturesqueness, 
 the apotheosis of a waving corn leaf, which she strove 
 to realize. Mildred, on the impulse of a life saver, threw 
 herself into the talk with unaccustomed vigor and tried 
 to make it seem as though Mamie s clear voiced remark 
 was merely an illusion of the ear. It was so evident that 
 Miss Mamie Epstein hadn t intended to be rude, but that 
 hitherto her social experience hadn t demanded much 
 tact. 
 
 "What did you register for?" Mildred asked Ruth 
 Ansel hurriedly. 
 
 " Oh, a whole string of things everything I wanted 
 to do all at once so they wouldn t have any excuse to send 
 me into an office mining and forestry and transporta 
 tion and agriculture were the first four." 
 
 " I registered just for agriculture and transportation. 
 What was yours? " she asked Mamie Epstein. 
 
 " When I ain t done any of em anyway, how should I 
 know? I just said not working by cloaks and suits or 
 kimonos or anything to sew. I ll be working by them all 
 my life anyway if I don t get me no up-town feller." 
 
 " I wouldn t register for anything," Ellen Forsythe 
 volunteered. "If the Government steals my productive 
 labor for a year they can t expect me to help them decide 
 what to do with it." 
 
 " Well, we all seem to have drawn agriculture, any 
 way." 
 
 " But I don t see " Mildred began. 
 
 The train stopped with a disconcerting suddenness and 
 the girls pressed against the windows. They had come 
 to a repair gang working on the road. As the train 
 pulled slowly ahead the lines of workmen smiled up at 
 the girls, took off their soft felt hats and called greetings 
 and most of the girls laughed and shouted back and tried
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 57 
 
 to get the windows open so that they could talk more 
 easily, for the railroad gang was largely made up from 
 the Universal Service and there was a natural free 
 masonry among them. In charge were trained railroad 
 makers, under them a group of graduates of the Service 
 who had chosen to go on with the work, and in the lowest 
 grade a group of raw Service lads doing the unskilled 
 work of shoveling gravel and pushing wheelbarrows 
 and carrying material back and forth. For this was a 
 government road, and the community commanded enough 
 unskilled labor temporarily unskilled because it had 
 not yet found its place in industry so that the old type 
 of permanently unskilled laborer was rarely found ex 
 cept in remote uncontrolled industries and showed a ten 
 dency to disappear altogether. The big fact of their 
 joint service to the State made these boys and girls 
 friendly at once. 
 
 " Pretty busy, aren t you ? " called Ruth Ansel, leaning 
 through the window she had wrenched open. 
 
 " Sure," came back a rich Irish voice. " Makin the 
 road safe for democracy to say nothin of bracin it up 
 so you won t get yourselves broke going by." 
 
 " Do you like it? " she called to another as the train 
 gathered way. 
 
 " You bet," came the response. 
 
 "Where you-all going?" called a soft voiced, dark 
 eyed lad. 
 
 " Going to Minneapolis," shouted Mamie Epstein. 
 
 " That might be the mills," said a young Scandinavian 
 understandingly. " Give the city my love, unless 
 you d like to keep it yourself." 
 
 Mamie made a face at him. 
 
 " Ain t you got a nerve ! " she cried. 
 
 Ellen Forsythe raised her chin scornfully, and Mil-
 
 58 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 dred felt herself out of the charted coasts of her social 
 experience. But at least here was some sort of an anchor 
 age. " We re making the road safe for you." Of 
 course ! She hadn t thought about work as getting some 
 thing done. She was going to do it because the govern 
 ment made her, but she hadn t hitherto considered the 
 object of the work itself. When poor men worked it 
 was, of course, to earn money to live on ; when rich men 
 worked it was because they wanted more money than 
 they already had; when w r omen worked it was because 
 they were so unfortunate as not to have any man to work 
 for them. Work was because people had to get money. 
 But here was work not to get money but because the 
 thing you were doing had to be done ! To Mildred, ut 
 terly innocent of any sort of economic theory and know 
 ing only the part of the world that spent money instead 
 of earning it, it all seemed very wonderful. And as she 
 continued to think about it, quite touchingly beautiful 
 too, but no more comprehensible than the principles of 
 metabolism. She tried to reason about it, but her mind 
 didn t focus easily at such a depth; so she turned to 
 Mamie Epstein, who was crowded close against the win 
 dow, entranced by the hurrying procession of Ohio fields. 
 
 " Do you think we ll know how to do what they want 
 us to do ? " she asked tentatively. 
 
 " Well, it s up to them, ain t it? " 
 
 "I I suppose it is. But if it s something that s got 
 to be done and we can t do it " 
 
 " The boss ll find that out, you bet ! " 
 
 " Yes, but if it s got to be done right away and we can t 
 do it " 
 
 " Then we gotta learn it, and you can get by with a 
 lot, too." 
 
 Mildred felt instinctively that Mamie hadn t grasped
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 59 
 
 the idea. She hadn t got it clear herself, but she felt 
 certain that there was an idea in it, and that she might 
 have a chance of grasping it if she once saw it clearly. 
 She was quite sure that Nick had not seen it that he 
 didn t even know that it was there. Why, she hadn t 
 known it was there a day ago herself and now look at 
 the way she felt about it ! But Nick, why, when they 
 set Nick to some sort of work he would do it because he 
 had to, not because it was something that needed to be 
 done. He would be perfectly dear about it, and he 
 wouldn t shirk or anything, but how he would hate it! 
 Hadn t they talked it over together again and again? 
 Wasn t work, the Universal Service especially, a hard 
 duty, a requisition, a tax, a horrible obstacle set between 
 them and what they wanted to do? 
 
 And as Mildred went on with the unaccustomed occu 
 pation of trying to think it through, there came to her a 
 sort of picture, very faint and blurred as though it hadn t 
 been fully developed on the film of her mind, of a whole 
 people working together for the things that they all 
 needed to have. And just by virtue of this vision, dim 
 and misty as it was, the aversion with which she had 
 entered the Service vanished and she was filled with 
 a tremulous delight in the new adventure in which she 
 Mildred Carver, an independent, free swimming human 
 being w r as embarked ; and she knew way down in the 
 bottom of that soul that she was just beginning to be con 
 scious of, that she wouldn t give up the chance of it, 
 no, not for anything that the world had yet seen fit to 
 offer her, beloved daughter of the rich and great as she 
 was.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IT was dark when the girls reached Minneapolis. 
 Automobile busses carried them out through the 
 bright streets where tiny box trees showed green 
 about the tops of the lamp posts ; out beyond the crowded 
 part of the city; past a little lake, like a mislaid hand 
 mirror, to a group of long two-story buildings. The 
 quartermaster of their company met them at the door 
 with a manner compounded of that of a school teacher, 
 a trained nurse and a shop forelady, and the girls filed in 
 with their bags and looked about in every sort of sur 
 prise. To not one of them was this great room the sort 
 of place they had expected to live in. Dark wood tables 
 stood down the middle of it with shaded lamps upon 
 them. The dull red curtains blowing strongly on the 
 night wind were the same color as the stenciled frieze 
 that ran around the top of the gray plaster wall, the same 
 color as the cushions on the long seats under the windows, 
 and as the covers on the tops of the low bookcases. It 
 was comfortable, it was almost beautiful, it was only 
 like an institution in that it smelled a little of soap and 
 the corners of the floor were rounded so that it could be 
 cleaned by the simple process of turning on the hose. But 
 it was not like anything that any of them had ever con 
 sidered as home. 
 
 Mildred saw it against the living places of the Carver 
 family the high stately rooms, the lovely textures, and 
 the costly furnishings. Mamie Epstein compared it with 
 the four-room home up three flights of stairs which 
 
 60
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 61 
 
 housed her father, mother, five brothers and sisters and 
 herself a place huddled with imitation brass beds, 
 cheap lace curtains, chenille portieres, photographs in 
 color which represented to Mamie the last word in Art, 
 gilt clocks, vases, ornaments and an insistent cheap pro 
 fusion under untempered gaslight. Ellen Forsythe, 
 standing critically aloof with an antagonistic eye traveling 
 back and forth, was heard to snap the single condemna 
 tory word " Bourgeois ! " 
 
 To the girls who were used to cafeterias, the supper 
 that night did not seem a strange thing. The practical 
 education in table manners of the working girl who 
 lunches in restaurants helped them through ; but for those 
 who had no experience of eating except in their own 
 homes it was a trying occasion. Still to have something 
 to do after the long physical inaction of their journey, 
 even if it was only to take up their trays and file through 
 the kitchen for their food, was a relief to them all. It 
 was a relief too for them to get into their white cots and 
 find themselves on something stationary with no rumble 
 in their ears. 
 
 Mildred went to sleep, after the whispering had died 
 down in the dormitory, with the forlorn feeling of an 
 unassimilated little atom wandering over the surface of 
 the earth by itself. She felt poignantly that she and 
 all the other girls were quite unrelated, that their only 
 connection was the purely external fact that, happening 
 to be the same age, they had come from New York on the 
 same train, and were sleeping now in the same room. 
 Nothing had yet bound them together. Even their 
 clothes were mutually antagonistic. Mildred s little 
 French cloak and trim hat hung on the rack at the foot of 
 her bed, opposite was Mamie Epstein s bright blue dress, 
 and further off the boyish suit of Ruth Ansel, and
 
 62 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 all down the room a very medley of garments, clothes 
 not to be worn again for many months. 
 
 The girls were waked in the morning by the clanging of 
 a bell, followed by the entrance of the quartermaster, 
 saying : 
 
 " Good morning, girls." 
 
 Blonde and brune, they sat up in their beds and an 
 swered her. 
 
 " Come to me in the store room that door there 
 one at a time and get your uniforms. The girl in the first 
 cot may come first." 
 
 The whole dormitory watched as the first girl slipped 
 out after the quartermaster. She came back presently 
 with an armful of clothes everything from hat to 
 shoes, and as she carried them down the room, the other 
 girls reached out to stop her, and finger them, and ex 
 claim. 
 
 After breakfast when they were formed in line in the 
 courtyard there appeared a new thing in the world, a 
 fresh creation the Forty-second Unit of the Eleventh 
 Corps of the National Agricultural Service, and 
 marched away up the street. They had come there as 
 individuals in all the colors of the rainbow; in all the 
 fashions that different purses and stages of aesthetic 
 development permitted; showing at the first glance all 
 sorts of breeding and circumstance, sartorially embodied, 
 but they marched down the street that first morning 
 as a unit, having taken on the surface democracy of the 
 Service uniform, the khaki, the brown frieze, the square 
 brown boots and soft felt hats, and so become part of a 
 thing which was bigger and better than any of them 
 working alone could ever be. 
 
 Mildred, taking her place in the line, had a quick vision 
 of another procession in which she would be the chief
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 63 
 
 figure, a procession where she would walk up the aisle 
 in the little church in Torexo Park with her satin train 
 following after and her grandmother s lace veil trailing 
 softly. Bridesmaids in blue would be stepping on ahead, 
 and there would be the music of the organ and the per 
 fume of the flowers, and all the people turning their heads 
 to see, and way up ahead the rector and, yes, of course, 
 Nick, probably looking frightened and ridiculous, 
 waiting for her. All this wedding procession Mildred 
 arranged and experienced as they were getting the step, 
 left, left, left, but it faded quite obediently away as she 
 fell into the rhythm of the company going to work, and 
 her steps beat out an insistent questioning, why ? why ? 
 why? The underlying motif of all this work eluded her. 
 No one in any part of her past life was the interpreter 
 she needed. And so, still bewildered, she marched with 
 her company out to the great flour mill which the gov 
 ernment had taken over in response to the demand of the 
 Farmers Non-Partisan League after the food shortage 
 of 1918. 
 
 The mill, rising like a tawny brick cliff set on the 
 high banks that held in the river, offered long rows 
 of clear windows to the east. Inside, the sun laid great 
 slow-moving squares of light upon the floors, gilded the 
 whirling machines and turned the floating flour dust into 
 pyramids and prisms of impalpable gold. The girls were 
 formed in line by the sergeant of their unit, a long 
 brown-clad row with their likenesses far more evident 
 than their differences. Mildred at the far end waited 
 nervously. Why did she have to be there? She had 
 come because she had been drafted, but what good did it 
 do? What was it for? Why had the government 
 drafted her ? 
 
 And then the door opened and some one carne in. His
 
 64 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 silhouette showed clear against the window tall and 
 thin with small, compact head and marked features. He 
 swung toward them, stopped opposite the middle of the 
 line and smiled. It was a smile that parted his thin lips 
 over his white teeth, that crinkled up the corners of his 
 eyes and even seemed to curl the ends of his dark hair, 
 a smile so full of sincerity and happiness and appreciation, 
 and so comprehendingly sweet, that it would never have 
 been possible to any woman of the sheltered old school 
 and to very few men, because it was the smile of some 
 one who had seen the world as it really is the great 
 masses of splendor and progress, and the thin black sedi 
 ment of shame and inertia and had found it good. He 
 looked down the line of girls and for each one his smile 
 was a personal greeting not the greeting of a boss, or 
 a brother, certainly not of the potential lover, but of a 
 new thing that was just coming into the world between 
 men and women the greeting of the fellow servant. 
 
 " Girls," said John Barton, and his voice was an in 
 finitely pleasant Yankee drawl, " I m glad to welcome you 
 into the Agricultural Service. This may not look like 
 agriculture to you, but you are here to help provide bread 
 for the people of all the world. It s almost the most im 
 portant thing there is to do. The folks that raise the 
 wheat, and the ones that ship it, and store it, and sell it, 
 and bake it, are all in the same work with you. If any 
 of them do their work badly fall down on their jobs 
 in any way either there isn t so much bread, or it isn t 
 so good, or it doesn t get to the people when they ought 
 to have it. And everybody has to have bread ! " 
 
 Mildred caught her breath. Was he going to say the 
 thing she had been trying to think out for herself the 
 thing she had been waiting for? She felt the color rise 
 to her cheeks.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 65 
 
 " And so that you ll be able to do your share in seeing 
 that everybody, including yourselves, has bread, you ve 
 got to learn to work, and I m here to teach you the best 
 and easiest way. There isn t anything about it that s 
 too hard for any girl to do, but your share has got to be 
 done right every day, not because you will be docked in 
 money if it isn t, but because it will interfere with the 
 bread that all the people of the United States have got to 
 have." 
 
 Mildred felt a stirring in the place where her emotions 
 slept and a quick burning back of her eyes. It was like 
 the way you expected to feel in church and mostly 
 didn t! And her rising enthusiasm for the things John 
 Barton had said reached out to include the man who had 
 said them, and some of the glory she thought she saw in 
 them flashed back again over him. 
 
 It was evident that not all of the girls took in the 
 meaning of this little prelude. To those who had per 
 sonally experienced work as it occurs in the uncontrolled 
 world of industry, John Barton s talk was quite unre 
 lated to reality. But to Mildred it was a new gospel an 
 nounced by a new prophet. 
 
 " And now I ll start you in the sewing room," said the 
 foreman. " Over there you ll find your aprons and 
 caps." 
 
 When they were ready he led them to a long, low table, 
 pointed each one to a chair and handed out great coarse 
 needles, and piles of cotton twine. Then he brought a 
 small bag of flour with an open top to the end of the 
 table. 
 
 " Now this, girls, is what I expect you to do. You 
 turn in the top like this see ? Hold it tight together 
 with your left hand be sure there s a knot in the end 
 of your thread, and begin to sew the top up with six
 
 66 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 stitches, pulling them tight like this see ? and fasten 
 the end of the thread with two stitches see ? Now if 
 you have all got your needles, each thread hers with a 
 piece of twine. Don t mix up your pile of twine, you 
 fourth girl from the end (this to Ellen Forsythe), get 
 it all straight before you begin. There now, all right! 
 I ll give you each a bag and you will see how to do it." 
 
 It was a pretty poor performance, judged from the 
 standpoint of getting flour sacks sewed in anything like 
 a reasonable time. The girls who had worked in the 
 clothing factories did much better than the Wadleigh 
 High School girls or Ruth or Mildred or Ellen Forsythe. 
 John Barton watched them in silence and walked down 
 the table and told each girl what was the matter with her 
 work. 
 
 " Now all get your hands off the table and we ll try 
 it again." 
 
 He pressed a lever, and the part of the table where the 
 bags stood tipped, and they slid into a chute beneath 
 while unsewed ones came down from above. The second 
 bags went a little better but it was still slow work. Over 
 and over during their first shift the foreman stood beside 
 them teaching them the simple work of sewing the tops 
 of flour sacks together over and over again ! Each girl 
 had a sandwich and a glass of milk at ten o clock and then 
 back to their tables and their flour sacks. 
 
 So that was the reason why she was there, Mildred 
 told herself as she struggled with a refractory flour sack, 
 so that everybody could have bread ! The idea didn t 
 excite her much because she had always taken it for 
 granted that they had bread anyway. And besides, her 
 connection with it all, through those six stitches in the 
 tops of the little flour bags, seemed attenuated and re 
 mote. And then came the foreman and took the first ten
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 67 
 
 girls on a journey through the mill. Leaning from the 
 top window Mildred saw far down below the full cars 
 pouring their loads into the mill. 
 
 " They come from all over the country," said the fore 
 man, leaning out beside her. " No one kind of wheat 
 alone makes the best flour. From as far south as Okla 
 homa, west to the Rockies and north to the Canadian 
 border the land has been plowed and harrowed and 
 planted, and the farmers have watched the sky, and the 
 Departments in Washington have experimented with 
 ways to get ahead of the weevil and the rust, and the reap 
 ers and thrashers have worked, and the train crews have 
 brought it all here so that we can make the best flour." 
 
 Mildred turned, her lips a little apart, and looked 
 straight into the foreman s eyes, eyes large, long lashed 
 and as deeply blue as the horizon edge of the ocean. It 
 seemed to her that they must see not only everything that 
 was before them but also a great deal that John Barton 
 would like to have there even if it wasn t, and that be 
 cause he saw it so clearly it was brought nearer to being 
 real. Standing beside the wide endless belt that brought 
 an endless stream of wheat grains from the storage ele 
 vators, John Barton caught up some kernels. 
 
 " See the different kinds." He held his open palm 
 toward the girls. " Those grains are Number One North 
 ern. We don t get much of that. They probably came 
 down from the Red River Valley. And that s Number 
 Two Spring, from Iowa or Missouri or Illinois. And 
 these that are yellow or brown or reddish come from 
 hundreds of miles apart. It takes them all in a fixed 
 proportion to make the best flour, and thousands of men 
 and women in thousands of places to grow them all." 
 
 He led them down through floor after floor filled with 
 hurrying machinery and showed them the progress of the
 
 68 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 wheat from north and south and east and west as it was 
 ground together, screened and sifted and bolted, passing 
 from one process to another almost without human assist 
 ance like a great cosmic process, till it poured itself into 
 barrels and sacks and started out over new routes to the 
 waiting country, and to the seaboard and the ships bound 
 for the five continents and the islands of the sea. Mil 
 dred remembered the heavy freighters she had seen 
 swinging slowly out into the Atlantic, and those other 
 boats laboring into Hull and Rotterdam and the gay ports 
 of the Mediterranean; she remembered the little village 
 bakeries in France and Germany and the funny Dutch 
 children munching wheaten bread on their way to school. 
 It might have all come from this very mill ! And if any 
 thing went wrong here the boats and the bakeries and the 
 children would all have to stop ! 
 
 She sat down to her sewing again a little awed. It 
 wasn t so small a thing to sew flour sacks as she had 
 thought why, it was important to everybody in the 
 world to have them sewed right ! John Barton had told 
 them that their part in patriotism was to put in those six 
 stitches, drawing them tight and making a knot at the 
 end. It was just like being a soldier or a sailor, he said, 
 only you didn t have to wait for a war to serve your 
 country. 
 
 By the end of her first day, Mildred had a curiously 
 hushed feeling about her new place in the universe. She 
 had inadvertently become a part of a very big thing and 
 she wondered if she would be able to do her share. And 
 the mystery and romance of it were so overshadowing, 
 that she found herself compelled to summon the thought 
 of her engagement and the picture of Nick, as a con 
 scious matter of duty instead of having them overwhelm 
 her with joyous irresistibility.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 69 
 
 When she marched back to the barracks after the 
 first six hours of work she had ever done in her life, Mil 
 dred had a sensation of almost religious upliftedness, as 
 though the sewing up of flour sacks was a great ritual, 
 and the mill a cathedral with John Barton as the officiat 
 ing priest.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE members of the Forty-second Unit settled 
 down into their new home like college girls. 
 What they were required to learn was widely 
 different from college work, but their life was not unlike 
 that which the founders of the early women s colleges 
 expected those institutions to give the students. It 
 trained them through actual work and actual experience, 
 and induced a wholesome democracy by the fact that rich 
 or poor, wise or foolish, the same things were expected 
 of them all. 
 
 There \vere certain fixed demands on them, inescap 
 able overhead charges on time and effort, to meet which 
 the rest of their lives had to be regulated. To begin with 
 there was that awful bell that rang at five in the morning 
 and lifted the reluctant girls out of their beds as though 
 they were attached to it by wires; and then came the 
 quick scramble for the white bath tubs and the scurrying 
 into uniforms and the rush down the stairs of those who, 
 being on the second shift at the mill and therefore not on 
 duty till noon, were required to help get breakfast for the 
 others. And after the first shift had marched away, 
 there was the clearing of the dishes and setting of the 
 house in order, and tramping away to the lecture hall at 
 one end of the long rectangle of buildings for the aca 
 demic part of their training lectures in good English, 
 in simple accounting, in politics and government 
 which they shared with all the boys and girls stationed in 
 
 70
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 71 
 
 Minneapolis, and for a few special lectures in the prin 
 ciples of agriculture. 
 
 This lecture hour had an enchantment all its own, for 
 there were the Service boys also, and was it not possible 
 to send soft glances across the room and get them re 
 turned with interest ? And was there not also a chance to 
 talk as they left the class room? And to talk meant to 
 make friends, and could not friends come to the big liv 
 ing room in the evening and play games and increase the 
 joy of life generally? So the by-products of the lectures, 
 and incidentally the lectures themselves, were exceedingly 
 well liked. 
 
 And after the lectures, the girls marched back to their 
 house again for two free hours. Sometimes these were 
 devoted to exercise, sometimes to mending the clothes 
 which under the assaults of vigorous and lively young 
 women developed such rips and tears as kept Mamie 
 Epstein, wise in the making of garments, in a continual 
 state of complaint. 
 
 " Say, the forelady didn t have no license to leave the 
 seams go out not fastened at the ends. If she should 
 be working for the United States, the way our boss is, 
 she wouldn t dast to do it understand me? Sure 
 you gotta take it out of the machine and pull the thread 
 through to the other side to make it stay good but all 
 the seams of my skirt, ain t I had to fix them over my 
 self ? And every time I wear my coat, a button I got 
 to sew on. If all the time I gotta sew buttons for my 
 self, how can I sew flour sacks for the United States? " 
 
 And after the mending came an early lunch, which 
 didn t seem so early to them as it would if they hadn t 
 breakfasted before six o clock ; and the march to the fac 
 tory where they took the places of the morning shift as 
 the clock struck twelve. For the machinery of that gov-
 
 72 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 ernment mill never stopped day or night, and there were 
 four six-hour shifts of Service boys and girls, and three 
 eight-hour shifts of adult workers. 
 
 In the afternoon, the morning shift had their classes 
 and their exercise and their mending and their free time, 
 and then all to the kitchen to help the cook, and stirring 
 and mixing and putting into ovens and taking out again ! 
 For dinner in the Service was a meal elaborated into three 
 courses soup, meat and vegetables, and a dessert, 
 and this in itself was an adventure to those of the Unit 
 who had been used either to the desultory feeding of the 
 poor, or to the elaborate menus of the rich, and for them 
 all it was a training in what a meal ought to be. After 
 dinner was done they settled down to their short evening. 
 
 And all the time they were talking, talking, talking 
 together of the things that made up this great new adven 
 ture. As they gathered round the low lamps and looked 
 at the magazines and papers, Annie McGee and Mamie 
 and Ruth and "Winkles," a girl from Syria, and the rest, 
 pooled the varying interests and experiences of their short 
 lives and handed them about, and exchanged them, and 
 thrashed out the things of this world and the next in the 
 light of them. And back of all their talk, and in and 
 through it all, was the consciousness of the great mill, 
 the tangible expression of the work all the people were 
 doing together. Through this material thing John Bar 
 ton dominated their young minds. Through him, their 
 world grew wide around them, and they began con 
 sciously to live in the whole universe. 
 
 Mamie Epstein, with the amazing mixture of idealism 
 and narrowness that the New York Ghetto breeds, saw 
 her little world stretch out over all the farms where the 
 " Krists " tilled the land and wore the clothes she had 
 seen being made in New York by the people who ate the 
 bread made from their wheat.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 73 
 
 " Almost like relations it makes us, only not so much," 
 she said thoughtfully. 
 
 Winkles preened herself at the difference between 
 America and Syria. 
 
 " In my country there is always the little mill. My 
 mother, my grandmother, every woman, sits every day 
 to make the flour. Have not I myself turned and turned 
 at the handle? Only sometimes in the village is a mill 
 and men to grind for all who come. But here is there 
 not Mr. John Barton to tell us how to make the flour so 
 that even my grandmother and her daughters need no 
 more to sit at the mill in my country but may eat of the 
 flour of America? " 
 
 Ruth Ansel s world precipitated itself out of something 
 like primeval chaos into an ordered series of interlocking 
 operations. She considered thoughtfully the way the 
 mill machinery was arranged so that the wheat could go 
 about on its own responsibility and with only a little 
 supervision here and there turn itself into flour and start 
 out to the people who needed it. She felt that it ought 
 to be possible to make the whole world as automatically 
 perfect as the mill. 
 
 Mildred s world began to have fewer things taken for 
 granted in it. The people who made the thread she 
 sewed the bags with, who made the ominously whirling 
 wheels in the engine room, and the bricks in the mill 
 walls, might be eating the flour from this mill. She 
 looked speculatively at the toe of her brown shoe, 
 flour from somewhere had gone to the man who made it. 
 Her mind followed the various threads in the weft of 
 civilization and found that the warp that held them to 
 gether was always food, for everybody had to have bread. 
 As she realized how important was the thing she was 
 helping to do, self-respect grew in her, together with a
 
 74 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 spirit of responsibility toward her work, and an enormous 
 reverence toward John Barton as the source of this new 
 vision. 
 
 All the girls began to feel that life was uncommonly 
 good to them and that this new and wonderful experience 
 could not be spared out of their lives no, not at the 
 cost of marriage or money or success or leisure or any 
 thing of which they had yet dreamed. 
 
 There were bright days when they would take their 
 hours out of barracks and their princely earnings of a 
 dollar and a half a week and go to the little shop around 
 the corner from the court house, where slim young 
 waiters brought them delectable imitations of French 
 pasties for ten cents, and ice creams for fifteen cents 
 more, and then if it were crisp and cold as well as sun 
 shiny, chocolate, very hot, with a summer cloud of 
 whipped cream on top. And if it were early in the week, 
 and their pay still intact in their pockets, they would have 
 another pasty, so rich and sweet and so sauced and 
 flavored, that they couldn t tell if it were peach or plum 
 or berry, and certainly didn t care. And into that shop 
 would come other Service girls and boys too, with all the 
 accents of all the world. I wonder if they still come 
 there or if another little shop with quite other little cakes 
 has taken its place! And then if it wasn t too dark and 
 they still felt energetic, they might go for a tramp beside 
 the Mississippi just as the aerial mail drove by overhead. 
 This air service which had come during their lifetime gave 
 them a sort of proprietary joy. The morning mail, wing 
 ing down from Blue Earth and Fargo and Moose Jaw, 
 was too early for them to see, so they usually watched for 
 this twilight return. Ruth was always trying to make 
 out a cousin of hers who had been a bombing pilot during 
 the war and still drove a battle plane converted to this
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 75 
 
 service of peace. Mildred wondered if by any chance 
 Arthur Wintermute had worked hard enough to be ad 
 mitted into the flying corps yet. Winkles and Mamie 
 had no more personal concern in the airplanes than as 
 though they were giant wild geese driving north, dimin 
 ishing to the size of pigeons, then to swallows and van 
 ishing away as the tiniest of gnats. But for all of them 
 there was the romantic appeal of this hazardous calling 
 and the sense of comradeship, for as Mamie said : 
 
 "If we ain t making flour how can they get bread so 
 they can fly understand me ? " 
 
 The girls would stop and watch the river and dream 
 quite wonderful and unrelated things, and try to put 
 them into words, and fail utterly. And turning back as 
 the sun got low and the river went black in its bed, still 
 talking on and on of work and play and not a little of men 
 and love and marriage. And Mamie would tell of Max 
 Ulman who was " almost like a gentleman friend, under 
 stand me? " and Ellen spoke with elaborate carelessness 
 of an artist who had asked her to " sit to him for the 
 hands " and Annie McGee boasted of a boot and shoe 
 clerk who called her " Peaches and Cream " and was 
 " crazy" about her, but from Mildred, though she was the 
 only one who considered herself engaged to be married, 
 there came not one mention of Nick Van Arsdale. And 
 if it were an emotional, red sunset Ellen would grow 
 sentimental over the river. 
 
 " It does exactly what it wants to do it goes where 
 it likes and nobody makes it." 
 
 " When you don t ask it how do you know if it goes 
 where it likes ? And, anyway, where does it go ? " 
 
 Mamie was always inquiring and accurate, and Ruth 
 Ansel s academic training usually helped her to answer. 
 
 " St. Paul is the first place and pretty soon it gets to
 
 76 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Red Wing and down where they raise wheat, and on 
 through the corn belt and the rice fields into the Gulf of 
 Mexico." 
 
 " Raising things to eat all the way it goes down, do 
 they do it?" 
 
 " Everybody eats such a lot they have to. But it isn t 
 only us, it s everybody everywhere. That League of 
 Nations man keeps saying how they need more wheat in 
 Greece or rice in India or something, and everybody keeps 
 growing more all the time." 
 
 " Don t you remember how there used to be posters 
 saying how food would win the war and asking us not 
 to waste wheat? Mr. Barton says there won t be much 
 of anything to have wars about now that everybody in the 
 world is eating together." 
 
 This philosophy of Mildred s was a somewhat garbled 
 account of what John Barton had said to her during the 
 noon hour. 
 
 " You notice the world started its get-together cam 
 paign after the great war, on food. It didn t matter so 
 much the things the delegates did or didn t do at the 
 Peace Table. They had shared their wheat loaf with a 
 great part of the world, as the President said, and they 
 weren t going to go back on it let the lawyers and sen 
 ators and business men say what they liked. It was more 
 powerful than anything else food was to bind them 
 together. So when you re working to make food you re 
 doing a lot more to hold up the League of Nations than 
 the diplomats that are making international laws and the 
 international police force that tries to make people keep 
 them." 
 
 These girls walking beside the Mississippi felt the 
 weight of responsibility, but it was a proud burden and 
 they stood straight under it. It made that river bank at
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 77 
 
 that particular time the most interesting place in the 
 whole world. But they were still young and burdens sat 
 feather light. On afternoons when they still had money 
 in their pockets they were pretty sure to go to a moving 
 picture show, and sit snuggled against each other s shoul 
 ders while equestrian heroes rode horses more swift than 
 Lochinvar s. And here they saw news of the day as it 
 really happened, ships sailing, presidents speaking, 
 bases being run, -- and began to philosophize and 
 work out new world policies just as though they 
 knew all about it and nobody had ever done it before! 
 And then out through the door on the sudden memory of 
 barracks and back, running through the streets, just in 
 time to eat the good filling stew and the stomach-expand 
 ing vegetable and bread in quantity to deplete the wheat 
 crop, and enough butter to disconcert the most industrious 
 cow just as though all the sweets and ices of the after 
 noon were still unserved to them by the slim young wait 
 ers! 
 
 And if the evening were fine some of the girls would 
 drift over to other barracks where they had made friends, 
 and girls and boys, and sometimes people from outside, 
 would come to see them. Then the games would come 
 out and there would be everything from cards to crambo ; 
 or if it were a cool night and everybody specially ener 
 getic, the victrola would be started, the tables moved 
 back, and there would be dancing. Once when they be 
 gan to sing, it was discovered that Ellen Forsythe had a 
 clear little voice of such piercing sweetness as brought 
 the heart to the throat and the tears to the eyes, and that 
 whether she sang the new unrhythmical ballads that were 
 good form in the studios of Greenwich Village, or the 
 old songs that everybody loves because they can hum 
 them, or even the airs from a popular musical show, it
 
 78 MILDRED -CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 was all the same, for no one could remember, while she 
 sang, anything but the sound of her voice; and the fact 
 that she shirked her work, protested at everything and 
 every one and stood as much like a rock as she could 
 against the submergence of her own rather trying per 
 sonality in the group, absolutely faded away. 
 
 When real winter came to Minneapolis, the little lakes 
 which polka-dot the city froze like thick white china 
 plates and all Scandinavia put steel to its feet and flung 
 out on the ice. Tall, big-boned boys and girls with the 
 pale hair and light eyes of the north had their cheeks 
 whipped to red as they circled and circled and swung. 
 The young Service recruits such of them as could 
 skate spent every possible moment on the lakes. There 
 was a sort of freemasonry of the ice which included not 
 only the boys and the girls of the Service but everybody 
 on the pond as well. Mildred, swinging away from Ruth 
 Ansel, found her hand caught by a tall, smiling lad, who, 
 after he had swung her quickly about, asked if he might 
 skate with her. She caught her breath, she wasn t used 
 to such simple .social ways but then everything was dif 
 ferent in the Service anyway and why shouldn t she ? 
 
 " I ll be very glad to skate with you," she answered a 
 little tremulously, but with all the formality she could 
 muster. 
 
 He caught her other hand and flew down the pond with 
 long, sure strokes. 
 
 " I saw you were in the Service," he explained as 
 though that \vere an introduction and a claim to consider 
 ation all in one. 
 
 Another boy called to them : 
 
 " Come on and crack the whip." 
 
 Quickly they were part of a lengthening line speeding 
 up the ice again. Down toward the middle of the row,
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 79 
 
 Mildred saw Ruth, laughing like a boy, pulling the whole 
 line forward, and fairly dragging a slender lad who held 
 her left hand, off his feet. The Service uniforms made 
 up only a small part of the line; most of the skaters wore 
 the gay sweaters and flying scarfs and many colored 
 clothes of civilian life. It was not so smart a group as 
 might have skated in Central Park, not perhaps so amus 
 ing, but it was far more candidly friendly. The line 
 swung forward at top speed, the other skaters scurrying 
 to the edges of the pond to let them by, and then a group 
 of strong boys at one end checked suddenly, and it 
 wound round and round and round them like a ribbon on 
 a bobbin, and those at the end made the last circle at a 
 terrifying speed and were shot into the central mass 
 with shouts of glee. It was a rough sport and there was 
 a good deal of tumbling about on the ice and screams of 
 laughter. Mildred lost her partner in the confusion and 
 before he found her again they were all up and hold 
 ing handsi and sweeping back down the lake. And so 
 again and again till the Service recruits had to dash back 
 to barracks amid the jeers of those who were younger or 
 older than the draft age. 
 
 " Oh don t you wish you could stay !" " We re going 
 to build a bonfire ! a bonfire ! a bonfire ! " 
 
 " You don t know what a good time we re going to 
 have." 
 
 " We don t have to go until we get good and ready 
 we don t." 
 
 "We ll be back to-morrow," Mildred called gayly, turn 
 ing and waving to the group still on the ice. 
 
 As she started reluctantly on, still keeping longing eyes 
 over her shoulder, she bumped fair and square into John 
 Barton. 
 
 " Oh, I m very sorry," she cried flushing. " I didn t 
 see you."
 
 80 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " I saw you," he said slowly, eying her curiously. 
 " I ve been seeing you for quite some time." 
 
 " We ve had a lot of fun," said Mildred, feeling 
 strangely embarrassed and beginning to walk on. 
 
 The foreman was walking beside her. 
 
 " You really enjoyed it, did you? " 
 
 " Oh, I love to skate. Father taught me when I 
 couldn t much more than walk. I remember yet how I 
 tumbled around on the ice when we went to the country 
 for Christmas. Nick Van Arsdale and I have skated 
 every pond and creek in Greene County." 
 
 " Who is Nick Van Arsdale? " 
 
 " He s the boy who lives next door." 
 
 Never was a literally true and innocent remark more 
 calculated to deceive! Mildred s mind swept suddenly 
 away after Nick s trim figure flying up the river ahead of 
 her. What fun if he had been here today! Nick was 
 part of things like this. 
 
 " I wish we didn t have to stop so soon," she said wist 
 fully, looking back. 
 
 " But you have to be ready for the mill in the morning 
 - that s the first thing." 
 
 Mildred came back with a start. 
 
 " Oh, I know." 
 
 She was conscious of a faint shadowy resentment as 
 they walked on in silence. But then John Barton began 
 to talk of quite grown up and serious things, and Mildred 
 felt that after all he didn t hold it against her that she had 
 wanted to go on skating, in spite of the fact that she was 
 due at the mill at six the next morning. She resolved to 
 be more worthy of his confidence in the future and by the 
 time they reached the barracks she was again caught up 
 into the heaven of enthusiasm for the work she was help 
 ing to do and the man who was directing it.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A the Forty-second Unit began to know itself and 
 understand its own habits and ways, it took it 
 for granted that men and boys always tended 
 to circle around Mildred Carver. It was not because she 
 was more beautiful than the other girls. There was a 
 timid little Italian with the face of a Bouguereau ma 
 donna, and a red-haired girl with flaming beauty like a 
 conflagration. It was not because of her wit, for that 
 faded timidly away before Mamie Epstein s sudden sallies. 
 But she had that nameless attraction that is the indefin 
 able, ineradicable difference between a siren and an ordi 
 nary woman. It was a dangerous birthright, and 
 Mildred was to get harm and joy of it all her life. 
 
 One day in the mill she was slow in letting go of her 
 flour sack as it slid down the chute. There was a cry, a 
 little spurt of blood, and then the machinery was stopped 
 suddenly as she held up a bleeding left hand. John Bar 
 ton came running, smothered her hand in cotton waste, 
 and half carried her down to the office where it was 
 bandaged. It wasn t a serious hurt. Mildred protested 
 that she could go right back to her work she was back 
 at it the next day. But John Barton was surprisingly 
 concerned. He came and watched her, explaining that 
 if it pained at all she must stop, and at recess he sat down 
 beside her and after a mere perfunctory question about 
 her hand, stayed talking idly till work began. The fol 
 lowing day he came again on the same pretense and 
 talked on with no pretense at all, so that the observing 
 
 G 8l
 
 82 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Mamie Epstein remarked to Ellen as they ate their mid- 
 morning sandwiches : 
 
 " A crush on Mildred the boss has got all right ! " 
 
 " That Barton ? How do you know ? " 
 
 " The front of your face instead of the back of it to 
 them, shows you ! " 
 
 Ellen turned calmly and studied the two. 
 
 " Grand wages all right don t you bet he gets ? " 
 
 " How should I know ? I suppose it s on the Civil 
 Service list if you want to look it up." 
 
 " Her chance to get married maybe it could be. She 
 should worry about work if he got engaged to her ! " 
 
 " I don t see how you can be thinking all the time about 
 getting married! It s the last thing I think of. I 
 wouldn t give up my liberty for any man." 
 
 " Say, honest you don t want to get married ? " 
 
 "Decidedly not!" 
 
 " But what ll you do? Ain t you got to work? " 
 
 " Do you think I d give up my Career and be a para 
 site and let a man support me? " 
 
 Ruth Ansel joined them, her sandwich in her hand. 
 
 " To Ellen I been saying, a crush on Mildred Mr. 
 Barton he has all right." 
 
 Ruth swung around and looked at the two as Ellen had 
 done. 
 
 " I don t see it." 
 
 " Well you can take it from me. I noticed it before. 
 Maybe she ll get engaged to him." 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 " Grand wages he gets, don t he ? In a flour mill there 
 ain t no slack season, is there? You can believe me or 
 not, all the time I bet he works." 
 
 " That wouldn t matter." 
 
 " Say, I guess you don t know ! And it s grand he s 
 the boss too ! "
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 83 
 
 " It isn t a question," said Ellen languidly, "of being 
 the boss or being a mere hireling. It s the idea of his 
 being in this sort of work at all. I couldn t stand it. 
 And of living in a new place like Minneapolis that hasn t 
 any atmosphere. Besides, I don t think there s anything 
 in it. She did hurt her hand." 
 
 Ruth, who had been watching them with the corners 
 of her mouth twitching, grinned wickedly : 
 
 " Girls," she announced, " there s no more chance of 
 Mildred Carver s marrying that man than there is of her 
 marrying me." 
 
 " Has she got a gentleman friend, already? " 
 
 " Not that I know of, and I guess it would get into 
 the papers if she had." 
 
 " Such a fool she should not be as to let a grand man, 
 like Mr. Barton is, not marry her! " 
 
 They went back to their work, but there was a little 
 furtive eyeing of Mildred who sat pensively picturing a 
 world full of beautiful idealized industry, operated by 
 purely altruistic workers, and supervised by Mr. John 
 Barton, foreman of the mill. 
 
 As the newness of the mill work wore off, and the 
 grind and monotony began to appear, when her back 
 ached and her eyes were tired and there was no charm in 
 holding the top of a cotton flour sack together with the 
 left hand while she put in six firm stitches with the right, 
 Mildred found herself turning for consolation not to the 
 gay figure of Nick, which made all this seem doubly dull 
 by contrast, but to the inspiring picture of John Barton, 
 which gave to the thing she had to do all the elements of 
 a great drama. 
 
 To Mamie Epstein, John Barton was merely the boss 
 of the mill. He was not different in kind from any 
 foreman in a cloak-making factory on Twenty-eighth
 
 84 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Street. To Ruth Ansel he was a sort of human lubri 
 cant which smoothed the operations of the mill. To 
 Ellen Forsythe he was an adverse potentate under whose 
 relentless eye she was compelled to sew flour sacks when 
 her temperament demanded that she go out on the river 
 bank and invite her soul in immaterial solitude. But to 
 Mildred, John Barton was a beneficent contemporary 
 Prometheus, holding in his hand the processes through 
 which the people were fed. If he failed the wheat would 
 have been grown in vain and men and women would go 
 hungry; there would come the disorder and dissension 
 that must arise among hungry people and the small strife 
 that meant suffering and the big strife that meant war. 
 But it was plain to Mildred that he did not fail. 
 
 The day Mamie had announced her discovery to Ellen 
 and Ruth, she came and sat on Mildred s bed at night, 
 evidently bent on talk. 
 
 " Say, ain t the boss elegant ! " she began. 
 
 Mildred, who was getting used to Mamie s vocabulary, 
 agreed that he was. 
 
 "I bet you like him?" 
 
 Mildred agreed to that, too. 
 
 " To get acquainted with a man like that, ain t it 
 grand?" 
 
 Mildred felt deeply that it was and began to join in 
 Mamie s paean of praise, and extend it, and widen it out 
 all around, and amplify it with excerpts from the doctrine 
 he had preached to them. And by just the amount that 
 she got beyond Mamie s depth, did Mamie measure Mil 
 dred s interest in John Barton so that she felt her sur 
 mises confirmed and certainty grew within her as Mildred 
 talked on. She would have been more certain still, if 
 when the lights were out and the whispering had died 
 down, she could have dropped with Mildred over the edge
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 85 
 
 of sleep and found her going through again a little scene 
 of the day before. The foreman had told Ellen Forsythe 
 that if she didn t make the last two stitches tighter, the 
 flour would leak out at the corner and whoever bought 
 it would get less than they paid for. 
 
 " And the people who buy these small bags are usually 
 the ones who can t afford to buy big ones, so it s harder 
 for them to lose it than as if they had more money to 
 spend for what they eat." 
 
 Mamie herself had picked up the bag she had just fin 
 ished and examined both corners with care, but Ellen had 
 lifted her chin and drooped her lids resentfully as though 
 there ought to be flour enough for everybody anyway 
 whether it leaked out at the corners or not, and if there 
 wasn t, it was somebody s fault and a " Movement " 
 ought to be started about it. 
 
 John Barton, as the source of all this ethical light, took, 
 in Mildred s dream, some of the characteristics of the 
 Sun God, and as she dropped off to sleep she was dazzled 
 by her vision of him. 
 
 Mamie was almost right in her reading of the situation. 
 The long breeding of the Carvers for health and beauty, 
 their training in culture and kindliness, had resulted in a 
 girl as attractive in a mill as in a drawing-room just 
 as lovable in an apron as in a ball gown. So the Sun God 
 shone with unusual warmth in the days that followed, and 
 Mildred flowered responsively. All sorts of tendrils of 
 appreciation went groping out toward him, and her 
 little unawakened soul was filled with the sight and 
 sound of the foreman of the mill as of a godlike prophet, 
 a bringer of light, a Theseus and Sir Launcelot and 
 Joshua rolled into one. He appealed to the religious en 
 thusiasm which is hid in the heart of every young girl, 
 the fanaticism that can develop either into hero worship or
 
 86 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 passionate self-sacrifice, and can fill convents as easily as 
 cradles. And all the wisdom of all the sages cannot tell 
 it from the love of a maid for a man until afterward ! 
 John Barton was to Mildred the sum of all the wonderful 
 new ideas he talked about, while Nick, who had never 
 talked about anything she didn t know already, was 
 merely a person. 
 
 Nick s letters had not told her much of what he was 
 doing, still less of what he was thinking. If the 
 Service meant anything to him comparable to what John 
 Barton had made it mean to her, they did not show it. 
 Instead, they were full of the sort of things she had 
 cared for before she went into the Service, about the 
 theater and who was singing and painting pictures and 
 what her friends were doing. Mildred thought sadly 
 that he didn t seem to have any idea what the Service was 
 all about, and tried to hand on some of the inspiration 
 she had acquired by filling her letters with John Barton, 
 what he said, how he ran the mill, and how wonderful 
 it was when he came to the barracks in the evening. But 
 she wasn t yet able to set down abstractions with her pen 
 and Nick got a vivid sense of John Barton as a person 
 ality set in the overwhelming vantage post of foreman, 
 and felt very small indeed by comparison. 
 
 As for John Barton, he saw Mildred as a singularly 
 lovely and intelligent young American girl of the sort 
 that New England produces so in excess of the demand 
 that they wither in the parental gardens everywhere, or 
 get shunted into genteel employments which are not 
 much better than this wistful withering; but who in for 
 tunate exceptions, are carried away into some more emo 
 tionally succulent field, where life gives them experience 
 and love, and where they bloom into the best that this 
 country or any other can produce. This was the sort of
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 87 
 
 girl that John Barton thought Mildred was, and he let 
 his good sturdy working-class dreams of an American 
 home and children fix themselves upon her.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MILDRED S letters to her mother greatly dis 
 quieted that lady. She had thought of this 
 daughter of hers as a little female Joseph 
 sold into an urban, Scandinavian, Egypt. Her heart 
 ached at the trials and sufferings, hardships and unpleas 
 antnesses that Mildred would have to undergo. She had 
 expected that the girl s letters would be full of inevitable 
 complaints and was prepared to administer epistolary 
 consolation. But nothing of the sort had been called 
 for! Mildred s work engrossed her; the other girls de 
 lighted her ; the mill rose, not as a prison house where she 
 toiled unwillingly, but as a sort of religious center from 
 which all sorts of beneficences appeared to emanate. And 
 what was this talk of being responsible for the breakfast 
 rolls of the whole United States? The girl was merely 
 sewing the tops of flour sacks together! And all this 
 about a Mr. Barton who seemed to hold some position in 
 the mill, a sort of taskmaster under whom the girls 
 performed their forced labor. Mildred seemed to see 
 him outside the mill. Probably some man inclined to 
 presume! Were the girls allowed to run about in the 
 city where men like that could talk to them? She had 
 thought they would be subject to galling restrictions, but 
 it was their extraordinary freedom that alarmed her. 
 
 And then one day she saw the old street cleaner on 
 Washington Square marching at the head of a squad of 
 lads in Service uniforms. They carried scrapers and 
 brooms and set to work promptly picking up papers and 
 
 88
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 89 
 
 putting quite a super-polish on the pavement that Mrs. 
 Carver admitted had not been usual before the Service 
 was established, though she told herself resentfully that 
 men could have been hired to do it just as well if the 
 Board of Estimate had voted the money. Her eyes had 
 followed the gang strung along the block until a voice 
 spoke at her elbow and she turned to look into the face 
 of Nick Van Arsdale. 
 
 He was grinning like a naughty boy and Mrs. Carver 
 felt herself quite out of the supply of social tact which 
 was her special asset. 
 
 "What what are you doing here?" she demanded 
 baldly. 
 
 The boy continued to grin. 
 
 " I registered for road making, you know, and street 
 cleaning seems to be the kindergarten stage of it. They 
 are sending me south pretty soon to work in the red clay 
 soils." 
 
 " Oh, Nick what will your father say ! " 
 
 " He hasn t said much of anything yet doesn t seem 
 to have any remarks on hand to fit the situation." 
 
 " I shouldn t think he would! " 
 
 " He s been down twice to see me do it, though, and he 
 objects to my method. The last time he pointed out a 
 cigar stump I d missed." 
 
 " Oh, my poor boy! " 
 
 " Oh, not at all, Mrs. Carver. I m liking it as far as 
 I ve got." 
 
 " Nick, I can t believe it ! But will you come for 
 dinner tomorrow night? We re having people you 
 know." 
 
 The young street cleaner stood with his Service helmet 
 in one hand and his broom in the other. 
 
 They don t let me out of barracks at dinner time.
 
 90 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 They see to it personally that I am fed what will make 
 me a good street cleaner stew mostly! But I ll be 
 through here about four might I come for tea? " 
 
 Waddell, the Carvers old butler, relieved Nick of his 
 helmet in a state of bristling disapproval. That a butler 
 should be expected to serve a street cleaner! He had 
 known Nick since he was a boy, but if one s social stand 
 ing is not determined by one s occupation, the foundation 
 of the universe must be toppling. And to have him talk 
 about his work quite openly ! Waddell was used enough 
 to gentlemen who did things for their living that he could 
 not socially approve, but he expected them to maintain a 
 graceful reticence on the subject. And here was this 
 young Mr. Van Arsdale boasting of what he was 
 doing! 
 
 " No, it isn t hard work not half so hard as polo," 
 said Nick, taking more sugar. " I get six hours in the 
 street and an hour of setting-up drill military, you 
 know and an hour of regular school work every day. 
 - No, I don t mind that part of it at all. What do I 
 mind ? Well, I have to make my bed in the morning. 
 Do you know, it s some trick to make a bed so you can 
 sleep in it afterward? I ve had more trouble learning to 
 do that than anything else so far. Oh, I say, Mrs. Carver, 
 is Mildred getting on all right? Her letters are jolly 
 enough, but they re not the way I thought they d be. Of 
 course I know she hates it only she won t say so." 
 
 " I don t think she hates it, Nick. She doesn t write 
 to me as though she did. There s a man named Barton 
 who seems to be talking to her a great deal keeping her 
 amused and interested." 
 
 " She s written to me about him, too. I guess he s 
 the foreman in her mill." 
 
 " Just what has she said? "
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 91 
 
 " Oh, I don t know exactly. It s kind of mixed to me. 
 He seems to be around all the time." 
 
 Mrs. Carver covered her anxiety by swinging back to 
 Nick s experiences. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Mrs. Carver, I have to do other housework, 
 too. I m learning to wash dishes and wait at table. I 
 wish you d just write and tell Mildred that. Any little 
 points in favor of my usefulness, you know." 
 
 " Why not write her yourself ? " 
 
 "I have! Do you think I d let a chance like that 
 slip? But I d like you to back me up." 
 
 Waddell, in a state of theoretic immobility, was never 
 theless detected in a sniff and Mrs. Carver looked up at 
 him speculatively. He was an imported English product 
 and she saw that when a street cleaner was not only in 
 vited to tea but could take such an attitude toward the 
 daughter of the house, his world must be in process of 
 dislocation. Later, in the spirit of humanity, she spoke 
 to him about the Service. 
 
 Thank you, madam, that Service, if you ll excuse me, 
 madam, ain t no good. There s Wicks, the second foot 
 man you may not have noticed him, madam. He 
 went into the Service in order that he could vote 
 something to do with cutting trees; or not cutting of em 
 it may have been, and since he come out, he s not 
 taking to the work. He enters into conversations, 
 madam. I caught him advisin of Mr. Carver s own 
 nephew, friendly like, to go into the forestry, which it 
 was a grand work, madam. And I m only keeping him 
 on because since the Service was set up, footmen is almost 
 impossible to come by." 
 
 Mary Carver had a quick vision of what it would be 
 when footmen were not to be come by at all nor maids 
 either ! But then, no such state of things ever had been
 
 92 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 and of course it never would be. Was not Aunt Millicent 
 a comforting proof of permanence? The life to which 
 she was accustomed was founded on the fact that other 
 people did the rough work of the world. Her resent 
 ment against a too socialized government grew as she 
 brooded over the matter. So many different sorts of 
 things might happen, most of which she felt justified in 
 objecting to, that she gave way to an impulse, quite out 
 of the family custom, and took the train for Minneapolis 
 without letting Mildred know that she was coming. 
 
 Mrs. Carver, minus her maid and with only a porter- 
 borne traveling bag by way of impedimenta, settled her 
 self just as the train started over the same road the troop 
 train had taken. Same tunnels, same palisades beyond 
 the river, same little boats bustling up and down! But 
 the people in this train were not starting on the great 
 adventure of life; they were merely swinging round and 
 round in the eddies where chance had swept them. Two 
 traveling salesmen talked loudly of the commissions they 
 had made and the amount they were able to charge up to 
 expenses. Further down the car was a mother and her 
 faded daughter, obviously middle class. They were 
 knitting steadily, having apparently acquired the habit 
 during the war and being unable to overcome it now. 
 There was an elderly gray man in a clerical collar, who 
 seized the opportunity of travel to enjoy a little nap, a 
 trim husband and wife and a subdued child, a limp busi 
 ness woman doing her accounts a whole earful of 
 people for whom life had settled into grooves. No 
 " right-about-face " would ever be called to them now. 
 They had no expectation that rainbow possibilities were 
 waiting round the corner. Sober certainties filled most of 
 their world. Mary Carver watched them distastefully. 
 
 By contrast to her traveling companions, she found the
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 93 
 
 girls of the Forty-second Unit comforting. She stood at 
 the door of the sewing room, searching the rows of girls 
 for Mildred and was much heartened to find them far 
 more attractive than she had dared to hope. At last she 
 discovered her daughter at the far end. Her hair was 
 covered with a white cap and she wore a coarse apron 
 from her throat to her ankles. Her eyebrows were full 
 of the white dust, it lay smoothly over her little perky 
 nose and under her blue eyes, and there was quite a de 
 posit of it beneath her under lip. 
 
 But if Mrs. Carver could not classify the girls as she 
 stood silently watching them, she herself in her irre 
 proachable broadcloth and furs with just one jewel at her 
 throat, was a person they could approximately pigeon 
 hole at once. It was evident, however, that Mrs. Car 
 ver s appearance explained nothing to John Barton who 
 stood silently beside her that to him ready-made 
 clothes or English-tailored, were all the same; and that 
 jewels might be bought at the ten-cent store for all the 
 difference he could see. Mamie Epstein s startled " Oh 
 Gawd " at last made Mildred look up from her work. 
 
 When she saw her mother she jumped up and hugged 
 her in a floury shower, and choked and cried a little, for 
 she was very young and suddenly rather lonesome. The 
 foreman, significantly sympathetic, gave her half an hour 
 off and they went out by the Mississippi. 
 
 "Do you know what I am, Mother dear?" Mildred 
 asked mischievously, when she had brushed the flour 
 from her face and the tears from her eyes, " I m an un 
 skilled laborer the kind you read about in strikes. And 
 I m here to dilute skilled labor. That is what Mr. Bar 
 ton told me. The engineers who run the machines stay 
 right along Mr. Barton s been here for four years 
 but they only keep us rookies three months."
 
 94 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Who is Mr. Barton? " asked Mrs. Carver cannily. 
 
 " Why, he s the foreman ! He brought you in. He 
 came from Maine and it just fits him like a fiddle." 
 
 Mary Carver felt that her daughter must have bor 
 rowed that phrase from the man himself. 
 
 " And in the barracks, too, Mother," Mildred went on, 
 " we rookies are just one step above the vacuum cleaner 
 and the machine that mixes the bread. It embarrasses 
 me not to be more important, but it kind of uplifts me to 
 be paid a dollar and a half a week for doing work. It s 
 quite different from when father sends me money. Do 
 I have any fun? Why, I have two hours out of barracks 
 twice a week when I can do anything I like! " 
 
 And this girl had been used to doing as she liked about 
 nine-tenths of the time ! 
 
 "Have you seen Nick?" asked Mildred with a little 
 self-reproachful anxiety. 
 
 " Oh, yes did he write you he was cleaning streets ? " 
 
 " Yes poor thing how he must hate it." 
 
 " I was surprised to find that he didn t seem to feel 
 that way about it at all." 
 
 Mildred looked at her mother pityingly. 
 
 " Oh, he wouldn t make a fuss of course, he d laugh 
 and be funny, but I know he was just pretending. There s 
 nothing in the world Nicholas Van Arsdale hates like 
 getting dirty and having to do as he s told. And then 
 he doesn t know what it s all for." 
 
 Mildred spoke with the conviction of superior knowl 
 edge, and Mrs. Carver enjoyed her assumption of pro 
 prietorship. 
 
 " No," said Mildred with thoughtful conviction, " work 
 wouldn t suit Nick at all." 
 
 " He asked me to tell you that they re teaching him to 
 peel vegetables and make beds and mend his clothes
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 95 
 
 he said he felt you d be glad to know that he was getting 
 trained in housekeeping so that he d be useful in the 
 home." 
 
 "Oh, did he?" 
 
 Mildred was so startlingly noncommittal that Mary 
 Carver stared. Had the girl lost her sense of humor? 
 Had any misunderstanding come between her and Nick? 
 Certainly nothing was further from her intention than to 
 let a mere technical refusal to recognize an engagement, 
 break off so desirable a match ! But she spied the thin 
 gold chain on Mildred s neck from which depended the 
 pink pearl ring and comforted herself. 
 
 Mrs. Carver came to the barracks that evening after 
 dinner. She wanted to see for herself how her daughter 
 lived and to discover what she could do to mitigate her 
 hard lot. But just as Mildred was beginning to tell her 
 about the details of the Service all the important little 
 things that a girl of eighteen wouldn t think of putting 
 into a letter the foreman of the mill sauntered in and 
 with elaborate carelessness joined them in their corner. 
 On being formally presented to Mrs. Carver he assured 
 her that he was glad to make her acquaintance. 
 
 The talk between them was simple enough, for Mrs. 
 Carver after arranging several pauses in which he might 
 gracefully have withdrawn, resorted to a rapid fire of 
 direct questions about things she wanted to know, and 
 being a social expert she got a good deal of information 
 that the foreman didn t know he had given her. For 
 Mary Carver had noticed the significant looks passing 
 between the girls as John Barton settled beside Mildred, 
 had surprised on his face a proprietary glance as though 
 he were inspecting a precious possession, and seeing in 
 Mildred s eyes the dazzled gaze of one who looks at the 
 light, she was taken with a horrid fear. This was worse
 
 96 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 than the worst she had dreaded, and there was no use 
 pretending security, for such things had happened ! She 
 rose suddenly a little breathless. 
 
 " I m sure Mr. Barton will excuse us, my dear. I 
 should like to walk around that courtyard which you 
 wrote me about the one where you drill." 
 
 John Barton rose as though to go with them, but Mrs. 
 Carver held out her hand with an insistently friendly: 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Barton," and before he could gather 
 himself to meet so much manner, she was vanishing 
 through the door with her daughter. 
 
 Mildred was too unconscious of any reason why her 
 mother should wish to separate her from John Barton to 
 know she had done it ; but she was distinctly sorry not to 
 share with her mother the wonderful things which the 
 foreman might say at any moment, the things he was 
 almost certain to say if you waited, about what the 
 Service meant and why everybody ought to work. 
 
 Other girls were walking about in the long galleries 
 that surrounded the courtyard like a medieval cloister. 
 Bits of gossip floated from them to Mary Carver. 
 Strange accents amused and distressed her, and not the 
 least of these was the accent of Mamie Epstein, who came 
 running to them in unembarrassed certainty that she must 
 be welcome wherever she chose to go. 
 
 " That your Mamma should come to see you, it s some 
 thing grand! Say, I wouldn t hate to see my Mamma 
 right away, you bet ! " and then as the vision of Frau Ep 
 stein, beshawled, bewigged and bent, came in contrast 
 with Mrs. Carver, " Only it ain t like she was like your 
 Mamma understand me ? so young looking, and 
 beautiful yet! A gentleman friend she could get as easy 
 as nothing a tall ! " 
 
 Mrs. Carver felt herself blushing in the moonlight -
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 97 
 
 a thing out of her experience for many years and 
 laughing a little nervously, but there was no use being 
 offended with Mamie, her sincere admiration was too 
 evident. And when she bade Mildred good night, she 
 invited Mamie to ride with them the next afternoon, the 
 last she was to be in town, when the girls had two hours 
 of liberty. 
 
 Mamie had never been in an automobile before. She 
 held on till her knuckles turned white and conversed in 
 gasps although the chauffeur was an extra cautious 
 .Swede. Mrs. Carver took them to a cafe in a tiny Greek 
 temple beside a little lake. There was an orchestra, and 
 Mamie, though she was quite carried away by the sensu 
 ous beauty, could only express her feelings by calling it 
 " swell " and " grand." Mildred cuddled up beside her 
 mother, more like a little girl listening to a fairy story 
 than a citizen in the service of her government or a mar 
 riageable young lady beset by an ineligible suitor, and 
 they were all very happy until a bell rang in the distance 
 and both girls jumped. 
 
 " Oh, we re late and what will Mr. Barton say ! " 
 
 " Oh, we gotta be back at six sharp or next week we 
 don t get no time off ! " 
 
 Mrs. Carver was not greatly disturbed. She was not 
 used to regulations and couldn t see what difference an 
 hour more spent with her a practiced chaperone, could 
 possibly make to anybody. 
 
 " I m sure it will be quite all right. I shall take pains 
 to explain it to the person in charge," she remarked tran 
 quilly. 
 
 " You don t understand, Mother. We re under orders !" 
 insisted Mildred. " No one could explain it but us. We 
 can only stay out if the quartermaster lets us you see 
 we re working for the United States." 
 H
 
 98 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Duty to the nation had been made a direct personal 
 relation for them and the immediate application of it was 
 the need to be back in barracks on time. What could 
 even the most dignified of mothers do but scuttle for the 
 waiting automobile and scramble in while Mildred called 
 to the deliberate chauffeur : 
 
 " We ve got to be back in twenty minutes. Put on all 
 the speed you ve got or here, let me run her! " 
 
 Before he had got his protest ready, Mildred had slid 
 behind the wheel, started the engine and begun a rush 
 that broke every speed law a city ever had. Policemen 
 scurried into the street but she swerved around their 
 extended clubs shouting " Service " as she flew by. 
 Her uniform checked them for just the instant it took her 
 to pass. Mrs. Carver, moved by some instinct of the 
 solidarity of the family that overcame her visible pro 
 test, leaned forward and assured the driver that she would 
 pay any fines or damages so long as he didn t interfere. 
 Mamie Epstein, pale and gasping, was so much more 
 frightened at the idea of being late than she was at the 
 way they turned corners on two wheels that she didn t 
 even scream. 
 
 It was evident even through her family reserve, that 
 Mary Carver was accumulating feeling to be launched up 
 on her daughter at the end of the run, but they only made 
 it by a hair and the girls rushed into the barracks before 
 she could loose it. 
 
 Mrs. Carver went back to New York with a different 
 sort of uneasiness than she had brought with her. Her 
 mind was relieved about the work that Mildred was ex 
 pected to do. It was distasteful of course, but it couldn t 
 be of any permanent injury to the child; even if it made 
 her a little round shouldered, she would straighten up 
 again. And neither did the girls in the Unit seem a
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 99 
 
 serious menace most of them were so very different 
 from Mildred that she wouldn t be affected by them. But 
 the whole life was subversive. The distinctions which 
 people of her class had built up around themselves 
 through the generations and had stood by rigidly, were 
 being disregarded. The bars seemed to have gone down, 
 with the startling result that though other people were 
 not coming into the sacred precincts, their own carefully 
 protected young were rushing out. The limitations of 
 the Service had sunk to unimportance, but its liberations 
 appalled her. John Barton as a personal menace, she 
 was inclined to disregard. Mildred would not be long in 
 Minneapolis and then he would simply fade from her 
 mind. But the state of mind that could place the fore 
 man of a mill as the center of the universe was a terri 
 fying thing. It was not what Mildred did that troubled 
 her, but what she was becoming.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE Forty-second Unit of the Eleventh Corps 
 of the National Agricultural Service had a 
 week off with transportation home at Christ 
 mas. The dormitory fairly pulsated with excitement 
 during the last few days. Interests that had been sub 
 merged by the hurrying rush of the adventure of work 
 shot up to the surface again and there was a drawing 
 back from their common concerns. The old civilization 
 into which all of them had been born rose up and claimed 
 its own. What would they do at Christmas time ? What 
 would they eat? What would they put on? Dances in 
 great houses or walks in the ghetto; rides in limousines 
 or on the Fifth Avenue bus; boys who belonged to their 
 pre-service acquaintance pictured just as they had left 
 them, not changed as they themselves had changed. 
 The mill, great in its overpowering significance, grew 
 unreal. 
 
 Mildred on the homeward journey found herself think 
 ing a good deal more about Nick Van Arsdale than she 
 had for the last three months. Of course she had had 
 letters from him, but they didn t say anything about what 
 he was doing in the Service, only about their lives 
 before they had been drafted, and that to Mildred had 
 grown a little dim. Nick had been set into the back 
 ground of her thoughts, and when he suddenly emerged, 
 pushing through the crowd at the Grand Central Station, 
 she flushed with embarrassment, for she knew that Mamie 
 Epstein saw him give her the officer s salute with his 
 
 100
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 101 
 
 slender brown hand; that Ruth s intelligent eyes recog 
 nized him; that Annie McGee noticed how his brown 
 khaki arm slipped round her brown khaki waist; and 
 that Ellen Forsythe was not five feet away when he threw 
 Van Arsdale tradition to the winds and kissed her. .She 
 tried to make it seem to the girls like a casual meeting, 
 the merest accident; tried to shift out of the telltale curve 
 of his arm, and get out of the depot before the girls made 
 certain of what they must already suspect. Tucked into 
 the limousine with Wicks and the chauffeur seated in 
 front, she found herself suddenly as shy and trembling 
 as though the pink pearl ring were not still hanging from 
 her neck and Nick her parentally prohibited suitor; as if 
 the evening on the veranda had never been. 
 
 " How how did you happen to come for me ? " 
 she faltered, countering feebly. 
 
 ; Your mother let me. Of course, I told her I was 
 going to anyway, and she laughed and said I d better 
 take her motor. Oh, Mildred, I m so " 
 
 " When did you get back? " 
 
 Yesterday I ve hardly been away just down to 
 Virginia to work in the clay soils a little." 
 
 " Poor Nick." 
 
 " Oh, not at all I haven t found it bad and you 
 ought to see me with a shovel I m prepared to be your 
 gardener Mildred dear " 
 
 But there really isn t any privacy in a limousine making 
 its way down Fifth Avenue in the middle of the morning 
 stopped by the traffic policemen, crowded up against 
 busses full of staring passengers, taking the wake of 
 vituperative delivery drivers, dodging under the noses 
 of formidable trucks lumbering like land whales with 
 their loads of boxes and surreptitious small boys. Mil 
 dred laughed a little at Nick s pretended chafing under
 
 102 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 the restraint of being able to do nothing more than hold 
 her hand beneath the dark fur robe, but she was con 
 scious that she wasn t altogether sorry about it. It might 
 be the latent instinct of coyness that hadn t had time to 
 develop before their sudden passion came upon them; or 
 it might be just a touch of self -consciousness that her 
 first experience of independent living had given her, or 
 perhaps a suspicion of resentment that her old life 
 should try so soon to shut out her new experiences, but 
 anyway she kept in an impersonal world till the car set 
 them down at her door, and there was the sudden 
 scramble of Ruthie and Junior past Waddell standing 
 stately but smiling at the door. There had been no mo 
 ment with Nick alone, and when she saw him again it 
 was in the midst of other people and overlapping excite 
 ments. 
 
 For gayeties and pleasures and frolics came crowding 
 on each other s heels, and over them and through them 
 and between them, she and all the young people were 
 talking, talking, talking, about the things they had seen 
 and done and the people they had met ; telling those who 
 hadn t yet gone into the Service all about it as though 
 they were college sophomores, instructing their elders and 
 their youngers in a highly superior way, and getting much 
 joy and much credit with themselves in the process. 
 
 And what the young of the Carvers and the Van Ars- 
 dales and the Wests and the Hopes and the Wintermutes 
 did for their families, Mamie did for the family in Or 
 chard Street, till the prolific circles of the Epsteins and the 
 Berkovitches heard how " grand " this Service was and 
 how you might be sitting on the same seat with Mrs. 
 Astor understand me ? and never know a thing ! 
 And they learned how there was a lot of the United 
 States besides the New York Ghetto into which they had
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 103 
 
 crowded straight from Ellis Island, and other things to 
 do besides " working by suits," and possibly other rea 
 sons for working than just to make a living but not 
 much of this last doctrine, for John Barton, who had put 
 it into words in Minneapolis, had not been so much of a 
 Sun God to Mamie Epstein as to Mildred Carver. And 
 there was the talking, talking, talking in the circles where 
 Ruth Ansel went, circles in which the theory of the 
 Service was indeed apprehended intellectually but only 
 so far as it concerned material things. And the individ 
 ualistic temperamental groups of Greenwich Village 
 heard it; and the daughters of Tammany Hall told of the 
 same things in their different way. Conflicts with paren 
 tal ideas were sharp and flat all along the line for shall 
 one encourage the young to demolish the order in which 
 one has learned to live even if one does not like it? to 
 cast reflections on the generation which might have been 
 expected to demolish it for itself? Many startled fam 
 ilies took measures to counteract the insidious evil 
 measures ranging from the strong arm and the upraised 
 voice, to silent prayer. Mrs. Carver, casting about des 
 perately for some defense worthy of her position, hit 
 upon the idea of a dinner dance to which Mildred could 
 ask her Service friends. What if Mildred wasn t out 
 yet she was eighteen ! 
 
 Mrs. Carver planned it as the sort of party she had 
 been brought up to the only kind of party the Car 
 ver family countenanced. It would be very beautiful 
 and very stately and very costly. There would be a won 
 derful dinner, and the most fashionable Hungarian or 
 chestra in a flower-filled ball-room, and afterward there 
 would be a supper served delicately. 
 
 Several things at once Mary Carver expected to ac 
 complish, by this dinner dance. She wanted first of all
 
 104 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 to show her own daughter by a vivid object lesson just 
 what the life she had been born to really meant, in beauty 
 and delight and the possibility of self-gratification, as 
 compared with the life in the Service of which she seemed 
 transiently enamored ; and second, to show her how very 
 ill this heterogeneous mass of Service acquaintances fitted 
 into the circle of the Carvers who, after all, had dis 
 covered the one perfect way of living. Mrs. Carver s 
 inner consciousness was wickedly and comfortably aware 
 that that sort of entertainment, rigidly persisted in, was 
 not likely to show the majority of the Service girls 
 and she remembered Mamie Epstein poignantly in 
 the most attractive light. 
 
 Waddell, standing importantly at the drawing room 
 door on the evening of the dance was greeted confidently 
 as " Mr. Carver " by Mamie Epstein in a green gauze 
 costume purchased entire out of a Grand Street window. 
 The memory of Mrs. Carver s clothes in Minneapolis had 
 induced certainty as to the financial position of the fam 
 ily, and didn t Miss Epstein know, from the Sunday 
 papers, that a dinner dance among the millionaires called 
 for a low necked, short sleeved gown? So Mamie ap 
 peared with a coiffure studied from a hair dresser s 
 window and practiced on for two days, a rather too high 
 complexion, and a calm conviction that her appearance 
 was all that could be expected of any one. Perfect and 
 serene, she entered the door, followed by a young man 
 in an obviously hired dress suit, whom she presented to 
 Waddell with much impressiveness as " my gentleman 
 friend." The butler was only revived by the sight of 
 Alice West and Sylvia Hope coming up the stairs in 
 simple pre-debutante gowns. It was with plaintive grat 
 itude that he escorted Arthur Wintermute to where Wicks 
 waited to take his coat. Waddell could catalogue a
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 105 
 
 Wintermute or a West or a Hope, but Epsteins and Mc- 
 Gees and Cappilarris, like the Smiths and Joneses, were 
 beyond his experience. He suffered acutely throughout 
 the evening. Think of his having to announce at the 
 drawing-room door the name of Mamie Epstein s gentle 
 man friend after he had seen him shaking hands with 
 Wicks as a comrade in the forestry service ! Except for 
 the torturing knowledge that such an experience might 
 now be expected in any American home, Waddell would 
 have given notice on the spot. 
 
 At Mildred standing by her mother s side in the draw 
 ing-room, Mamie gave a gasp of disappointment, for 
 she was dressed in the simplest of white dresses and with 
 no more coiffure than the twisting of her blond hair into 
 a knot at the back of her neck. Mrs. Carver, however, 
 was more satisfying. Here was such a gown as the 
 papers described as a " dinner dress," here was satin, 
 here were shoulders and a string of what Mamie hoped 
 feverishly were " real pearls " because she wanted to be 
 sure that she had seen such things. 
 
 The dinner started as Mrs. Carver hoped it would. 
 Out of uniform the differences between the young people 
 were disconcertingly evident. Looking around her great 
 dinner table, she was filled with self-congratulation. Mil 
 dred was too young to be counted on conversationally. 
 Her husband would be courteously attentive but not 
 necessarily exciting to the girls on either side of him. 
 David and Winthrop, whom she had especially enlisted, 
 were bred in the limitations of the Carver ideals. Annie 
 McGee in a " one-piece " dress of navy silk with a large 
 lace collar was not easy in the partnership of Arthur 
 Wintermute, dark, slender and faultlessly clothed, with 
 the kindest of hearts, the most democratic of intentions, 
 but no conversational ability to make them evident. El-
 
 106 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 len Forsythe in a dull red garment cut on the lines of a 
 garden smock and with what looked like a band of petri 
 fied entomological specimens around her head, was ob 
 viously disconcerting to Nick Van Arsdale. Winthrop 
 Carver, older and socially experienced, was evidently en 
 joying the companionship of Mamie Epstein. Mildred 
 had elected to sit by the " gentleman friend," whose name 
 proved to be Ulman, as probably the most difficult social 
 problem in the group. Mary Carver felt that things 
 were starting as badly as she hoped. 
 
 Waddell, circling the table at the head of his viand- 
 bearing corps, was conscious that some of the guests 
 did not wait until he presented the dishes at their left 
 before helping themselves. Others suffered from an em 
 barrassment so acute as to prevent their taking any food 
 at all. Constraint apparently emanated from every fork 
 and spoon, and though at first it merely paralyzed their 
 feeding muscles, it quickly rose and tied their tongues. 
 To Mary Carver the situation seemed an interesting vin 
 dication of her theory. 
 
 And then Mildred leaned forward and spoke to Mamie 
 Epstein down the table. 
 
 " Do you think this bread is made of our flour? " she 
 asked. 
 
 Mrs. Carver was conscious of a reluctant and exasper 
 ated admiration of her daughter. She hadn t reckoned 
 on the child s changing so much in three months. There 
 couldn t have been a more tactful remark more loosen 
 ing to the ducts of speech. She might have had twenty 
 years of experience as a hostess ! For here was a sub 
 ject on which all of them stood on absolute equality - 
 on which they need have no reticences or concealments. 
 
 The " gentleman friend " swung round in his chair 
 and concentrated an elaborately courteous manner on
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 107 
 
 Mildred a manner which gradually changed as he saw 
 her not as the " Miss Million-bucks " of the cartoonists, 
 but as a young girl with lovely direct eyes and a simplic 
 ity he had never supposed an attribute of the " swells." 
 Suddenly Mr. Ulman became an Othello, anxious to do 
 something that would please and get attention, and with 
 his experience in the forestry service as the only possible 
 field of narration for his position in the bookkeeping 
 department of the City Gas Company didn t present any 
 elements of romantic interest he began to tell Mildred 
 about finding a deserted cabin in the woods. 
 
 " And say, the things that were living there you 
 wouldn t believe it ! There was squirrels, of course, and 
 a hole where a woodchuck came in and there was a 
 wild-cat and kittens. Say, Jim, how many kittens did 
 that wild-cat have? " 
 
 The question was put to Wicks, busily engaged in pass 
 ing a conserve on the opposite side of the table. The 
 embarrassed footman reddened and pretended not to hear, 
 then as the question was repeated, he straightened up and 
 out of the servant class, and as Waddell stood petrified 
 with horror, answered clearly : 
 
 Three at first; one got away." 
 
 David, hurrying to the rescue of the beleaguered foot 
 man, asked what became of the kittens. 
 
 " I believe they were sent to the Bronx, sir. There s 
 two up there that come from that way." 
 
 And Ruth Ansel with a sudden tolerance which the 
 intellectual aristocracy does not always exhibit, said that 
 they must be the ones she had seen there last summer ; and 
 Alice West wished she had seen them ; and Arthur Win- 
 termute said he would go and see them, and under the pro 
 tection of a general buzz of interest in those wild-cat 
 kittens, Wicks went on passing the conserve, Waddell
 
 108 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 resumed mobility, and the trying incident was snowed 
 under. 
 
 But it had raised in the mind of Mary Carver fresh and 
 more disconcerting possibilities of companionship for 
 her daughter. Not that Wicks wasn t an exceptional 
 young man of upright character and an efficient foot 
 man; and a cat may look at a king yes, but not at a 
 princess ! 
 
 Mamie s eyes kept circling the table ceaselessly the 
 people, the flowers, the dishes, the silver, the relays of 
 delicate, unaccustomed foods, nothing escaped her at the 
 same time that she held up her end of the conversation 
 with Winthrop Carver. 
 
 " Say, who s that swell gentleman sitting next to Annie 
 McGee? Like a fish in the face he looks." 
 
 " His name is Wintermute Arthur Wintermute." 
 
 " My Gawd ! To a English Lord is it his sister got 
 married, last year that all the papers had it about her 
 trousseau? " 
 
 " Yes, Edith married Lord Percy Elton. They re 
 visiting here now." 
 
 Mamie studied Arthur minutely. 
 
 " Her picture, I seen in the paper. She don t look 
 like him. Even if her father wasn t a millionaire, I 
 guess she could get married." 
 
 " I guess most girls could," laughed Winthrop. 
 
 " Well, it ain t so easy if you live on the East Side. 
 And you gotta be awful good looking if you want to 
 get an uptown feller." 
 
 " Do most girls want to marry uptown men? " 
 
 " On the East Side I guess you ain t never been, to 
 think they wouldn t! Maybe you think it ain t so bad. 
 But I m part of it I m in the show, and I m going to 
 get out of it. Before I was in the Service I thought I d
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 109 
 
 have to try and get me an uptown feller like some of the 
 girls had done. But you gotta get a millionaire or it 
 don t do you no good. You can t get away with no re 
 finement that s as good as the genuine, if you don t marry 
 a real swell." 
 
 " And is that what you re planning to do ? " 
 
 The girl s frank scorn tore the mask from Winthrop s 
 ridicule. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Miss Epstein," he said quickly. 
 
 " You can believe me or not, I ain t thinking about that 
 like I did! Being in the Service I seen lots of ways I 
 don t have to work by shirtwaists and live on the East 
 Side. And I got all the rest of the year when I work for 
 the United States like everybody else does. Why, Mil 
 dred Carver ain t got nothing on me that way, has she? " 
 
 " None of us have anything on anybody while we re in 
 the Service." 
 
 " But you wasn t in it, was you? You look too old." 
 
 " I was in the army through the war. That s work 
 ing for the United States, too." 
 
 " Would you of done it if it hadn t been the war? " 
 
 " Miss Epstein, I don t know. I m afraid not. You 
 see, there wasn t any way for me to find out about it be 
 forehand as there is for you." 
 
 And he tried to tell her a little of what the army service 
 had meant to him. 
 
 Ellen Forsythe, further down the table, felt that she 
 must somehow overcome the disadvantages that were 
 descending upon her in this unsympathetic, bourgeois en 
 vironment. The resentment with which she had entered 
 the Service had not all vanished and she wanted to get 
 back to spheres of influence where she felt more at home, 
 so she turned to Nick Van Arsdale and with a slight clink 
 ing of the entomological specimens, inquired casually: 
 
 " Do you deep breathe ? "
 
 110 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Nick jumped. He had been talking round the curve 
 of the table with Ruth Ansel s brother on whose hockey 
 team he had played. 
 
 "I beg your pardon? " he said blankly. 
 
 " Do you deep breathe? " 
 
 Nick s mind was full of athletics and he took this to be 
 a new phrase on the same subject. 
 
 " Not very, but I think I shall get my chest expansion 
 up before the end of the year." 
 
 " Oh," cried Ellen. " It isn t that! It s to get inspi 
 ration and concentration! It s psychology really." 
 
 Nick s eyes began to dance. The girl was evidently a 
 freak and such a chance and then he caught Mildred s 
 look, and collapsing under its entreaty answered Ellen 
 with a beautiful consideration that made her feel a little 
 goddess of wisdom and fount of inspiration. None of 
 her brother s artist friends, nor the maned writers she had 
 met in the basement cafes, nor the professional Bohe 
 mians of Greenwich Village, nor the high school boys of 
 her home town in Ohio, had ever roused such a feeling 
 of self-appreciation in her. And she was made content 
 again with the Egyptological costume of which she had 
 begun to develop doubts, and her content reflected back 
 to Nick again, to his slender brown hands and his shining 
 brown hair, and his clear brown eyes, and he seemed to 
 her to radiate light as though an incandescent soul were 
 shining through, and for Ellen Forsythe Nick became 
 one with the Sun God. For there are constellations 
 many, and Sun Gods many, to furnish forth the world ! 
 
 Little whiffs of music had been drifting in to them dur 
 ing dinner and when these were followed to their source, 
 there was the ballroom gay with flowers and Christmas 
 greens. The music swelled as they came in, and Nick 
 swinging Ellen out upon the floor found her dancing with
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. Ill 
 
 a grace and abandon that made him forget the smock- 
 like gown, and rise above the distractions of her head 
 dress, only hoping desperately that a large, blue, beetle- 
 like object opposite his left eye, was really dead. Mamie 
 had been disconcerted by the fact that her gentleman 
 friend had not been seated next her at dinner and she was 
 further confused by the fact that he clutched Mildred in 
 an almost frantic embrace and bore her into the dance. 
 This was not the accepted conduct east of the Bowery. 
 But on Winthrop Carver s asking her quite formally if 
 he could have the pleasure of dancing with her, she was 
 comforted. And if this " real swell " did not hold her 
 so close, nor swing her so fast, nor talk to her so much 
 as one of the East Side boys would have done, she still 
 got a great and tremulous pleasure out of it. David was 
 dancing with Ruth Ansel trying to rather, because 
 Ruth was built rather for utility than grace or pliability, 
 and their efforts resembled a wrestling match. 
 
 " Oh, poor David ! " cried Mary Carver to Aunt Milli- 
 cent who had dropped in to watch. " She is walking all 
 over both his feet at once. What an awful time her 
 mother will have making her go after she s out ! " 
 
 Aunt Millicent considered Ruth drastically. 
 
 " My dear Mary, that girl is out now as much as she 
 will ever be. She s not the sort that goes to anything 
 but dances at clubs or hotels or things like that. Except 
 for meeting Mildred in the Service she couldn t possibly 
 have been here." 
 
 Mrs. Carver s spirits were reviving. The accomplish 
 ment of dancing was evidently too full of the pitfalls of 
 different methods to be socially smooth. This ought 
 to make plain to Mildred what she felt the dinner itself 
 had failed to do what she herself had not had the cour 
 age to put into words.
 
 112 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Well, I think she s having a good time now." 
 
 Aunt Millicent turned at the tone and found her se 
 renely smiling. 
 
 " So that s it ! I suppose one may be catty in a good 
 cause." 
 
 Andrew Carver on his way to a later engagement ap 
 peared at the ballroom door with Apperson Forbes beside 
 him. Mildred ran across to her great-uncle a lovely 
 Artemis in a cloud of white and quite casually smiled 
 at Apperson Forbes, such a sweet, frank smile, and was so 
 overwhelmingly lovely as she did it, that looking into her 
 eyes which were almost on a level with his, he felt a cold 
 prickling in his long stiff spine. 
 
 Old Andrew s eyes twinkled as they traveled round the 
 room. No pleasing eccentricity of costume or pretense 
 of elegance escaped him. Even so mild an adventure 
 was a delight. 
 
 " I m afraid these young people don t fit their steps very 
 well," he chuckled to Aunt Millicent, " but what s that 
 they re doing now? " 
 
 David s voice came across the room. 
 
 " A batch of Hungarians that we had in a concentra 
 tion camp did it like that it isn t the Czardas exactly - 
 more rudimentary and lots more fun. I got them to 
 teach me most of the company learned. The advan 
 tage is that you can do it without any other music than 
 a drum." 
 
 The young people formed about him as he stamped and 
 glided and kicked across the floor. And then Ruth An 
 sel tried to follow and almost fell over her own feet, and 
 Mildred set her hands on her hips and began, and Arthur 
 Wintermute and Nick ; and finally Ellen Forsythe slid out 
 upon the floor and the steps and the stamps and the glides 
 and the strange five-four time seemed things she had
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 113 
 
 been born to, and the red smock floated out and the beads 
 and the trophies clanked, and she was a new dancer danc 
 ing a new dance and quite surprisingly lovely as she did 
 it. And they all tried it again and again and the orches 
 tra leader who had a soul above the one-step, tucked his 
 violin under his chin and evolved out of his inner con 
 sciousness a melody in the elusive rhythm or perhaps 
 he had brought it from some Hungarian village, and 
 came out from behind his screen of palms, a lambent- 
 eyed figure who kept the time with a tapping heel. 
 
 It was, he told them, a dance of the peasants in the 
 little villages of the Carpathians. A dance around the 
 fire in the evening, and danced together by the master and 
 the servant, and even by the lord from the castle, some 
 times when he was a boy. And they all stamped and 
 glided and snapped their fingers in the air as they spun 
 around. Mamie Epstein s fat little legs and Ruth An 
 sel s long shambling ones, the gentleman friend s rented 
 coat tails cutting up the same capers in the air as Nick 
 Van Arsdale s superlative clothes. And then the leader 
 of the orchestra he seemed hardly to touch the violin to 
 make the music come cried exultantly : 
 
 " See it is the morning of the day and the hunters leave 
 their sweethearts for the chase see all ! " and he caught 
 Mildred round the waist and swung her swiftly in fare 
 well. 
 
 "See all!" 
 
 And Nick caught the girl nearest him, and David 
 valiantly swung Ruth Ansel, and the room was filled with 
 whirling skirts. 
 
 " Now," cried the violinist, " it is the music of the 
 hunt," and he began a smooth, racing melody which the 
 rest of his orchestra, stepping out from behind the palms, 
 carried on as he led the men round in the swift rush of
 
 114 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 the syncopated five-four gliding, stamping, step, while 
 the girls pressed back against the wall. He changed the 
 rhythm and the men stopped, panting. Now, he told 
 them, it was the village at the close of the day, and there 
 came the song of the mothers to their babies and then way 
 off in the distance the return of the hunters. The young 
 men stirred again without waiting for the leader as the 
 rhythm grew faster. Nick started it and the others fol 
 lowed, and as they passed Wicks, stationed immovable 
 beside Waddell at the door, he too swung forward with 
 the intoxication of it all, till the butler caught him by the 
 arm. 
 
 Old Andrew s dapper little feet stirred in his perfect 
 pumps, his old blood quickened in his veins ; he too was 
 a young man again in his heart almost in his body 
 and past joys rose in him. 
 
 The bonds family tradition had set on him were 
 loosed here at their very source the freedom which he 
 had evaded the family to enjoy, was here at the fountain 
 head. Looking back, Old Andrew thought himself none 
 the worse for his catholic enjoyments, so why should 
 other people be the worse for them ? 
 
 Apperson Forbes, too, was touched with the intoxica 
 tion but his feet stiffened in his boots, his fingers threaded 
 themselves stiffly in resistance. In the ordered universe 
 which he understood, emotions and freedoms were ex 
 pected to stay rigidly in the pigeon homes where they 
 belonged. 
 
 The hunting song swelled higher and the returning 
 hunters whirled their sweethearts to the quickening beat 
 of the music and then on round and round and round the 
 imaginary fire in the imaginary village in the imaginary 
 hills, till the very Carpathians seemed to rise and shelter 
 them and the streams came tumbling over the rocks ; till
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 115 
 
 every long corseted impulse of these children of princes 
 and peasants were loosed, and each boy s arm was round 
 the waist of his real sweetheart, and each girl s hand in 
 that of her real lover as the wild music with its unfettered 
 rhythm carried them on and on. And then from the 
 freedom of the edge of the world, the subtly changed 
 beat of the music brought them into the age-old Teutonic 
 waltz the same soothing swing that the northern 
 hordes carried into Spain and over into Egypt and left 
 as a precious gift to their Scandinavian neighbors and 
 their Celtic subjects, and the key rose from maddening 
 minor cadences up to the serene major, and the wild mel 
 ody was tamed, and chained, and faltered and died away, 
 and they were all back in Mrs. Carver s ballroom again 
 with a still orchestra sitting behind palms! 
 
 Mary Carver bade her guests good-night wearily. As 
 an example of how impossible it was to mix young people 
 of divergent traditions into a smooth social paste; of how 
 much better the Carvers way of life was than any other 
 way; of how the democratic ideals of the Service were 
 socially inapplicable, the dinner dance had failed. 
 
 And to crown it all, the next morning as Mildred was 
 leaving to go back to Minneapolis, she loosed the slender 
 chain from her neck on which hung the pink pearl ring. 
 
 " Mother," she said, " will you take care of this, please? 
 It s really in the way."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 BEFORE the Minnesota winter had loosened its 
 grip, a fresh band of recruits from the Pacific 
 Coast came to take the places of the Forty- 
 second Unit and Mildred and her friends were sent to 
 the field work. They said good-by to the flour mill with 
 considerable regret. It had been their introductory par 
 agraph in the book of work and they had an affection for 
 it. The hurrying belts and wheels, the clanking, roaring 
 machines, the flying white dust were all unlovely enough, 
 but the big thing that they represented, the girls had found 
 good. 
 
 John Barton saw them off at the train, an action so 
 unusual that Quartermaster Alice Farrington, who had 
 taken successive relays of Service girls away from the 
 mill, leaned from the car window to watch him specu- 
 latively. 
 
 Straight down the Mississippi Valley they went, out 
 of the region of tall Scandinavians, down through the 
 farms taken up by the " homesteaders " from New Eng 
 land searching for land with a smaller percentage of raw 
 rock and a longer " growing season," on through the 
 thrifty German settlements along the great waterways, 
 through the farms of the " poor white " invasion from the 
 hills of Kentucky and Tennessee to an old army can 
 tonment on the edge of Oklahoma which had been trans 
 formed into an Agricultural Training Camp. 
 
 Here, before the frost was out of the ground, they
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 117 
 
 were given their first lessons in the care and handling of 
 farm machinery. 
 
 Ruth Ansel standing before a bench in the repair shed 
 and carefully wiping with cotton waste the links of a 
 chain to be refitted over the sprocket wheel of a tractor, 
 looked up suddenly to see Ellen Forsythe drop the oil can 
 she was trying to fill and press two small, greasy hands 
 over brimming eyes. 
 
 "What s the matter?" she cried, striding around to 
 the other side of the work bench and putting a strong arm 
 across Ellen s shaking shoulders. 
 
 " I can t get the oil in it won t go the hole is too 
 little I ve spilled it over everything I I just 
 can t." 
 
 "Oh, bosh!" 
 
 Ruth caught up the can and unscrewed the top. 
 
 " Here, take it apart like this no, turn it the other 
 way, a screw doesn t turn like that! Here hold it 
 in your right hand and turn it so ! There now use 
 that funnel. What s a funnel? Why that thing there 
 like a Victrola horn little end in here that s it. 
 Now I ll hold it and you pour the oil. Not so fast! 
 Oh, Ellen, you ve run it all over the top ! Well, take it 
 over to the engineer and I ll sop it up. But what s the 
 use of being such a dub you don t think what you re 
 doing!" 
 
 " I don t want to think about things like this ! " said 
 Ellen resentfully as she carried the oil can over to where 
 a tractor with its attendant plows was being overhauled 
 under the supervision of the engineer. 
 
 Mildred, in overalls, was polishing the brass fittings, 
 her cheeks pink and her lips a little apart with the excite 
 ment. Mamie was kneeling on the floor, her quick hands 
 moving about the cylinders one girl was struggling
 
 118 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 with a wrench another with some lubricating graphite. 
 At the flour mill they had sat sedately on proper seats 
 and used that traditionally feminine tool, the needle, en 
 countering no worse dirt than flour i,o\v they were 
 expected to work with wrenches and pliers, with oil cans 
 and lubricants to do ill-smelling jobs with black, greasy 
 rags and polishes and cleaners and disconcerting com 
 pounds. They blacked their hands and jagged their 
 finger nails and acquired the compulsory working class 
 habit of wiping their hands on their nether garments and 
 rubbing their noses with their wrists for shall one 
 smear a real complexion with lubricating graphite ? They 
 were no longer fine upstanding human beings they be 
 came turners and twisters under wheels and about boilers ; 
 headlong divers into the midst of tangles of machinery; 
 grovellers under car bodies. It was as though they had 
 gone scampering back along the path of evolution, 
 through the quadrupedal stage to the age of worms. 
 
 After the " washing up " the first night, Ellen Forsythe 
 threw herself into a chair and began to cry. She was a 
 humorous little figure much too slender for the overalls 
 that had been dealt out to her; with her bobbed hair fall 
 ing forward over her ears, and her narrow shoulders 
 shaking as she sobbed. 
 
 " Look ! " she cried tragically, taking her hands from 
 her face and holding them out, " Just look! " 
 
 They were small hands small and weak. Each fin 
 ger was smooth and round and delicately pointed, the 
 palms sloped away quite suddenly toward the wrists 
 lovely clinging hands, but not much good to work with. 
 They had stood her fairly well in the mill, but now as she 
 held them out trembling, the narrow nails were black and 
 broken, they were bruised and scratched and blisters were 
 beginning to rise. Ellen, looking at them, began to sob 
 afresh.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 119 
 
 " Well, what of it? " inquired Ruth with a disconcert 
 ing young sternness. 
 
 " Is it that they hurt you? " inquired Mamie Epstein 
 sympathetically. " Say, I guess if you was to tell the 
 doctor " 
 
 " Oh, no I don t mind that! I could stand pain 
 it s ennobling but look at them, they ll never be right 
 again, never, never! " and she pressed them over her 
 streaming eyes. 
 
 " But, Ellen," Mildred began argumentatively, " You 
 don t need to get them as bad as that. I only broke one 
 nail that was cleaning the chain." 
 
 " Maybe you didn t, but I can t help it everything 
 hits me and things drop on me, and the wheels turn 
 when I don t think they will ! And everything ! " 
 
 "But Ellen you mustn t let them you must 
 watch ! " 
 
 " I can t watch things like that I don t care about 
 them; they don t interest me Oh, I hate it all ! " 
 
 The quartermaster seeing some trouble came and patted 
 Ellen on the shoulder and put lotion on the bruises and 
 court plaster on the scratches and generally did what she 
 could, but the girl was disconsolate. And when she was 
 given a lesson in running the tractor she fared even worse 
 levers and gears and speeds were nothing to her 
 she couldn t focus her mind on them. She did every 
 thing unfortunate except fall off. It was a nightmare 
 week to her. Her helpless hands were the fit expression 
 of her helpless mind so far as all machinery was con 
 cerned. The instructors instructed and the girls plead in 
 vain and so Ellen was transferred from the Agricultural 
 camp and sent as assistant to the postmaster of Central 
 City, Iowa. 
 
 Mamie herself was not having an easy time. She tried
 
 120 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 conscientiously, but the actual running of the tractor was 
 beyond her. 
 
 " It s like this see ? on the lever you push to make 
 it go, I gotta get my foot, and I gotta stand up to do it- 
 see? I dassent sit on the seat only when I want to stop, 
 and then I don t have to sit there see ? " 
 
 But if Mamie couldn t run the tractor in any way that 
 seemed to further the food production of the nation; the 
 environment she had grown up in had made her a won 
 derful cleaner of machinery. When Mamie had cleaned 
 a tractor, you could know that it was clean that its 
 tanks and oil cups were full and that it was ready to go in 
 to the fields the next morning. Hadn t she known what it 
 was to keep a power-driven sewing machine with all its 
 attachments up to the mark? Yes, Miss Mamie Epstein 
 made herself a valuable agriculturist although she was 
 hampered by all sorts of scientific ignorances. What 
 made a steam engine go she had no more idea of than the 
 mother of Robert Fulton. What made gasoline do any 
 thing beyond cleaning gloves she had never even con 
 sidered. Mildred and Ruth already knew how to run 
 automobiles and had no trouble learning to run tractors. 
 
 A week in the Agricultural Training Camp, and they 
 were all sent to a great Oklahoma ranch. There were 
 sixteen girls in the agricultural unit of fifty workers 
 sixteen girls, twenty boys and fourteen professional farm 
 laborers, men who had been through the training as re 
 cruits and had chosen to go on in this part of the govern 
 ment service. 
 
 They got to their barracks early in the day, and looked 
 out over a great rolling prairie not yet wakened to the 
 faintest film of spring green. 
 
 "If you was to ask me, I d say there was no place for 
 so much of anything to come from ! " cried Mamie.
 
 MILDREJ CARVER, U. S. A. 121 
 
 " God is supposed to have made it," said Mildred, 
 laughing. 
 
 She was a little shocked at her own daring in speaking 
 of God a merely formal church acquaintance so 
 casually. 
 
 "If Ellen were here, she d object to the mere theory 
 of His being concerned in it," commented Ruth. 
 
 " Well, my Mamma says it s ignorant not to believe 
 things like that. You can prove it by that, nobody told 
 you nothing." 
 
 The girls fell silent. Speculations about religion were 
 still for all of them things to be entertained furtively, 
 knocking wood the while, lest some offended deity stand 
 ready to punish the unspoken thought. 
 
 "Whadda you think we are going to do to it ? " inquired 
 Mamie, waving inclusive hands at everything in sight. 
 
 " Plow it, I suppose," answered Ruth slowly. " Don t 
 you remember what the man who lectured to us in Min 
 neapolis said about subsoiling and fertilizing and harrow 
 ing and seed beds ? " 
 
 " Oh, Gawd ! " said Mamie, awestruck. " Have I 
 gotta do all that ! " 
 
 Mildred remembered suddenly that Nick must be some 
 where in this part of the world he had written that 
 they were putting him on the real roadmaking at last and 
 sending him to the Southwest. It came over her how 
 little she had seen of Nick during her vacation; there 
 hadn t been an hour they had had alone. She didn t 
 know much of what he had been doing and nothing at 
 all of how he felt about it, but she thought she knew. 
 
 Poor Nick ! He didn t see this great business of work 
 ing for the United States as she did he couldn t ! No 
 body like John Barton had ever explained it to him. It 
 was going to be pretty hard to make him understand how
 
 122 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 she saw it even after they got back and were married. 
 The prospect appalled her. 
 
 The next morning an automobile bus carried them to 
 the field where the tractors waited for them to begin 
 work. It is one thing to run a tractor round and round 
 the practice field in the cantonment, and quite another 
 to start off over the prairies on one s own responsibility 
 with the great rumbling machine. 
 
 Mildred found herself on the second tractor in her 
 field, following the trained driver; and followed in turn 
 by a boy named Wilcox from San Francisco, who had 
 joined them from another training camp. She was so 
 excited that her hands shook and she wondered if she 
 could ever remember which levers did which things and 
 how to work them. And as she settled into her seat and 
 got her knickerbockered legs free for their work on the 
 levers, she had a sudden heartsinking at the thought of 
 the first corner and how she was going to turn it square 
 and trim, just at the moment when the leader turned it 
 ahead of her. She didn t have time to be afraid al 
 most automatically she started her motor, threw in the 
 clutch and the tractor began to crawl ahead. She said 
 over to herself part of a letter she had had from John 
 Barton that day. 
 
 " The field work isn t any harder than sewing flour 
 sacks when you get used to it. It s all part of the big 
 drive to get the people fed the most important thing 
 in the world ! " That s what she was going to do 
 " The most important thing in the world! " 
 
 Mildred had never been so excited in her life not 
 when the canoe capsized with her, not when she was al 
 lowed to come in for a moment before dinner and be pre 
 sented to the President of the United States, not when 
 Nick first kissed her in the moonlight ! That her tractor
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 123 
 
 should follow the car ahead evenly and at the proper 
 distance seemed " the most important thing in the world." 
 Her lips were parted for her hurrying breath, her hands 
 held the wheel so tight that they hurt her ; she was shaken 
 by an inward trembling. 
 
 Her machine seemed to yaw and gee like a sail boat but 
 she kept it following after sometimes she saw that it 
 overlapped the trail of the leader and replowed the land 
 sometimes it swung to the left and there was an un 
 touched strip ! The wheel seemed a living thing, utterly 
 perverse; the tractor was a great pachyderm running 
 wild. Miles and miles across the prairie she thought 
 they must have gone, before the leader looked back and 
 gave the signal to turn the corner. Mildred felt the 
 sweat start on her forehead as she brought the machine 
 about and slowed down to avoid fouling the plowshares. 
 Never before had life given to Mildred Carver such an 
 intoxicant as came from the first glance she dared to 
 take over her shoulder that showed her six plowshares 
 safely following her down the second side of the field. 
 Her first furrows were indeed twisted and uneven, but 
 they were there. She, Mildred Carver, was plowing the 
 land! 
 
 That first three hours of farm work didn t seem real to 
 Mildred they were too full of sensation and effort to 
 be of this world. There were the long stretches from 
 corner to corner that she tried to make straight the 
 turns when to bit her machine into obedience seemed like 
 swaying the universe. Not every time did she get round 
 the square without fouling the plows, and when she didn t 
 - there was the stopping of all three machines and the 
 pulling and the hauling and the general righting before 
 they could start again on the gradually shortening sides 
 of the great field; and finally the ending up with what
 
 124 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 seemed like a swirl of the head tractor in the center. Mil 
 dred hadn t had a thought all the time except to keep her 
 tractor going what levers she was to pull next, whether 
 she had better swerve around that little hollow or go 
 through it, just how long she must hold up her machine 
 at the corner to let the leader get the proper distance 
 ahead. She was too absorbed to notice the ache in her 
 muscles, the blisters rising on her hands and her growing 
 hunger till the leader called across that it was time to eat. 
 
 And there was lunch coming out of a hamper as they 
 reached the farm house not a little lady-like lunch such 
 as an elegant young female might permit herself to taste 
 in the middle of the forenoon, but good filling sandwiches 
 thickly spread with butter and meat, and hot cocoa and 
 hard boiled eggs and jam everything that naturally 
 belongs with a picnic except the pie ! 
 
 Mildred, looking for a place to wash, discovered the 
 pump, and an obliging young girl of fourteen ran out 
 from the farm house to work it for her and bring a tin 
 basin. 
 
 " Where do you hail from? " drawled the child softly. 
 
 "I beg your pardon?" queried Mildred, a little be 
 wildered, and then suddenly comprehending : 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Why, I live in New York City." 
 
 The girl s mouth and eyes opened wide together. 
 
 " Do you like it? " she asked. 
 
 "Like what?" 
 
 " Livin way off there like that ? " 
 
 Mildred laughed. 
 
 " It isn t way off when you re there it s quite near 
 by." 
 
 The child watched her soberly. 
 
 " My pap came down from Kansas when they opened 
 up the State."
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 125 
 
 Evidently this was a claim to consideration and Mil 
 dred met it with courtesy though quite uncomprehending. 
 
 " He came when they opened up the State " she re 
 peated insistently. " We got a good farm here. We re 
 makin out good." 
 
 " That s nice," Mildred repeated vaguely, she didn t 
 quite sense the meaning underneath the new phrases. 
 
 " Do you like it in New York City? " 
 
 " Why, yes of course I like it it s my home." 
 
 " Do you think I could get to go to the City, when it s 
 my service year ? " 
 
 " I don t see why not you just have to ask for it, 
 I guess." 
 
 " I never was to a city." 
 
 Mildred turned and looked at her carefully a red 
 dish, blond young thing as most of our native Americans 
 still are, showing the Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Scandinavian 
 derivations about the age of Ruth. Never seen a 
 city ! that must mean other strange things, too. She 
 wore a neat print dress of the cheap ready-made sort that 
 the New York factories turn out by the thousands be 
 tween seasons and that have almost everywhere super 
 seded the traditional homemade calico wrapper, greatly 
 to the advantage of the aesthetics. How would she like 
 the city? What would it do to her? Mildred was un 
 consciously just on the verge of incipient sociological 
 speculation when the tractor driver called her and she 
 went back for her second three hours on the machine. 
 
 She was still too excited to be really tired when her six 
 hour work day was up and the big bus brought the second 
 shift of workers, and gathered her up and took her back 
 to barracks for though the service recruits had short 
 hours under careful supervision, the machines never 
 rested while there was daylight to run them. For the
 
 126 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 earth persisted in swinging on round the sun whether the 
 farmers were ready for it or not and never since the 
 terrible lesson of the war with Germany had the govern 
 ment of the United States left the putting in of the crops 
 to chance, or individual initiative, or withheld help, or 
 labor, or subsidy, when these would help to the full feed 
 ing of the nation. 
 
 As the girls got used to their work, they had time to 
 see something of the people whose fields they tilled. 
 
 " Not more than a hundred people since they were born 
 have they seen ! And land not covered up by cities, only 
 in a park, I never seen till I was in the Service. There 
 ain t nobody they gotta keep up with. Not since they was 
 born did they ever have to do quick anything and I 
 ain t never had time to do anything slow. Different al 
 together it makes us ! " 
 
 The sixteen girls were lingering over their dinner when 
 Mamie launched her philosophy toward the quarter 
 master, Alice Farrington, who traveled with them as they 
 zigzagged rapidly north into Missouri to keep ahead of 
 the spring. 
 
 A black-browed girl down the table showed a gleaming 
 row of teeth and a flash of eyes like great black topaz 
 with brown lights in them she was from some unpro 
 nounceable province on the hither edge of Syria and had a 
 name commonly translated " Winkles " by the girls. Her 
 accent is not to be set down by the twenty-six letters of 
 our alphabet. 
 
 " It was like this in my home," she said, " only we were 
 always afraid." 
 
 " Afraid of what? " asked the quartermaster. 
 
 " Of the soldiers sometimes they came and took 
 what they chose; or of the wild dogs and wolves that came 
 down from the hills; or of the sickness every year, it
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 127 
 
 came and if you had it you would die; or of the evil spir 
 its that killed the crops by keeping the rain away." 
 
 The girls looked at Winkles in awe. This girl from 
 another civilization than theirs never seemed real she 
 breathed a combination of the Old Testament and the 
 Arabian Nights. Things that they had only read of had 
 been part of her experience. 
 
 " Then how was it like this? " asked the literal Ruth 
 Ansel. 
 
 " In my country there were not many people except 
 in the villages and there only a few. And there were 
 the same things to grow wheat and barley and corn. 
 And the water was from the well or the spring and not in 
 the house, just as it is here. Only no man had much 
 land, and they do not have machines like these we run to 
 make it grow much corn, and they are poor and very, 
 very dirty and they die soon in my country." 
 
 There was an awed silence round the table. 
 
 " Was that why your father came away? " asked Mil 
 dred gently. 
 
 The girl s teeth and eyes flashed back at her as though 
 a light had been turned quickly on and off. 
 
 " Yes to get away from being afraid and poor and 
 dirty and sick in America you do not have to have 
 these things. My father is now an American citizen and 
 I am a soldier for the government." 
 
 Mildred felt a lump rise in her throat, the very same 
 lump that came when John Barton had first talked to 
 them in the flour mill. Those emotions which had been 
 bred down below the surface in her race showed a ten 
 dency to well up again when she was deeply stirred by 
 something fine and big. 
 
 Winkles was becoming one of the best tractor drivers 
 not because she had any previous knowledge of any
 
 128 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 sort of machinery, but because she had great physical 
 endurance, a willingness to submit to direction and an 
 insistence on learning that was not equaled by any other 
 girl in the Unit. It was her first chance to become a part 
 of the great thing which made the difference between the 
 life her father had fled from, and the Utopia they thought 
 they had come into. 
 
 " The men that work for the farmers they are much 
 the same as in my country. Only it is we who are dif 
 ferent, but we work not for the farmer but for the 
 government and not for always, only one year." 
 
 "Say, ain t that a difference?" broke in Mamie Ep 
 stein. " I d die being lonesome if I was to have to live 
 here! What ud you do after dinner? What d you do 
 on Sunday? Who you gotta talk to when you ain t 
 workin ? Excuse me! " 
 
 " I think," said Ruth slowly, " I think it could be organ 
 ized I think " 
 
 But Mamie broke in again. 
 
 " Some ways it ain t as good as Orchard Street. I 
 don t notice it s any easier to keep clean than what it is 
 there we got about just as many bath tubs as they got 
 and that ain t any so s you d notice em. We get just as 
 good food and my Mamma she cooks it a lot better 
 than that time Mrs. Linden give me a dinner, cause the 
 bus with the lunch was late." 
 
 " They do cook badly," said Quartermaster Earring- 
 ton, " but then they haven t the variety we have in the 
 city they - 
 
 " Well, that s up to them. Ain t this the kind of place 
 things grow that you eat! " 
 
 The farm hands did appall the girls. Not that there 
 were many of them for the Service was driving them 
 out but still some did exist vestigial remains of an
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 129 
 
 unorganized civilization that was passing away. They 
 were in startling contrast to the group of industrial 
 workers the girls were used to in the cities; physically 
 large and strong as was necessary to the work they did 
 physically slow as having no need to keep up with the 
 motions of hurrying machinery but only with the delib 
 erate strides of inevitable nature. No need for them to 
 be well informed, or well dressed, or good citizens, for 
 there was nothing to be gained for them as farm hands 
 by any self-development beyond the physical. There 
 were practically no mental or moral demands in their 
 calling and small social or financial satisfactions. 
 
 " Gee! If it was me I d rather be workin by infants 
 wear in Stanton Street seein what it does to em when 
 they get through," commented Mamie. 
 
 But before our Universal Service, the farm hand, even 
 the last remnant of him, tends to vanish, and the farms 
 themselves to shrink to a size that the owner can operate 
 between the stress seasons of seedtime and harvest. And 
 already under the organized help to the farmers, the 
 acreage under cultivation is slowly increasing and the 
 yield per acre going up. 
 
 Mildred loved the work. All her life she had been 
 used to being out of doors riding, tramping, playing 
 games, getting much joy out of the open air. Now she 
 had this same outdoor life in the interests of production 
 of industry. She kept telling herself that this was 
 the other end of the work John Barton was doing the 
 work of giving everybody bread the most important 
 thing in the world.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WORKING back and forth through the endless 
 green miles of the corn belt, past the point 
 ing white fingers of the scattered churches, 
 gradually northward from one little wood-built town to 
 another, the tractor teams of the Forty-second Unit be 
 came increasingly expert. 
 
 Mildred following after Edward Fox, the professional 
 worker who drove the first tractor, and followed closely 
 by Sam Wilcox on the third, no longer had any terror of 
 the corners of the fields, she knew she could turn them 
 safely; she no longer watched her furrows anxiously over 
 her shoulder, she knew they were straight. There 
 wasn t much chance to talk because the noise of their 
 combined engines was like the sound of aeroplanes in 
 flight, but there was a lot of time to speculate on all the 
 problems that were presenting themselves to her day by 
 day. 
 
 This speculation would have been inevitable to a girl 
 of her type and age, but if she had been a New York 
 debutante, as her mother had been, instead of a tractor 
 driver in the Mississippi Valley, it would have turned on 
 her personal concerns amusements, clothes and par 
 ticularly marriage to a far greater extent. 
 
 One day they plowed a great rich tract through the 
 middle of which ran a slow, meandering stream, lately 
 snowbound. A Service Corps was busy digging and 
 trenching along the bank of it and Edward Fox signaled 
 to stop. 
 
 130
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 131 
 
 " Taking the kinks out of the stream," the gang leader 
 told Mildred. " Land here grows too much corn to the 
 acre to let any more of it be under water than we can help. 
 Of course, it isn t as pretty to look at as it was before, 
 I guess we will have to look for beauty somewhere else." 
 
 And his glance at Mildred seemed to indicate where it 
 was to be found. 
 
 They tell me it pays well to straighten out the brooks. 
 Somebody in the University of Iowa made an estimate on 
 the number of acres it saved but I couldn t believe it till 
 they put me on this job." 
 
 Mildred went back to her tractor with a half-forgotten 
 " golden text " about " making straight His paths " float 
 ing in her mind, which drifted off into obscure calcula 
 tions of the number of corn bread muffins somebody 
 would eat because the curl was taken out of that particu 
 lar stream. 
 
 Another day Winkles came back at night full of excite- 
 ment. 
 
 There was a little hill oh, a very little hill and 
 the men in the uniforms were putting small trees on the 
 top of it a long row of very small trees. Why do you 
 plant trees ? I said to them. They told me it was so the 
 wind would be kept from the young corn. And that is a 
 wonderful thing in this country, that the government 
 keeps the wind from the young corn! " 
 
 And that, too, Mildred thought about while she rode 
 her tractor. 
 
 One night in Missouri, their barracks was on the 
 ground of an Agricultural Experiment Station and the 
 recruits stationed there welcomed them with hilarious joy 
 and told them about the experiments they were making 
 in early varieties of corn, and wheat from China, and new 
 fertilizers and ways to circumvent the grasshopper
 
 132 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 these all mixed up with the gossip of the Service, and 
 national politics as interpreted in the light of their eight 
 een years, and a lot of scattering personalities and some 
 faultfinding. 
 
 " What do you think of being eight miles from the 
 movies for four months! Why, I d even be darn glad 
 to see those before-the-war films of Charley Chaplin!" 
 
 " We haven t seen any since we left Minneapolis, 
 either," said Ruth Ansel. " But if it s any comfort to 
 you, I ll tell you about the last ones we saw there." 
 
 After an outraged silence the Experiment Station re 
 cruits told Ruth what they really thought of her and har 
 mony was restored. 
 
 It was the evening after that or the next but one that 
 Mamie said earnestly to Mildred : 
 
 " One more young man gets stuck on you, Mildred. 
 Sam Wilcox ain t it so? Off you he don t take his 
 eyes." 
 
 Mildred turned in surprise. They were sewing under 
 the lamp holes in stockings, rents in skirts, buttons on 
 underwear. Mildred was doing it painstakingly but 
 exceedingly ill, it irked her more than anything in the 
 Service, and she watched enviously the carefree way in 
 which Mamie attacked needle and thread. She could 
 never get used to Mamie s way of talking things out to 
 her disregard of what was commonly taken for granted 
 or implied or pretended. 
 
 " What makes you think Sam Wilcox is stuck on me ? " 
 Mildred knew it wasn t any use to fence with Mamie but 
 ancestral reserve made her try. 
 
 " Well, why wouldn t he be ? All day he sees you on 
 the tractor riding, and every evening coming here." 
 
 " Mamie Epstein, what makes you always think 
 somebody is stuck on somebody else? It makes me so 
 uncomfortable ! It spoils all the fun ! "
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 133 
 
 " Fun all right it is for you, but how I worry about 
 it you should know ! " 
 
 " Nobody has to marry ! " 
 
 Mamie s shrug was a quick arraignment of the whole 
 feminist movement. 
 
 " An old maid you think I should be working by shirt 
 waists till I gotta die! Such plans I ain t got for my 
 self!" 
 
 They sewed silently for a while. Ostensibly all Mil 
 dred s attention was concentrated upon her rather futile 
 efforts to sew a ripped seam ; in reality she was struggling 
 with a sudden fit of physical distaste at the idea of Sam 
 Wilcox being " stuck on her." There was a certain sleek 
 masculinity about Sam, all frank and clear skinned and 
 boyish as he was; that repelled her the moment she saw 
 him in the light of a possible lover. Mamie s words had 
 brought him into quick contrast with Nick and all her 
 aesthetically critical senses sprang away from his short 
 fingered, clumsy hands, the clumsy, untaught processes 
 of his brain; from his vigorous but ungraceful body; 
 from his innocent but unlovely manners toward the 
 slender figure of Nick with all its perfection of finish in 
 physical detail a crisp, definite modeling of the bones 
 as they showed through the not too abundant flesh; the 
 careful marking of his eyebrows ; the supple adaptability 
 of his hands; the bodily control that kept him always 
 physically at ease ; the consideration of manner bred into 
 him for generations. It all came to Mildred as a wave 
 of feeling rather than of thought. Emotionally she 
 pushed Sam away with outward facing palms. When 
 she brought herself back to the present Mamie was say 
 ing: 
 
 " With you it s different. All those swell uptown 
 fellers you got a chance to get married to. I bet your
 
 134 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 father could give a boy a five thousand dollar check and 
 never make no difference in the housekeeping." 
 
 " But I m not thinking about getting married not at 
 all!" 
 
 Mildred stopped suddenly of course in a way she 
 was thinking of getting married, for there was Nick 
 but it all seemed very far away and unimportant. 
 
 " Honest, Mildred, you make me so tired ! Ain t Mr. 
 Barton just waiting till it is October and you get out of 
 the Service ? Not that I would say you should take him 
 understand me with swell fellows coming to your 
 house and pearls on your mother s neck like they was sold 
 at the ten cent store- that plenty! But Mr. Barton 
 from Minneapolis or Sam Wilcox from San Francisco, 
 would be different for me." 
 
 Mildred turned on her suddenly. 
 
 " Mamie, you don t mean 
 
 " Sure, I do mean ! Never does a young man come 
 along that I don t say to myself, Is that the young man 
 you should get married to, Mamie Epstein ? 
 
 " But Sam Wilcox isn t - 
 
 " Sure, I know he s a Krist, but what did my Papa 
 come by America for if I ain t gotta right to marry if I 
 can get him a young man not working by cloaks and suits 
 in New York City?" 
 
 " Of course, you ve the right, Mamie but 
 
 " No rich uptown feller, like some of the girls has got, 
 for how would I get away with it, and his Papa and 
 Mamma and everybody smiling sarcastic ? And Mr. Bar 
 ton from Minneapolis right away it would be every 
 thing like his mother did was all the way there was to do 
 it understand me ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mildred slowly she was filled with a 
 blind resentment that Mamie should even imply a criti 
 cism of her prophet of light.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 135 
 
 " But Sam Wilcox, what is the gents furnishing 
 business in San Francisco that I gotta put up any pretense 
 of refinement if I got a husband that s in it? Sure, I can 
 get away with the gents furnishings all right! " 
 
 Mildred still sewed valiantly at her seam but she had 
 lost the power of concentrating upon it. 
 
 " It ain t that you would get married to him yourself, 
 Mildred all the grand chances you got. Just enter 
 tainment it is, like you was going to the movies." 
 
 Outside there was a loud, keen whistling of an intri 
 cate syncopated measure with as elaborate ornamentations 
 as the human mouth-parts make possible and Mamie and 
 Mildred raised their heads. 
 
 "Ain t I telling you? Every night he comes like it 
 was a rubber band that pulled him? " 
 
 " I ll go, Mamie I ll go upstairs in a moment or 
 two." 
 
 Sam Wilcox strolled over and sat as close to Mildred 
 as the mechanical construction of tables and chairs per 
 mitted. 
 
 " Well, ain t this a cheering sight for a man that s been 
 sewing on his own buttons for six months? " 
 
 " And whose buttons would it be you sew on, if it 
 ain t your own buttons," commented Mamie softly. 
 
 Sam Wilcox hardly noticed her. 
 
 " Makes you feel like you was married and got a home 
 of your own I guess " 
 
 " Well of all the nerve ! Do you think any girl gets 
 married so s to have a license to sew on buttons for noth 
 ing? There s more n a hundred places in New York 
 City where she gets paid for that kind of pleasure in per 
 fectly good money." 
 
 Mildred laughed a little nervously. 
 
 " Say, ain t it some better n running a tractor that s 
 liable to balk any minute? "
 
 136 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " I don t like to sew," said Mildred deliberately. 
 
 " Oh, I say but maybe you wouldn t have to I bet 
 I make good money by the time I m twenty-one I - 
 
 Mildred rose hastily and gathered up her unfinished 
 seam. 
 
 " I ll take this upstairs," she said. 
 
 Mamie watched her go comprehendingly. Sam waited 
 a while in silence and then turned to Mamie. 
 
 " Ain t it funny she shouldn t like to sew? " 
 
 Mamie was obtrusively diligent with her needle. 
 
 " Oh, not so funny you would notice it. Sam Wilcox, 
 do you think it is so nice that a boy should be talking 
 about getting married like it was a new kind of work for 
 his wife!" 
 
 " Oh I say, Mamie I meant " 
 
 " Well, the girl you talk work to, you gotta pick care 
 ful ! Mildred Carver, if you could see the house she lives 
 in and her Mamma with real pearls, you wouldn t talk 
 sewing on buttons to like it was a great privilege." 
 
 " What s pearls ! My mother s got a diamond pin and 
 earrings to wear to church." 
 
 " Say, what s diamonds for church ! I guess Mildred s 
 Papa if he should want a church he could buy it all right ! 
 Butlers they have and a swell room to dance in like you 
 rented a hall in Avenue A." 
 
 It wasn t clear to Sam Wilcox just what Mamie meant. 
 The mind can only receive what it is prepared to hold, 
 and as far as social distinctions, and financial levels, and 
 the relation of the diamond and the pearl to each other in 
 the social scale, and such like subtleties, the mind of Mr. 
 Sam Wilcox was as unprepared as the unbroken prairie 
 for corn. 
 
 " A girl that sews easy before she gets married should 
 like to sew on buttons after she gets a husband. Sewing
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 137 
 
 I been doing ever since I could make a thread through the 
 hole of a needle go ! " 
 
 Mamie was only subtle in her receive her serve was 
 direct and square in the court. There was not even the 
 suspicion of a cut on it, but it got by Sam. 
 
 Mamie s fingers speeding the needle in and out were 
 obvious, they flashed and danced before the eyes of Sam 
 Wilcox. The thread mended and buttons flew into place 
 like pictures drawing themselves on a movie screen, 
 but the boy looked persistently toward the staircase down 
 which Mildred might reasonably be expected to return. 
 
 " Your Mamma has some more boys? " Mamie s voice 
 was gutturally sweet. 
 
 " No such luck for the old lady, thought when she 
 saw what I was like she couldn t make no improvements." 
 
 " Say, you don t hate yourself ! But some girls she s 
 got?" 
 
 " Nope only yours truly ! " 
 
 " Ain t it grand she should have diamond pins and 
 everything! " 
 
 " She looks all right when she s dressed up, too. I say 
 to her, Ma, look at the fellows watching you, they think 
 I got a new girl, just like that." 
 
 " Oh, ain t you sassy by your Mamma! " 
 
 " She likes it, you bet but what s eating Mildred 
 ain t she coming back? " 
 
 There was a pause full of Mamie s marshaling of re- 
 enforcements. 
 
 " Resting after the sewing, I guess she is. If you ain t 
 used to sewing on buttons, more than running tractors it 
 makes you tired." 
 
 " Well I guess I ll be goin ! I m some done up 
 myself." 
 
 Mamie sewed slowly after Sam had gone sewed
 
 138 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 while she reviewed the situation. There was no sen 
 sitiveness in her appreciation of the fact that she ob 
 viously hadn t even got the rays of Sam s matrimonial 
 headlights deflected in her direction. Sam looked to her 
 about like the thing she could get away with. She folded 
 her sewing with smart speed and went to join some girls 
 under the further lamp. They were poring over the 
 fashions in the back of a woman s magazine. 
 
 " Say, ain t it fierce the way somebody else s always 
 froze onto anything you want? " she complained. 
 
 "What s the matter, Mamie?" 
 
 " Well, there s those styles in ladies trotteur suits, and 
 there s that coat in chinchilla would I be getting them 
 do you think? And I bet I marry a gink that works by 
 pants in Rivington Street, after all ! "
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE U. S. A. wears the Corn Belt like a girdle of 
 glory with her summer dresses. Every year 
 when she has brushed off the white powder 
 that she puts on for the winter s gayeties, she looks to 
 the resetting and polishing of this chief treasure. Each 
 flat, square mile must be made ready for its enameling of 
 green, each thoroughfare and by-road must be polished 
 smooth to make easy the way of the crops. 
 
 The Forty-second Unit of the Eleventh Corps of the 
 Agricultural Service, swinging rapidly north before the 
 drive of a luminary, insistently bent on lengthening the 
 growing day of the crops -- came into a region of 
 new government roads flung down hastily like Sir Wal 
 ter s cloak before their rumbling busses. Gangs of husky 
 brown boys worked upon them under the supervision of 
 trained road-makers and one morning as Mildred climbed 
 to the seat of her tractor, Nick Van Arsdale jerked up 
 straight from his work ; ran across the meadow and cried : 
 
 " Hullo, Mildred," just as she started the motor. 
 
 There was no stopping then but when Mildred got 
 fairly under way she laughed back at him a serene 
 young figure in khaki, her blond braid held by a blue rib 
 bon and the morning breeze blowing little tendrils of gold 
 about her sunburned ears. And Nick felt a tear that 
 lodged under the corner of his eyelid spill over at the 
 courage of the laugh she sent back. Think of her having 
 to work on a farm she, who had always had every 
 little thing in the world done for her and ought to have 
 
 139
 
 140 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 been carefully taken care of always ! How she must hate 
 it, and yet smiling at him like that ! Work was a differ 
 ent thing for a man. As the tractor vanished over a little 
 rise in a cloud of dust, Nick walked across to the farm 
 house. The farmer s wife was most willing to talk to 
 this handsome service lad. 
 
 " They ll be back for lunch about nine. Oh, no, we 
 don t feed em. We just give em a place to eat in. See 
 those boxes? That s their lunch. It came by the bus 
 this morning. When they ve had it, they ll go to work 
 again and at half-past twelve the bus ll be along bringing 
 them that s to work in the afternoon and takin them 
 that s here back. How do we get em to come? Why, 
 we have to plant the crops that the government expert 
 tells us to. At first some of us stuck out for doing as 
 we d always done; but we couldn t get the government 
 help for the plowing and harrowing and planting in the 
 spring, or the cutting and binding and threshing in the 
 summer; and such as had it got way ahead of us. Yes, 
 they do pretty fair. There s trained men in charge to 
 tell em how. What ? oh, yes, all the machines belong 
 to them. Of course, the work don t take much judgment. 
 I guess if you know how to run an automobile you can t 
 go far wrong on it. But my the difference it makes in 
 the crops! Pay? why, of course we pay by the acre 
 and they bring as many people and as many machines as 
 they need. No, this is the first work this lot has done 
 in the county they come over to Kirksville yesterday. 
 Isn t that where you re put up ? " 
 
 Nick, tramping over to the barracks where the Forty- 
 second Unit was quartered, as soon as he had helped to 
 wash the dishes and brush up the crumbs, had a great 
 warm feeling around his heart. Mildred and he would 
 talk together of the people in New York and he would
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 141 
 
 tell her about how they really made roads and the time 
 the engine boiler exploded and what it was like to " drag " 
 the roads in dry weather, and oh, a lot of things. And 
 then it occurred that he would kiss her, of course didn t 
 one naturally kiss the girl one was going to marry ? And 
 a quick feel of that first kiss of theirs way, way back 
 there when they were both so young nearly six months 
 ago came to Nick and he hastened his steps. 
 
 But the sitting room of the barracks was full of people 
 - not only the girls who lived there, but the boys of the 
 Unit and several men from his own section and even from 
 Kirksville had made excuses to drop in. Mildred did 
 jump up and come running toward him and held out her 
 hand but there was nothing particularly satisfying about 
 a mere hand. He whispered to her to come out doors 
 with him. But there were little hitches she had to in 
 form Quartermaster Farrington that she was going out, 
 and get her coat, and write her name on the " on leave " 
 list before they could slip out through the door by them 
 selves. The cold air struck them like a rushing river 
 air fresh from the still frozen heights of the Canadian 
 border and taking all their extra energy to meet and com 
 bat it. So when Nick, safe at last in a protecting shadow, 
 slid his arm around Mildred and bent to meet her lips, it 
 was in the mid stream of a rushing air current that was 
 like the Mississippi in flood. No soft arms went up 
 round his neck as they had in the insidious perfume- 
 laden summer mist. No ! What he got was a rather un 
 satisfactory peck in the midst of wild catches at hat and 
 flying hair. And as for its being the soft ending of a 
 languorous day that had had nothing much but Mildred in 
 it anyway, why it was just something added to a day al 
 ready filled with hard physical exertion. They were not 
 any longer two young people with nothing to do but fall
 
 142 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 in love in a sense-compelling setting, but extraordinarily 
 busy recruits set primarily on the adventure of work. 
 
 To Mildred, Nick had never seemed so attractive. She 
 had been all these months with people whose small ways 
 were less charming and graceful but a new coquetry 
 had developed in her. She could not quite define it in her 
 self ; it was as though she were quite ready to admit her 
 engagement to him as an academic proposition, but not 
 as a working hypothesis. She somehow pushed their re 
 lations into a state of quite unaccustomed uncertainty 
 bewildering to Nick, for all she was so glad to see him. 
 They couldn t stay out doors indefinitely clinging to each 
 other under such emotionally adverse conditions. There 
 was nothing for it but to come back to the lamp-lit bar 
 rack-room and the chattering group around the stove. 
 
 Mildred took it all in good part too good, Nick 
 thought, considering that he was ordered away tomor 
 row and this was their one evening together. And so 
 because he was hurt and disappointed, he threw himself 
 into talk with Sam Wilcox and Winkles and a gesticu 
 lating, curly-headed young Italian, and talked roads and 
 farm machinery and planting; and criticized the food, 
 and raged at the regulations, and guyed the officers, and 
 altogether showed himself such a charming and normal 
 and lovable young man that the whole group could hardly 
 let him go when the nine o clock bugle blew. 
 
 And Nick, dull eyed, went back to his barracks and 
 made a humble comparison of himself with Sam Wilcox, 
 who had shown proprietary symptoms. Was not Sam 
 as good looking? As intelligent? Might he not some 
 time be as rich or if he were not, did that matter to 
 Mildred Carver? And there was this Barton they d 
 been talking about that evening as though he were the 
 king pin of the whole country. Same man Mildred had
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 143 
 
 written about from Minneapolis. That Mamie Epstein 
 raved about him too, but not so much as Mildred. You d 
 think girls would find something new to talk about! 
 Probably he was just another of these men that were in 
 love with Mildred ! Feeling shorn of any inherent mer 
 its that might make her prefer him after she had a chance 
 to choose, he went to bed with the realization of how 
 Mildred s matrimonial outlook had widened. Of course 
 he knew that almost any girl had a greater choice of 
 husbands than a rich girl in society. The men she may 
 appropriately marry are within a very narrow circle, the 
 greatest pains are taken to see that she meets no one out 
 side it, and most of the men in the world are outside. 
 Nick knew all these things and cursed the way his partic 
 ular section of the universe was constructed as he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 And Mildred, combing out her long, blond hair, thought 
 how splendid Nick was about work that she knew he 
 didn t care for at all. Of course, Nick was part of the 
 big job, too for if they didn t have good roads how 
 would they get about to plant the crops ? He wasn t im 
 portant like Mr. Barton, and after his year he would go 
 back to all kinds of things that didn t matter, while Mr. 
 Barton would keep right on helping to make flour. Mil 
 dred blushed at the mere coupling of the two names in 
 her own mind and Mamie Epstein coming across for 
 a last good-night gossip, caught the blush and the self- 
 conscious look in Mildred s eyes and made a quick mis 
 interpretation. 
 
 " You and me was saying last week a girl ain t got to 
 be in a hurry to get married, but such a young man as Mr. 
 Van Arsdale any girl can be lucky to get." 
 
 Mildred, jarred out of her little tender reverie, turned 
 suddenly.
 
 144 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Mamie I won t hear you talk all the time about 
 boys and getting married! And I wish you d let me 
 alone ! " 
 
 Mamie dropped her lower jaw in surprise, what was 
 there about matrimonial probabilities different from any 
 of the other affairs of life, that one should not speak 
 about them? Why, wasn t it a flattering attention to 
 rate another person s chances high in the marriage mar 
 ket? She rose in a slow bewilderment. 
 
 " Well, you needn t throw a hate on me because I say 
 you got a chance to get married to Mr. Van Arsdale. He 
 got such a respect off-a-you, I bet you don t have it just 
 friends with him if you don t like it. I - 
 
 Mildred turned again in a sudden flash. 
 
 " Stop ! " she cried. 
 
 And Mamie stopped. 
 
 So the little idyl which fortune flung them in this 
 chance meeting, she snatched back again and left nothing 
 but a sense of mutual exasperation. 
 
 Mildred lay for a long time enjoying a great variety 
 of conflicting and more or less undefined sensations. So 
 Mamie thought it was " just friends " between her and 
 Nick, did she? Well, that showed how little Mamie 
 knew about it ! But then Mamie was usually right about 
 such things as personal relationships think of the time 
 she knew for a week beforehand how Winkles was mad 
 at Miss Farrington, and nobody else even suspected it! 
 But of course she didn t know this time. The picture of 
 John Barton came slowly on the screen of her mind, but 
 she turned it back hastily as though it had no business 
 appearing unbidden or in that connection. And then for 
 safety from her own emotions, she thought of her work, 
 and that was a comforting thing, for she was beginning 
 to have ideas on an improvement of the grip handles of
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 145 
 
 her control levers and she wanted to talk with the Captain 
 of the Unit next day and see if he didn t agree with her, 
 and her mind grew hazy, hearing the Captain say : 
 
 " That is a wonderful idea, Miss Carver wonderful ! 
 All our engineers together never thought of a thing like 
 that! It will revolutionize farm tractors! " 
 
 And very dimly indeed she saw the other girls filled 
 with admiration and further off Nick registering awed 
 wonder and just as the dark of sleep closed over her, John 
 Barton said something about the noble work of feeding 
 the world only she was too far away to hear dis 
 tinctly.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 DEAR MOTHER : - 
 You know our second vacation week comes 
 next month. I want awfully to see you and 
 father and Ruthie and Junior, but it s such a terribly long 
 way to New York that I d have to be traveling most of 
 my vacation if I went home. So couldn t you all come 
 to Minneapolis which is just a little way off, and spend 
 the vacation there with me ? Please, please do ! You ve 
 so much more time than I have. You could be there 
 when I came and we d have a whole week together. You 
 know you haven t a thing to do and I have to begin the 
 harvesting right after vacation. We ll just have the 
 best time. All the other girls are going home because 
 their mothers and fathers can t come on and they are 
 kicking about it like anything, but it s either that or stay 
 in barracks and loaf. And there isn t the least reason in 
 the world why you can t come So do it, Mother dear, 
 oh, Please." 
 
 Mrs. Carver read this letter to her husband at break 
 fast after Junior and Ruth had gone to school. 
 
 " How absurd the child is ! As though I had nothing 
 to do ! " she commented laughing " and Junior s teeth 
 being straightened." 
 
 " It would take most of her time to get here and back 
 again," said Frank, laying down his paper and addressing 
 himself to his hothouse melon. " Wouldn t you like to 
 run out there, Mary? We could go on to the coast if 
 you cared to." 
 
 146
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 147 
 
 " I can t possibly, Frank. All the things I m inter 
 ested in are just finishing up then it s the very end of 
 the season and you know I m planning to get a new house 
 keeper for Torexo if it were a month later 
 
 "It isn t! I think, Mary, I ll go. There s nothing 
 here I can t leave for a fortnight or so Jameson is 
 pretty efficient." 
 
 " Oh, that would be nice ! You d have quite a lark 
 off there together. I know Mildred would love it. And 
 be sure you tell her all you can about Nick for after 
 all, Frank, nothing could be more suitable. We may just 
 as well face the fact, Frank. Mildred s the type that s 
 quite certain to attract men. I could see that it had al 
 ready begun when I was in Minneapolis and of course, 
 quite awful things could happen with her meeting every 
 body like this. Not that bad enough things aren t pos 
 sible when perfectly good boys of people we know are as 
 dull as Arthur Wintermute. But I m getting to feel as 
 though Nick were a sort of life preserver, and I don t 
 want him to get out of reach. If things were as they 
 were before the war I wouldn t be so much concerned, 
 but now people like us seem to be standing on quicksand. 
 Be sure you keep Nick in her mind all the time you re 
 there will you, Frank ? " 
 
 Frank Carver, planning to give his daughter the hap 
 piest sort of vacation, found himself suddenly wonder 
 ing what she would like to do. He knew what she had 
 liked as a little girl, fishing and riding and games and 
 mechanical toys; but something told him that her tastes 
 might be changing. Well, anyway, she was probably as 
 fond of candy as ever and on his way to the train he 
 laid in a stock of the most wonderful sweets New York 
 could provide. And then on a sudden shamefaced im 
 pulse, born of the fact that the sun glared distressingly
 
 148 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 from the newly sprinkled pavement, he stopped his motor 
 before a shop window that displayed parasols, and bought 
 a wonderful confection of satin and lace with a handle of 
 ivory. He didn t feel that the purchases which his man 
 carried into the train after him were at all adequate; he 
 was confessedly humble minded about them, but he hadn t 
 known what else to bring. 
 
 He sat in the pullman eyeing the parasol box morosely 
 and trying to think what Mildred would like to do in 
 this vacation week of hers. There were the theaters 
 but he wasn t sure whether Minneapolis had any that 
 were good. They could get a motor, of course Mil 
 dred had always had a car; and there was the river 
 and there might be ball games or tennis matches or some 
 thing. Frank Carver began to get panicky as the train 
 carried him west what was he going to do with this 
 girl of his, that he had been a stranger to for half a year? 
 There was nothing but the resources of a great city and 
 plenty of money to amuse her with, and he began to feel 
 helpless. And after all her work she must need amuse 
 ment ! He began to consider the parasol box hopelessly. 
 If he only knew the town better! Why had she hap 
 pened to pick out Minneapolis, anyway? Was it the 
 nearest large city? He sent the porter for a railroad 
 map. No, it wasn t the nearest to the last address she 
 had given not by some inches on the map ! Omaha 
 and Kansas City were nearer and Chicago wasn t any 
 further away ! What possessed the child to pick out that 
 place ! As though she hadn t had enough of it when she 
 was working in the flour mill ! Strange thing for her to 
 do ! He got the explanation the second day. 
 
 Mildred came down to breakfast with her hat on and 
 began to hurry her breakfast. 
 
 " I ll just run over to the mill, father, while you re read 
 ing your paper," she remarked casually.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 149 
 
 " What mill ? " he inquired in surprise. 
 
 "Why, the mill I worked in! " she answered with a 
 surprise greater than his own could there be more than 
 one mill she would want to see ? 
 
 " All right, daughter I ll be ready in a few min 
 utes." 
 
 " Oh, no, father," her consternation was evident. 
 " Oh, no ! " and then more gently, " I wouldn t feel com 
 fortable to make you go way out there." 
 
 Frank Carver was somewhat disconcerted. In effect 
 his daughter had told him that she didn t want him along. 
 
 " Very well ! " he said quietly, " just push the cream 
 this way, please thank you I ll wait till you come 
 back," and seeing Mildred rise, " Waiter, call a taxi." 
 
 " Oh, father ! A taxi ! I d feel so queer when we al 
 ways walked! " 
 
 " I d rather you d take one, my dear and then 
 you ll be back sooner. Taxi s here, is it? Thank you." 
 
 He rose and escorted his young recruit through the 
 lobby, put her in the cab, as a daughter of the Carvers 
 had always been installed in her chariot, and closed the 
 door. 
 
 " Wait and bring the lady back, driver. What s the 
 address, Mildred? Just the government flour mill ? You 
 know it, do you, driver? Very well." 
 
 He felt the incongruousness of it a sort of double- 
 edged incongruousness. Here was the carefully guarded 
 daughter of his house going alone and quite unprotected 
 in a mere public conveyance to visit a manufacturing 
 plant ; but here was also a recruit in the government serv 
 ice wearing the uniform of the United States, being tim 
 orously conveyed to the place where she had been 
 employed in a privately hired taxicab. Looking after 
 her till the cab turned the corner, he was conscious of a
 
 150 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 distressing lack of coordination in his thinking parts. 
 Back at his table he sat idly stirring his coffee, discon 
 certed and a little hurt. He had intended to give Mildred 
 the parasol after breakfast it was just the sort of day 
 when he thought a girl would like one to carry but, of 
 course, it would have been out of place in a flour mill. 
 When she got back 
 
 It was almost noon before she came into their little 
 sitting room, showing no consciousness of any particular 
 obligation to have returned earlier. 
 
 " Did you have a good time? " there was a certain 
 intent of irony in Frank Carver s question, but his daugh 
 ter didn t perceive it. 
 
 " Oh, father isn t the way they make things per 
 fectly wonderful! There were a lot of things I didn t 
 understand about the mill while I was in it ways 
 the machines worked, you know, and exactly what they 
 did. Of course, I was only sewing up sacks, anyway." 
 
 " Didn t you ever go through it all ? " 
 
 " Lots of times only I didn t understand it. But 
 working with the tractor and having to clean the engine 
 and all the plows and harrows and things why it makes 
 me know a lot about the way machines work ! Mr. Bar 
 ton took me all over it again today and told me about ev 
 erything and I found I understood much better." 
 
 "Who is Mr. Barton?" 
 
 " Why, he s the foreman ! " 
 
 Frank felt the surprise in her tones. It was as though 
 he had asked, " Who is Edison? " 
 
 Mildred curled up in an overstuffed chair, tossed her 
 hat on the table and began to talk about farm and mill 
 machinery with an unconscious command of the special 
 ized vocabulary which left her father gasping. Valves 
 and controls and differentials and a whole catalogue of
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 151 
 
 terms that he knew by reputation only, not by personal 
 introduction, seemed to be the familiars of his blue-eyed 
 daughter. He asked her a question now and then just 
 to keep her talking, and all the time he was studying the 
 new thing she had become in mixed wonder and appre 
 ciation. Mildred was just saying: 
 
 " The trouble with the older form of hopper appears 
 to be the difficulty of readjusting it quickly. If you have 
 to disconnect it 
 
 When he happened to glance through the door of his 
 bedroom and see the parasol box ! He remembered how 
 the clerk who had sold it to him had floated and serpen 
 tined about in her high-heeled boots, fluttering its frills. 
 Potentially she stood in ruffled silk beside a lagoon, drop 
 ping crumbs to swimming swans! At least he had had 
 that sort of a Watteau picture of his daughter when he 
 bought the thing. But Mildred sat before him in the 
 flesh, dressed in brown khaki buttoned to the throat. Her 
 knees were crossed and she swung one thick-booted foot 
 back and forth and she talked of lubricating graphite and 
 the waste of power in changing gears! It seemed an 
 inappropriate moment for parasols and they went to 
 lunch. 
 
 The next morning she announced serenely : 
 
 "I m going to dinner with Mr. Barton to-morrow night. 
 You won t mind if I leave you, will you, Father? You 
 see I haven t seen him for nearly four months." 
 
 Frank Carver was acutely conscious that girls of 
 eighteen are not supposed to dine alone in restaurants 
 with men; but looking into the clear eyes of his khaki- 
 clad girl, he realized, that for a citizen serving her coun 
 try, for a girl who had driven a traction engine from the 
 30th to the 45th parallel of latitude, who has watched 
 the sun rise from the southern bayous to the northern
 
 152 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 hills, chaperones and what they implied were forever ob 
 solete. 
 
 So Mildred dined with the foreman and afterward they 
 went to a moving picture show, and at ten o clock he es 
 corted her back to the hotel and was met by Frank wait 
 ing by seeming accident in the lobby. 
 
 " Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Carver. I had 
 the pleasure of being introduced to your wife last year," 
 said John Barton with amiable condescension. " Your 
 daughter here tells me you ve come clear from New York 
 to pass the week with her some trip ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Frank Carver feebly. 
 
 " You holding down a job that will wait till you get 
 back?" 
 
 " Yes," repeated Frank, trying to adjust himself to 
 the role of somebody s employee. 
 
 "What s your line?" 
 
 The multitudinous magnate made a hasty survey of his 
 crowding interests and hazarded : 
 
 " Steel." 
 
 " Didn t know there were any steel mills in New York." 
 
 " Well, no. They aren t exactly in the city." 
 
 " I suppose you can get me a chance to go through them 
 when I come to New York ? " 
 
 " I yes, I think so. Are you coming soon? " 
 
 " Well, not exactly what you would call soon, I guess. 
 Some time along in the fall if there s anybody there would 
 care to see me." 
 
 Mildred, smiling quietly, didn t seem to grasp the full 
 significance of the talk, but the men, looking straight into 
 each other s eyes, understood perfectly. 
 
 Of course it wasn t to be thought of! Frank Carver 
 knew that. This man was a foreman in the flour mill 
 with the training that fitted him for that work, and his
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 153 
 
 daughter was Miss Carver of New York but suppose, 
 just for the sake of argument, that they had been of the 
 same social and financial level ! Frank felt and he 
 prided himself on a knowledge of men that John Bar 
 ton was the type he would have chosen for a son-in-law. 
 But it was a question that, of course, he could only con 
 sider academically. 
 
 Frank didn t sleep much that night there seemed 
 no special need for it. He was too busy thinking out this 
 new difficulty to notice how the hours slid by. For the 
 foreman was in love with Mildred there was no ques 
 tion about that! Did Mildred know it? He wasn t 
 sure. But undoubtedly John Barton was the determining 
 factor that had drawn her to Minneapolis. Here was 
 probably the root of Mildred s interest in machinery. 
 Such things weren t natural to girls of her age. And 
 then suddenly he saw her married to the foreman, the 
 wife of a mechanic! He had many such in his employ. 
 The man was paid probably about three thousand dollars 
 a year and he would keep on earning it, with good fortune 
 and no accidents, till he was past fifty. After that age 
 the experience of the companies in which he was inter 
 ested showed that a lack of physical alertness made a 
 man an unsatisfactory employee in a factory. Of course 
 there was the government pension Frank Carver didn t 
 remember just how much that was. It wasn t the money 
 there was money enough for his daughter no matter 
 whom she married. It was a question of the kind of life 
 implied by it all. He had a vision of tiny front halls 
 with oilcloth in them, wives in gingham aprons, laden 
 clothes lines in crowded back yards this was the sort 
 of thing John Barton would take for granted. And then 
 he thought of the white parasol ! She would carry it 
 to church! And she would carry it perpetually without
 
 154 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 regard to changing fashions or suitability simply because 
 the duplication of such things in the lifetime of a fore 
 man s wife was impossible. And then he thought how 
 delightfully the lace fluttered around the edge, and how 
 the carved dragon on the handle turned and twisted ; and 
 how, lovely as it was, it was as nothing to what his daugh 
 ter could have if she chose; and he wondered if all the 
 things the parasol represented would together prove a 
 lure to this girl who had always had so much that going 
 without might seem an adventure. He couldn t let her 
 marry the foreman of a mill. It was out of the question 
 - but in these three days he had discovered his daughter 
 grown into an independent individual. His final con 
 clusion was that he had best talk it out with Mildred her 
 self in his state of nervous fatigue that seemed a satis 
 fying determination and under the wing of it he managed 
 to go to sleep. 
 
 He woke with the obligation to talk it out with Mildred 
 as strong about him as a prison. Everything in the day 
 must be bent to that. He had set the package containing 
 the parasol resolutely away in the wardrobe in his 
 room. But breakfast didn t seem a good time. 
 Mildred was so blue-eyed, red-lipped and golden- 
 haired! She ate her grapefruit with such childish 
 relish; she deluged her oatmeal with cream in such 
 a consciously reprehensible way; she stole his extra 
 toast so obviously, and laughed at him so charm 
 ingly when he pretended to be surprised at not finding it ; 
 and was so altogether bewitching even to a father, that 
 Frank Carver decided not to mention it till breakfast was 
 over. And then Mildred was just in the mood to keep on 
 playing, and they decided to go out to Lake Minnetonka, 
 which neither of them had seen, and Mildred hoped it 
 would be like Coney Island because she had never been
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 155 
 
 there, and Frank hoped it wouldn t because he had. 
 And they motored out through the fresh heat of the early 
 summer, and that was no time to talk it out, and when the 
 chauffeur stopped with the lake spread out before them, 
 there, coming to the dock, was a boat with a high double 
 deck and the slightly inebriated carriage as of a man likely 
 to lose his balance ; and when the boat whistled in a deep 
 bass voice quite out of keeping with its size, it visibly lost 
 headway from the effort. People were running down 
 the pier to get aboard and Mildred wanted to go too, so 
 they dashed after the crowd and found places on the after 
 deck. And of course it wasn t a good place to talk it out 
 with so many people about though Frank thought he 
 had made a mistake in not bringing the parasol, for this 
 would have been the time to use it. 
 
 Another girl in uniform smiled at Mildred and asked 
 what Service she was in. 
 
 " I m in the telegraph," she offered, " and maybe they ll 
 put me in the wireless division when I go back." 
 
 " Is it your vacation, too? " 
 
 " Yes, and it seems as if I d just got home and had to 
 go right back again ! " 
 
 The freemasonry of the Service kept them talking and 
 Frank found himself drawn in, and then some other 
 people who were with the telegraph girl came across to 
 join them in the simplest, most friendly way and they all 
 talked together, nonsense, and personalities and politics 
 and told alleged funny stories and tried to guess riddles 
 and chewed gum and at last began to sing popular songs 
 and eat peanuts and candy, and Mildred brought out a 
 box of superlative sweets which she had tucked into the 
 motor, and they all exclaimed at it and called it " grand " 
 but quite evidently preferred peanut brittle when it came 
 to eating, and had altogether a most innocent middle-class
 
 156 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 time, and Frank Carver, joining in the singing and order 
 ing relays of pop and ginger ale for the company, enjoyed 
 himself hugely, but didn t find it a good time to talk it out 
 with Mildred. They landed way up the lake in a grassy 
 cove to wait till the boat came back again. And here 
 Mildred began to pick wild flowers and led him wander 
 ing up a shaded path and into a meadow where two 
 friendly rabbits loped off as they came. There was, 
 whenever they mounted a little rise, the sense of a lim 
 itless land only half tamed to human service. 
 
 " I m glad," said Mildred lightly, " that I don t have to 
 plow it all." 
 
 They were alone now and the afternoon sun worked out 
 intricate problems in triangulation with the trees. But 
 Mildred was still gathering flowers and chattering of this 
 and that and it seemed a pity to break her fun by talking 
 it out just then. 
 
 The path led them deceitfully back to the boat landing, 
 and then it pleased Mildred to sit on the grass and make 
 her wildflowers into a wreath, and put it on her father s 
 head ; and a slightly bald gentleman in a straggling, tick 
 ling wreath is in no position to talk anything out with any 
 body. And then the boat whistle was heard around the 
 point of the land and Frank, hastily divesting himself of 
 his wreath, assumed such dignity as he could at short no 
 tice, and followed his frivolous-minded, giggling daugh 
 ter across the gang plank. And the crowd going back sang 
 the same songs and ate peanuts and drank pop in the same 
 hilarious light-heartedness, and Mildred and her father 
 again became part of the fun; and they both went almost 
 to sleep going home in the motor, and when they got back 
 to the hotel they had just energy left to get to bed and 
 here was the whole day gone and things hadn t been talked 
 out yet !
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 157 
 
 That boat trip was a disconcerting thing for Frank 
 Carver. He had met plenty of middle-class and work 
 ing people in his life, but not as being one of them. 
 Usually they had been people he employed. He had 
 rather taken it for granted that he and his kind bore dis 
 tinguishing signs subtleties of accent and manner, 
 which would inevitably mark them off from other folks, 
 but if it was so, these people didn t know it. They simply 
 took him and Mildred for granted, and for Mildred this 
 did not satisfy him, as how could one know if these were 
 all people his daughter ought to meet? But for himself 
 he enjoyed it hugely was it not an adventure in the 
 middle class ? 
 
 The next morning Frank Carver took himself firmly in 
 hand. Here he had hardly mentioned Nick Van Arsdale 
 and he had promised Mary that he would keep him con 
 tinually in Mildred s mind; he hadn t presented the par 
 asol which might be taken as a symbol of the life that 
 marriage with Nick implied; he hadn t stood between 
 Mildred and her perfectly impossible admirer; he hadn t 
 even talked the matter over with his daughter which 
 was about the least that a father could expect of himself. 
 He told himself that he must do better than this. 
 
 That night he privately arranged to take Mildred to 
 St. Paul for what he hoped wouldn t be an any-worse- 
 than-usual musical show, and told her about it afterward. 
 Just as he was ordering a motor, which he took as much 
 for granted as his shoes, Mildred interfered. 
 
 " Oh, Father, let s take the trolley. We always take 
 the trolley in the Service and it s such fun." 
 
 Her father didn t think it fun but this was Mildred s 
 vacation, not his. And w r hen a violent thunder storm put 
 the electric power system temporarily out of business on 
 the way home and left them for an hour in the midst of
 
 158 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 sloshing rain, and flashing light, he bore it very well, and 
 explained as far as his knowledge went, just what hap 
 pened in case of a short circuit and what the electricians 
 were probably doing about it at that moment. It might 
 have been a good chance to talk it over with Mildred, - 
 they were in the comparative privacy of a trolley car with 
 only a dozen or so extraneous people but when a man 
 is trying to satisfy the bright and inquiring mind of his 
 offspring on a subject which he only half understands, he 
 is in no position to be impressive. 
 
 And when they finally got back to their hotel they 
 found that John Barton had called and left his name 
 not his card with the clerk. 
 
 Frank Carver suggested various forms of entertain 
 ment for the next evening but Mildred hadn t been able 
 to decide which she preferred they were still discussing 
 it at their dinner when the boy from the lobby came to 
 their table and announced " Mr. Barton calling." 
 
 That evening spent with John Barton in their little ho 
 tel sitting room taught Frank Carver several things. He 
 saw that not only was the man utterly ignorant of the 
 social and financial position of his daughter, but that he 
 didn t know the real Mildred at all. Her mind, her dis 
 position, her experiences, her tastes, were things with 
 which he didn t even concern himself. He loved in her the 
 beautiful promise of the intelligent, housekeeping, child- 
 raising wife which would fulfill his dream of what life 
 should be. Frank Carver was learning that his daughter 
 was an elaborately differentiated individual ; John Barton 
 saw Mildred only as his particular feminine complement. 
 If Mildred could understand this, it might solve his prob 
 lem. Decidedly he must talk it out with her. 
 
 It was evident also that Mildred gave John Barton no 
 more chance to find out what she thought and felt than
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 159 
 
 as though she had been in his congregation in church. 
 She listened and she responded, that was all, and there 
 was enough of the preacher in John Barton to make him 
 content with this. 
 
 The next day was their last in Minneapolis and Frank 
 felt that he had discharged his trust from Mary so ill 
 that he had better go with Mildred to her first stopping 
 place. When she was actually at the field work and out 
 of John Barton s sphere of influence, he might really get 
 a chance to give her the advice she had a right to have. 
 He couldn t go back to New York with that sense of fail 
 ure on him. 
 
 And just as they were following the porter with their 
 bags out of the door, the chambermaid, intent on collect 
 ing a tip, appeared in the offing. Frank put his hand in 
 his pocket and then a slow flush rose to his face. He 
 stepped quickly up to the girl and spoke very low : 
 
 " There s a package in the closet in my room a- par 
 asol it s for you."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A" midsummer the great wheat harvest stands just 
 between full eared perfection and the dropping 
 of the dead ripe grain to the ground, which is 
 Nature s na ive way of preparing for next year s spring. 
 Between Nature and her thriftless intention rush a hun 
 dred thousand boys and girls with steam-fed steeds and 
 chariots breathing gasoline. 
 
 Frank Carver, following discreetly after the troop bus 
 which carried his daughter out to the fields just as the 
 sun drove red-hot darts vertically into the baking prairie, 
 thought that civilization had still a long way to go before 
 farm labor would become an occupation he would choose 
 for his daughter. 
 
 When he finally passed through the cloud of dust that 
 rose behind the bus like the noonday ghost of drought, he 
 saw Mildred trying her levers, making sure that every 
 thing worked and then mounting above those unreason 
 ably formidable wheels and bars and chains, throw in her 
 clutch with the swift certainty of a professional and start 
 away across the prairie with a great grain cutting machine 
 clanking and clattering at her heels. 
 
 The farm they were to reap was divided into compar 
 atively small fields, so instead of their usual three tractor 
 team, Mildred and Winkles were sent out together, 
 Winkles in the lead and Mildred taking the dust. The 
 great machines crawled up and down over the gentle roll 
 of the prairie; up and down, on and on toward nothing 
 more final than a cobwebby wire fence in the distance and 
 
 160
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 161 
 
 some tentative sticks of trees, trying obligingly to accli 
 mate themselves where nothing but human preference 
 gave them any reason for growing. Not a dreary land 
 scape since it was yielding generously under the plow, but 
 with all the deadly monotony of assured adventureless 
 comfort. The reapers went on till the noise of their en 
 gines came to Frank Carver like the buzzing of a blue 
 bottle, then turned over a little hill and disappeared. 
 
 Frank Carver got thoughtfully into his car again and 
 told the driver to take him back to the barracks. Here 
 he sought out Quartermaster Alice Farrington and began 
 to ask her questions. She was a square, direct woman 
 with clear eyes that met you fairly, a woman would have 
 handed her baby to her with certainty that it would be 
 content, a man would have given her the keys to his strong 
 box if not to his heart; a mother would have welcomed 
 her as the bride of an only son can I say more, except 
 that the only son probably wouldn t have married her ? 
 
 "When will my daughter be back?" Frank inquired. 
 
 Alice Farrington, taking stock of his gray lounge suit, 
 of the gray hat exactly matching it and the soft dust coat 
 dropped over a chair arm, listening to the clear, precise 
 English where every word was a perfect entity developed 
 for a particular purpose and not to be used for any other 
 or weakened by careless intermingling; placed him rightly 
 as a privileged person. 
 
 " Not till after seven on this shift we get in twelve 
 good hours of daylight work now." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " Dinner as soon as they ve washed up." 
 
 Frank Carver winced " washed up " was a phrase 
 he had heard his mill-hands use. 
 
 " And bed as soon after nine as they can be persuaded 
 to go." 
 
 H
 
 162 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " And between dinner and bed? " 
 
 " Oh, usually some of the boys and men come from 
 their barracks or the girls walk out in the evening or 
 they sing or dance if they feel like it." 
 
 " Are there guests every evening? " 
 
 " Whenever they care to come." 
 
 " But only those you know only recruits in the 
 Service? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! Anybody any of them know people they 
 happen to meet, if they choose to ask them." 
 
 Frank Carver heard himself gasp. 
 
 " But young girls ! Are they always people they 
 ought to meet ? " 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, people you would ask to your home people 
 whose character men especially - 
 
 He felt himself floundering distressfully. 
 
 " Oh, that! Well, in the sense you mean probably not. 
 But don t you think everybody ought to know every kind 
 of people? " 
 
 "But young girls Miss Farrington!" 
 
 " Recruits in the government Service, Mr. Carver ! " 
 
 Frank stirred impatiently. 
 
 " It seems to me," said Alice Farrington, smoothing 
 the blue cotton over her knees, " that we are long past 
 the stage where the gospel of hush can be preached to 
 any of us any more. We ve got to know what kind of 
 people and what kind of things actually exist in the world 
 we re living in. These girls aren t children. Most of 
 them have had a lot of experience already." 
 
 What the quartermaster said filled Frank with a vague 
 alarm. He had been bred in the tradition that young girls 
 should be shielded and guarded from even a knowledge 
 of the unsavory things of life, much more from actual
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 163 
 
 personal contact with them. But this unrestricted social 
 intercourse had already been going on for more than six 
 months and though Mildred was undoubtedly different as 
 a result of it, she wasn t changed for the worse. Look 
 ing at Alice Farrington he felt reassured as to the out 
 come although he profoundly distrusted the means. 
 
 " As a matter of fact," she continued definitely, " we 
 have had surprisingly little trouble far less than with 
 the same number of girls at home. There isn t much 
 temptation to sex irregularities, because they re all so 
 busy that there isn t any dullness to relieve in that way; 
 and they aren t forced to it to earn a living because that s 
 provided for in the Service. Of course, we occasionally 
 come upon abnormal types boys and girls both and 
 then we send them to the hospital camps for observation. 
 No, we have practically no girls becoming mothers while 
 they re in the Service. It s good training here it 
 works ! " 
 
 Frank felt himself turning sick and cold at the sugges 
 tion, even the suggestion that such things could hap 
 pen in the same Service where his daughter was ! 
 
 That very day Mildred came back with the story of a 
 real adventure. Winkles and she had finished one field 
 and were driving their machines across an open space 
 arranged for the feeding of steers and hogs to be fattened 
 for the Chicago packers. Down the middle of it was a 
 sort of giant lunch counter on which the ration for the 
 steers was already spread. The girls were running their 
 tractors across this empty space toward the next field 
 they were to reap when Mildred s machine was taken with 
 an internal convulsion and stopped, shuddering. Both 
 the girls were down on the ground peering under the balk 
 ing engine, when the gates at the further edge of the field 
 were opened and a wave of spreading horns and tramp 
 ling hoofs started toward them.
 
 164 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 "Quick, Mildred, quick! Go back up, quick!" cried 
 Winkles. 
 
 They scrambled up desperately to their seats before the 
 terrifying charge of the hungry steers and the drove of 
 squealing hogs, twice their number, that ran with them. 
 Mildred tried to be ashamed of her fright and cheer up 
 Winkles. 
 
 " Of course, they won t hurt us, Winkles .it s it s 
 just because they re so hungry. Oh, keep off ! Stop ! 
 Go away, you awful thing! " 
 
 A great roan beast had seemed to think that Mildred s 
 tractor was a sort of side table set for his private delec 
 tation. 
 
 " It is true perhaps they do not eat girls, Mildred - 
 but there are more ways to die than by eating! Look 
 what they do there! " 
 
 The steers crowded around the tables, horning and 
 shouldering each other, sometimes getting their hoofs 
 upon the table in their eagerness, and kicking and tramp 
 ling the squealing hogs who could only get the grain that 
 fell from the table. 
 
 " We might get down and run to the fence " sug 
 gested Mildred. 
 
 " No they can run faster than we think how 
 they came, like stones down the mountain side ! " 
 
 " Oh oh Winkles ! oh, they re eating it all up ! 
 Oh, they ll come over here oh ! " 
 
 They did ! They wandered around in seeming abstrac 
 tion and the girls came in for a share of their careless 
 attention. One enterprising animal with an investigative 
 spirit toward machinery caused Winkles to see approach 
 ing dissolution and she screamed again and again. 
 
 And then out of the sunset came a figure sitting a great 
 white horse a figure haloed with light, vast, shouldered 
 like Launcelot and trotted toward them.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 165 
 
 " Say, don be scare ! " he called when he was near 
 enough. " Dey don hurt you ! " 
 
 To the girls he was nevertheless a rescuing paladin be 
 cause in reality he was a particularly good looking 
 Swedish farm hand working on the ranch. 
 
 " Dey don hurt," he repeated with a slow smile. 
 
 His way of hustling the feeding beasts about with a 
 stick struck them as a wonderful piece of heroism. 
 
 " Now you go all right," he said after he had cleared 
 a path. 
 
 But the girls were too shaken to come down, and be 
 sides, the hogs of which he seemed to take no account also 
 looked dangerous to them. So after further considera 
 tion he dismounted, carried first Winkles and then Mil 
 dred to his great white horse and led it to the field where 
 the bus waited. To their relieved thanks he responded 
 with a slow smile and the cryptic remark : 
 
 " I come." 
 
 The next evening he did come bearing votive offerings 
 of orchard fruits. As he entered the barracks Winkles 
 looked up at him with obvious delight there was a 
 frankness about her that precluded blushes but her 
 eyes were like the topaz and the black diamond rolled 
 into one. Not one of the boys in the Unit was like him 
 a Son of the Morning and great as the gods of the 
 hills ! She was no tribe purist this girl from the edge 
 of Syria. Her fathers had gladly sold their daughters 
 into the harems of the Orient for a thousand years and 
 there was family pride if the price was high! She had 
 no predilection for squat, swarthy men of her own race 
 when she saw something better. 
 
 But unfortunately the big Swede was less cosmopol 
 itan. His ideal was buxom with blue eyes and light hair 
 like the girls he had known in Sweden. So his eyes trav-
 
 166 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 eled past Winkles to where Mildred sat on the far win 
 dow seat with her father, and his slow feet followed his 
 quick eyes. 
 
 You vas Svede?" he inquired, quite ignoring her 
 introduction to Frank as he seated himself beside her. 
 " No ! Your mutter, she vas Svede ? No ! Born dis 
 country ? Come now, you make fool mit me ! " 
 
 A great golden giant mounted on a huge steed and with 
 the lines of flexing muscles molding the loose shirt that 
 covered them to beauty, is quite a different person from a 
 huge farm hand in his best clothes, green ready-made tie, 
 and shiny yellow shoes. But a little of the glamour of 
 the rescuing knight still hung round him and besides 
 wasn t he too in the great work of feeding the world? So 
 Mildred talked with him so prettily and drew Winkles in 
 so tactfully that an immense interest in cattle and hogs 
 and corn and wheat and all the other affairs of farming, 
 seemed to spring up of itself; and the laborer was made 
 to see himself as the focus of a brilliant intellectual ef 
 fort, and as sending off quite unprecedented conversa 
 tional sparkles. It was a flattering view of himself and 
 he evidently enjoyed it. 
 
 The next night he came again. Mildred feeling that 
 her previous efforts were all that even a rescuer could 
 expect, tried to turn him over to the willing Winkles. 
 But he didn t turn ! It was Mildred s blue eyes and blond 
 braids that drew him, he had a purely provincial taste 
 in girls. 
 
 The third evening when he appeared ruminatively at 
 the barracks, Frank Carver took his daughter by the arm 
 and led her resolutely into the moonlight. Evidently he 
 had got to talk it out with Mildred, and that at once ! 
 
 But the girl seemed so glad to come, so relieved to be 
 away from both the towering Swede and Sam Wilcox
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 167 
 
 who still pervaded the middle distance in spite of Mamie 
 Epstein s efforts, that he felt reassured. She wasn t en 
 couraging these men anyway, at least no more than the 
 spirit of adventure prompted. But still it ought to be 
 done! 
 
 " Mildred," he began, conversationally poising himself 
 like a boxer, ready to spring either way, " it seems to 
 me that a girl in the Service needs to have a pretty steady 
 head so many unexpected things happen to her." 
 
 You mean those steers ? I was afraid of them but 
 not so afraid as Winkles. You should have heard her 
 scream ! But when that man Lindens is his name, 
 isn t it? when he came and pushed them about just 
 the way I saw a woman shoo chickens in Kansas 
 why then I saw they weren t dangerous." 
 
 They re dangerous enough, Mildred, if you don t 
 know how to manage them and so are men." 
 
 " Oh, men ! Why, all those I ve met are so interesting. 
 Only I keep thinking it s rather conceited, I suppose 
 that about a lot of things I know more than they do." 
 
 Frank was somewhat stunned. Had he been warning 
 her against the wiles of the cougar only to find her an ac 
 complished woodsman? He found himself rejoicing in 
 every bit of independence and self -sufficiency which he 
 discovered in his daughter, for she had come to the place 
 where not the most athletic father could protect her, not 
 the richest father could buy her any sort of privilege, not 
 the wisest father could safeguard her with counsel. She 
 had nothing to depend on but eighteen years of parental 
 training and the government of the United States. He 
 asked himself, if Mildred was to be unavoidably thrown 
 with all the other young people in the country, wasn t 
 it important that they have the chance to be the sort of 
 people he would be content to have her thrown with?
 
 168 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 And yet Frank admitted that the Swede s intentions were 
 undoubtedly honorable. There was no doubt of his be 
 ing a good-looking, well-grown man probably able to pro 
 vide her with food and clothing by the sweat of his brow 
 for the rest of her natural life and so, according to his 
 standards, quite in a position to marry. Frank realized 
 that his daughter was getting an amount of romantic ad 
 venture which she would never have enjoyed without the 
 Service, but he was much disquieted. If such things 
 were happening to the million and a half girls in the 
 Service, wouldn t the human race develop all sorts of 
 curious crosses possibly non-advantageous ?
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 IT was growing hot oh, very hot indeed ! The air 
 was like a dry sponge that drew every last drop of 
 moisture out of the reluctant land, and still dry, 
 rushed on to drain new acres. The wheat would have 
 filled a little more if there had been rain, but full or not 
 it was dead ripe and farmers breaking off a head here 
 and there found the stalk crisp and hollow. The harvest 
 had come all at once with a rush, and there was danger 
 that the kernels would drop from the heads before the 
 grain could be cut. The farmers watched for the gov 
 ernment harvesters as Sister Anne watched from Blue 
 Beard s tower, and while they waited, dragged old dis 
 carded reapers from their barns, oiled them in desperate 
 haste and set out to save a few acres of their crops. The 
 Agricultural recruits worked night and day in four 
 shifts now, for the moon was full. Extra units and ex 
 tra tractors were rushed from regions that could wait, to 
 this which was threatened. The smell of gasoline from 
 an approaching tractor was sweeter on the wind than any 
 breath of spring. The forces of the whole Service were 
 focused here to save the wheat. No submarine prowling 
 beneath a provision laden ocean could create such poten 
 tial hunger as the drought did hour by hour. And the 
 heat grew! 
 
 The sun and the flying dust burned even the most 
 seasoned skin to brick red. 
 
 " Say, honest, if I had to sit on the back of my neck, 
 
 169
 
 170 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 I d stand up all night, so sore it is," said Mamie Epstein, 
 smoothing a layer of cocoa butter over all visible parts 
 of herself. 
 
 "Mildred, you re peeling again all across your nose! 
 Why didn t you put magnesium on your face before you 
 started? If it doesn t blow off, or sweat off, or rub off, 
 it s some protection." 
 
 Ruth Ansel, shining under layers of cold cream, stud 
 ied Mildred critically. 
 
 " It isn t that it looks bad to be burned like that but 
 it hurts! I hate to lie awake all night wishing I d never 
 had a skin." 
 
 " I believe that my eyelids are so burned that they re 
 swelling can you tell, Ruth?" Mildred thrust a well- 
 greased face toward her. 
 
 "I should say they were! Don t they feel funny?" 
 
 Only Winkles took no discomfort from the sun. Ac 
 climated to heat since before Asshur-Bani-pal sat his 
 throne, before the temple of Bel rose by the Tigris, the 
 skin of her race turned the sun aside like armor. She 
 watched the other girls in wonder. 
 
 " A little sun, some wind and all this ! " 
 
 " Well, I heard a man to-day tell Mr. Fox while we 
 were lunching on his veranda that it was lovely cyclone 
 weather do you think he meant there really might be 
 one?" 
 
 " What is cyclone ? " inquired Winkles. 
 
 The girls had grown used to letting Mamie Epstein 
 answer all questions not because she always knew, but 
 because she had a willing mind. But in the matter of 
 " cyclone " she failed them by being ostentatiously occu 
 pied in rubbing in cocoa butter and pretending not to 
 hear. 
 
 " It s wind," said Ruth with a slow accuracy, " a great
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 171 
 
 deal of wind all at once. It tears up trees and blows 
 down houses and it goes round and round." 
 
 " Oh, Ruth, I think it s a hurricane that does that I 
 think a cyclone goes straight ahead ! " 
 
 They discussed it back and forth, while Mamie Epstein 
 covertly drank in every word, the while slowly rubbing in 
 cream. 
 
 " Cyclone cellars, a fellow in Kirksville said those holes 
 with doors by the schoolhouse, were," Mamie contrib 
 uted at last. 
 
 " And in the churchyards too don t you remember?" 
 said Mildred. 
 
 The next day opened with the same dry wind from the 
 southwest, a deadly insistent wind whispering into the 
 ears of the farmers : 
 
 " What I didn t do yesterday, I ll do today ! Do to 
 day do today ! " 
 
 A horrible recitative ! 
 
 The Unit had finished one district and was being rushed 
 to the next which they hoped to reach by afternoon. 
 
 As the bus mounted a little hill, a small biplane circled 
 low and made a landing in the road ahead. There was 
 a great cheering and a group of Service boys went whoop 
 ing toward it. The officer in charge set them to push the 
 machine out of the way of the bus and the boy who 
 worked hardest at it was Arthur Wintermute ! Arthur, 
 without his tutor or his valet, pushing and tugging just 
 like anybody else Arthur carrying his shoulders with 
 some regard to where shoulders ought to be! He ex 
 plained to Mildred that it was an aviation training corps. 
 
 " They haven t let me go up alone yet, but I m going 
 today and if I can qualify, I m going to join the regular 
 flying corps in Texas when my year is through. Just 
 think of being a flyer for the United States ! "
 
 172 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 So even Arthur Wintermute could develop ambition 
 when real work was forced upon him! 
 
 It did change people work did. What had it done 
 to Nick? And as though Arthur divined what was in 
 her mind : 
 
 " Edith writes me that Nick s been sent to the moun 
 tains to make roads to some new copper mines the gov 
 ernment s opening up. She said he s awfully keen about 
 it likes working and everything ! he must be a lot 
 different only I d rather fly." 
 
 Mildred was a little hurt that news about Nick must 
 come to her so indirectly. Of course she hadn t written 
 very often but then Nick must know how busy she was 
 with the harvest. And besides, she resented the idea of 
 Nick s being different she wanted him to stay just the 
 same. But she didn t believe it anyway How should 
 Edith Wintermute know ? Why hadn t Nick chosen avi 
 ation instead of roadmaking? It would have been so 
 much more suitable and he d have had a better time. 
 
 " Oh, I wish I could wait and see you go up! " Mil 
 dred called back to Arthur as the bus started on again. 
 
 The regiment to which the flying corps belonged was 
 stationed in the next hollow. They were quite raw re 
 cruits. Later they would be sent away to the borders or 
 the coast defenses, or perhaps to the training ships. 
 Those who made superlative records were given a chance 
 to enter West Point, so that the officers of our ever- 
 changing citizen army won their positions through sheer 
 ability. 
 
 An hour later they had reached their new barracks and 
 the afternoon shift was ready to start for the fields when 
 Ruth called to Quartermaster Farrington : 
 
 " What makes the sky so queer? " 
 
 They all looked up. The air was frightfully hot and
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 173 
 
 absolutely still as though a tight cap had been pinned over 
 the edges of the world. The blue in the sky was gone. 
 From millions of miles outside the earth the rays of the 
 sun seemed to have changed color as by the hand of a 
 conjurer. 
 
 "Honest, it looks like the wheat was turning green! 
 Understand me, not like again it was young, but like it 
 was sick. It s got me scared, all right." 
 
 They huddled about the bus watching the cold green 
 light growing in the hot, still air. And then along the 
 road they had come, rose a low, black wave ; flat as a wall 
 of paint, sharp and straight as a knife blade where it met 
 the blighted sky. It hugged the ground as it swept 
 silently toward them hugged it close like a blanket that 
 Earth was pulling over her parched knees. 
 
 Suddenly Annie McGee shrilled high : 
 
 " The Cyclone ! The Cyclone ! " and rushed for the 
 door with the rest tumbling after. 
 
 They crowded chattering and sobbing against the win 
 dows, Annie crossing herself desperately. They saw the 
 distant grain flattening as under the laundress iron and 
 then the dark wave came and struck the end of the build 
 ing like the solid impact of a river in flood. The walls 
 bent, recovered, there was a spatter of rain, and 
 the thing was gone ! 
 
 But Mildred tore open the door and dragging Winkles 
 by the arm, ran through the cold wind toward the bus, for 
 she had seen a great struggling thing, fighting like a giant 
 eagle, go down the wind. 
 
 " Quick, Winkles, quick ! we must catch it there 
 was some one in it I saw that is, I think there was 
 Quick!" 
 
 They got the bus started and turned after the cyclone. 
 Only the finger tips of it had brushed them but they could
 
 174 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 see the great black formless mass going on ahead. The 
 road led in the general direction it had taken, and they 
 crowded on every bit of speed the lumbering machine 
 could carry and followed after. There was real green 
 to be seen now even if the wheat lay tangled and flat 
 real green and the sunlight dancing over it. The world 
 smiled a little wet, sheepish, smile as though willing to 
 make up for its fit of temper. But Mildred and Winkles 
 pushed the bus on, peering right and left over the country 
 on the chance. Here they saw the tops of trees capri 
 ciously picked off as a child pulls the head off a daisy 
 here was a house disroofed over by the railroad station 
 a great gray corrugated iron grain elevator had been 
 resolved into its component plates, as neatly as if by men 
 trained to the job. It was a hopeless chase of course 
 there wasn t a chance of their finding the aeroplane 
 only they did ! 
 
 Not more than two miles away it lay in the corner of a 
 field, a mere pile of unrelated odds and ends of steel and 
 canvas and wood and, fallen clear of the wreckage, 
 Arthur Wintermute lay upon his face. 
 
 They turned him over with trembling, unskilled hands. 
 They thought he was breathing, but they didn t quite 
 know they thought his heart beat, but they couldn t 
 make sure. 
 
 " I can run faster than you, Winkles," gasped Mildred 
 and started for a house just in view across the field. 
 
 The farmer s family that came trailing her back found 
 Winkles with part of one of the wrecked wings pulled 
 loose and ready to be used as a stretcher. 
 
 " I don t think he s dead," said the farmer s wife, " but 
 I wouldn t undertake to say for sure. Lift him gentle, 
 William, I ll take his feet now you girls slide that 
 thing under him while he s up there, that s it. Wil-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 175 
 
 Ham, you take that end if you face the other way you 
 can hold on better. Here, Lyman, catch hold right here. 
 I ll run ahead and get a place ready and some hot water, 
 oh, and the doctor! " 
 
 " Where will I find him? " asked Mildred quickly. 
 
 " Well, I couldn t rightly say if the wires ain t down 
 we can use the telephone we d better try that anyway." 
 
 Mildred walked beside Arthur as they carried him up. 
 It seemed to her as though he were trying to raise his eye 
 lids and she patted his hand and spoke to him : 
 
 " Arthur Arthur Wintermute don t you hear 
 me? It s Mildred can you hear me? It s Mildred 
 Carver." And all the time thinking how she had just 
 been wishing Nick was in the aviation and being more 
 tender of Arthur in gratitude that he wasn t Nick. 
 
 " I don t get any answer on the telephone I guess 
 some of you ll have to hitch up and go for the doctor," 
 said the farmer s wife. And then it was seen that 
 Winkles was driving the bus up to the door. They went 
 for the doctor in the bus, found him and brought him 
 back and waited in agonized silence till he had made his 
 examination. 
 
 " Well, I can t tell just what the damage is he seems 
 to be hurt pretty bad but it s mostly inside. There s some 
 ribs fractured, of course but it don t seem likely " 
 
 " Wouldn t it be possible to have a consultation or 
 something if it s as bad as that? Isn t there a hospital? 
 Can t we send for somebody? " 
 
 The country doctor looked at Mildred in slow sur 
 prise. 
 
 " Well, there isn t much of anybody near that you 
 could get hold of Not that I wouldn t be willing to call 
 in a consultant, of course it s a difficult case and if the 
 Mayos "
 
 176 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Who are they? " 
 
 "Oh, way up in Wisconsin that s a long way 
 
 " I ll wire anyway," and Mildred, leaving Winkles to 
 help the doctor and the farmer s wife, started the bus 
 again for the little railroad station she had seen near the 
 wrecked grain elevator. 
 
 The wires were down! She got the name and direc 
 tion of the nearest town to the east which would probably 
 be out of the path of the cyclone and made for that. She 
 preempted the wires with a young imperiousness, the con 
 sciousness of unlimited money power, and the cachet of 
 her Service uniform got her father in New York on 
 the telephone and told him to explain to Mrs. Winter- 
 mute, and also his promise of a special train \vith the best 
 surgeon he could find in New York, also the promise of a 
 wire to the Mayos and to some one in Chicago or nearer 
 if he could get them. 
 
 It didn t occur to Mildred that the Unit Quartermaster 
 must be in some perturbation as to what had become of 
 them, so she drove the bus back to the farmhouse and 
 took her place with Winkles as the doctor s aide. But 
 some time during the night an anxious Alice Farrington 
 in a commandeered Ford appeared at the farmhouse and 
 took her place with the watching girls. 
 
 Arthur was breathing now harsh, heavy and slow 
 but his eyes were closed and he lay inert. A message 
 came before dawn that Mrs. Wintermute had left New 
 York and that doctors from Chicago were on their way. 
 The night wore on and all the next day Arthur lay 
 with his chest rising and falling. An hour before the 
 train with the doctors got in, his chest went curiously flat. 
 
 The tragedy made a profound impression on the busy, 
 happy little Agricultural Unit because of the sheer per 
 sonal horror of it all. But in Mildred it bred the feeling
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 177 
 
 of being very small and very helpless and very much 
 alone! The blessed security of her childhood seemed 
 shattered all the years when terrible things happened 
 only in books or in newspapers or in places that were very 
 far away indeed, were blotted out, and death and horror 
 had touched her. Fear, from which she had been 
 guarded all her life, had put its finger on her. If she 
 could only get back to the place where somebody or some 
 thing stood between her and dread ! She longed for her 
 own home, her own people. She wanted to be protected 
 and taken care of. She was suddenly homesick and 
 frightened and alone. 
 
 And all the while the Earth smiled its little wet, green, 
 deprecatory smile as though the wheat that lay tangled 
 and flat were not the life of the people; as though Arthur 
 Wintermute were still to make his first flight in the gov 
 ernment service. 
 
 But they were quickly shifted out of the devastated 
 region, and sent back and forth, back and forth, following 
 the harvest trail northward as the crops ripened, for the 
 wheat must be reaped to the last field, and they ended with 
 a final rush of all the force that the government could 
 muster at the northern border. 
 
 And there was the fall plowing for the winter wheat 
 and the seeding but not much of that for the recruits 
 who had been called three months after Mildred were now 
 experienced workers, and took the brunt of the fall plant 
 ing. 
 
 The Forty-second Unit took its turn helping with the 
 thrashing and loading of the wheat harvest, until the 
 black frost came and their year was done. 
 
 N
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ONLY when our ideals are made flesh and come 
 among us do they bring crucifixions. So long 
 as democracy remains embalmed in the Decla 
 ration of Independence and the Constitution, can we not 
 buy and sell as we choose ? Gather our gains into banks 
 and build high walls of privilege about ourselves? But 
 the materialization of Democracy is no painless process. 
 
 Frank and Mary Carver waiting in the Grand Central 
 Station to receive their daughter, found themselves part 
 of the same crowd they had been in a year ago. If there 
 were a few more hats where shawls had been before, if 
 increasing prosperity had brought more cleanliness and a 
 look of better feeding, they did not notice it. For be 
 tween these other parents and the Carvers, direct personal 
 relation the sacred rites of eating together, of inter 
 marriage, of playing the same games, discussing the same 
 people simply did not exist. There was a chasm be 
 tween them much greater than mere race could dig. The 
 Jewish and Italian and Greek parents had much in com 
 mon with the Americans and Irish from Harlem and the 
 Bronx; all the basic problems of food and housing, of 
 bringing up their children and providing for their old 
 age, were theirs together. For Mr. and Mrs. Carver 
 these problems had vanished through the possession of 
 much money for many generations. In all that waiting 
 group the experience of real democracy was as foreign 
 as reincarnation. But these returning boys and girls had 
 
 178
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 179 
 
 gone centuries ahead of their parents in a single year for 
 they had been part of the world s first experiment in in 
 dustrial democracy. 
 
 They came fairly tumbling now from the steps of the 
 tourist sleepers, their ruck-sacks in their hands, their 
 thick boots thumping firmly on the platform, their shoul 
 ders set square. Being city-born and bred, they had 
 been given their Service year in the country. The first 
 four cars were filled with boys. There was a sudden 
 hush in the waiting crowd as they formed in double lines 
 took the 
 
 " LEFT, LEFT, LEFT/ from the captain and came 
 marching up the steps brown, hardy, young men of 
 nineteen. 
 
 The iron gates slid open and the parents pressed against 
 the restraining ropes that made a clear aisle to the far end 
 of the depot. The lads came through grinning and there 
 began to be cries of recognition. 
 
 " There s Eddie ! there, next that tall fellow on the 
 other side. Oh, Eddie say Ed ! Ed ! Hi ! poke 
 him, mister, will yer? " 
 
 " Oh, Abe ! Honest, Mamma, ain t that him coming 
 along? Say, is it your own son you don t know? " 
 
 " Now, my dear, don t cry so just because William is 
 here. How the boy will feel to see his mother in tears ! 
 No, I m not crying myself ! You re quite mistaken. 
 I m only a little hoarse ! There he is ! I see him I 
 see him ! Look, Annette ! Look No further down 
 that way ! No, I did not pinch you either ! Nonsense 
 - you re just excited. Try and keep calm ! Willie 
 Willie Willie!" 
 
 It was a roar as of the Chicago wheat pit that rose when 
 the boys turned into the waiting crowd for here were 
 people whose emotion roused the full force of their lungs;
 
 180 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 people who could only be glad when slapping each other 
 on the back ; people who cried and laughed together, and 
 that forcibly; a group which manifested its feelings ob 
 viously, audibly and through the body almost as naively 
 as a herd of deer. The boys were all conquering heroes 
 even if they had done nothing but paste labels on bundles 
 in a Government Express office, and the crowd absorbed 
 them joyously, not realizing what potent yeast they were 
 to the old order. 
 
 The boys had all passed before the girls came through 
 the gates. Short and tall, fat and thin, they were drawn 
 into likeness by their tanned faces and their uniforms. 
 Their questioning eyes glanced left and right. Out of 
 the democracy of their Service year they were met again 
 with all the differences that social stratification implies. 
 It came as a blow mixed with the joy of homecoming 
 they winced and were happy at once. With what pain 
 and what sinkings of the heart did some of them again 
 feel the parental arms ! 
 
 Mrs. Carver didn t recognize Mildred at first with her 
 brown skin and a strip of adhesive plaster over one eye 
 brow. And even when she had discovered her, and felt 
 her strong young arms about her, and had lifted her 
 shoulders away from the pressing people and taken a 
 step toward the door, her daughter slipped away from her 
 again. Mildred ran over to a black-browed girl, the center 
 of an obviously non-English-speaking group whom Mrs. 
 Carver inferred from their appearance were engaged in 
 the business of conducting fruit stands; and then she 
 stopped by a girl crying joyously in the arms of her po 
 liceman father; and then she was swept into a group of 
 boys who laughed and wrung her hands and reminded her 
 that they were all going to Coney Island next Saturday 
 and one got her promise for the first ride in the scenic
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 181 
 
 railway, and another begged her to chute the chutes with 
 him. And until the crowd finally disintegrated and 
 drained away to surface cars, and elevated, and subway, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carver had to stand and wait. 
 
 "Who was the short, dark girl you spoke to?" Mrs. 
 Carver inquired when they had settled into the motor. 
 
 " She s one of the two best tractor drivers in our Unit. 
 Her name s Winkles and she came from a place you can t 
 pronounce in Syria. We never could tell whether it was 
 Winkles or Jimmie Cabot of Boston who got the most 
 acres out of a gallon of gasoline. Isn t she a dear? " 
 
 "What happened to your forehead?" Mrs. Carver 
 countered with quick tactfulness. 
 
 " Oh, that was two weeks ago. I ran into a rock, the 
 reaper broke a blade and a belt flew off and hit me in the 
 face. I never even saw the rock, and if I had I wouldn t 
 have thought so small a rock would have made so big a 
 jolt." 
 
 " Well, dear, I imagine you are as glad to get back as 
 we are to have you. It must have been a terrible year 
 thank God it s over! " 
 
 " Why, Mother ! It was wonderful ! " 
 
 "Wonderful!" 
 
 " I m glad to be back because I wanted so awfully to 
 see you and Ruthie and Junior and I wish I could do it 
 again." 
 
 "Oh, my dear!" 
 
 The cry seemed forced from Mrs. Carver and she tried 
 to cover it with a cough, but it had sounded nevertheless, 
 and the girl set her face as the motor drew up at the door. 
 
 Mildred had looked for Nick in the crowd at the sta 
 tion looked with a curious combination of eagerness 
 and dread which she didn t understand. She hadn t 
 heard from him for several weeks and wasn t quite cer-
 
 182 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 tain where his last station was, but she had taken it for 
 granted that he would be home to meet her. Well, prob 
 ably he had decided to meet her at the house. She knew 
 that some of the family would be there to welcome her 
 it was the Carver custom. Other and newer people 
 might permit indifference, but the Carvers were a closed 
 corporation inside which a strong family affection was 
 deliberately fostered. But Nick did not run down the 
 white stone steps to greet her only Ruth and Junior 
 came to hug her hilariously. And then she became con 
 scious of the family phalanx inside the door. So still it 
 seemed to her after the unrestrained emotion in the de 
 pot; so immobile, so subdued! And, yet, she knew they 
 would not be here if they were not glad to see her, quite 
 as glad as Mamie Epstein s cousin s husband who had 
 lifted her from the floor and kissed her loudly on both 
 cheeks. 
 
 Mildred saw the family group with new eyes. The 
 women were just as delicately perfect, the men were just 
 as straight and honorably clear-eyed; the cadence of their 
 low voices was just as beautifully restful; their clothes 
 were just as harmoniously superior to fashion; their ways 
 just as kindly and considerate they had in no way 
 changed. But Mildred felt like a sailor suddenly set in 
 a windless harbor after rounding the cape in a spanking 
 breeze there seemed nothing further to do about any 
 thing. She looked about furtively for Nick but evi 
 dently he hadn t come, and then the family flood closed 
 over her. Dutifully she kissed Aunt Millicent s soft old 
 cheek. 
 
 " It is a great sacrifice to give a year of your life and I 
 hope the government appreciated it! " said that lady with 
 considerable condescension toward the world in general 
 and the government in particular.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 183 
 
 " Tell me what did you talk with them about? " 
 
 This from a tall, shimmering sort of a cousin addicted 
 to sparkling black clothes and educated in France ! 
 
 "Why, we talked about everything, Alice every 
 thing there is to talk about, I guess." 
 
 " Who took care of your clothes? " asked pretty Anne 
 Weston. 
 
 Mildred twinkled into a laugh. 
 
 " We were supposed to do it for ourselves, Anne, but 
 if you really want me to confess, I ll have to say that 
 Mamie Epstein did mine most of the time." 
 
 " Mamie Epstein who is she? " 
 
 " Oh, she s one of the girls in our Unit that I like a 
 lot she can sew. Everybody in her family makes 
 clothes her father and everybody." 
 
 "Oh one of those garment workers!" 
 
 " Yes, Anne." 
 
 " She was probably glad to earn the money ! " 
 
 "What money?" 
 
 " That you paid her for taking care of your clothes." 
 
 " Oh, Anne ! I didn t pay her to do it ! She s my 
 friend! She did it for me because she saw I didn t know 
 how. There wasn t a thing I could do for her except 
 fill the oil cups sometimes." 
 
 Their soft voices kept up the gentlest fire of the most 
 unanswerable questions ! 
 
 " Wasn t it hard to sleep in the room with other 
 people? " 
 
 " Did you find that the rectors of the country churches 
 took a real interest in the young people? " 
 
 "How could you get on with uneducated persons?" 
 
 " It was probably a real privilege for the other girls to 
 know you you could help them in so many ways ! " 
 
 Mildred was entirely out of countenance. Had she
 
 184 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 got so far away from them in a year ? Hadn t they any 
 idea what it had all been about ? That it meant anything 
 more than a visit to the seashore? A shopping trip to 
 buy gloves ? How dull was this talk of her lovely kins 
 women who acted as though everything must stay the 
 same always! How much duller than the talk of Mamie 
 and Winkles and Ruth! 
 
 Her mind went back to those long, rainy days in Mis 
 souri when they had to wait for the ground to dry before 
 they could go on with the plowing days when a flat, 
 gray sky almost rested on a flat gray earth with only the 
 thin gray fingers of the rain to keep them apart, and 
 they had thrashed out the philosophy of the ages in little, 
 and plotted out their future in the light of it, Ellen 
 Forsythe, and the right of everybody to do as they chose; 
 Ruth, and her predilection for a universe ordered like a 
 model factory; Winkles with her baffling belief that ev 
 erything was all right anyway except in Syria. 
 
 This talk of girls! It has the perpetual freshness of 
 successive springs in that it always paints the future. 
 Back a few thousand years and their future was the man 
 who would take them and if there would be food enough, 
 and not too many beatings. And then the centuries 
 drifting by and the girls find themselves property and the 
 talk is of accomplishments they must acquire to enhance 
 the price. Ages later and the first talk of rights to come, 
 rights in their own bodies primarily and then in the own 
 ership of their children and the spending of their money. 
 Another gap, and the talk throws ahead to the desire to 
 know, and the future has something in it besides love 
 and maternity. And then the schools and colleges taken 
 as much for granted as marriage and a home, and the 
 professions beckoning. And then, Politics and Work to-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 185 
 
 gether, and these girls of the Universal Service picking 
 futures for themselves out of all that civilization offers 
 anybody. 
 
 Mildred came back to the immediate present with a 
 start. 
 
 " Yes, Aunt Millicent, we wore our uniforms all the 
 time. We didn t dress for dinner, except to put on clean 
 waists and do our hair," she said faintly. 
 
 It all seemed so still; the thick rugs swallowed the 
 sound, and the thick curtains, and the rich dresses the 
 mechanics of living were smooth running and oiled to the 
 last joint. She felt that life was picking her up to set 
 her securely in the middle of a satin-covered cushion of 
 down and that she would be very small indeed and 
 very helpless when she got there. And then she felt a 
 strong hand clapped firmly on her shoulder, and spun 
 round under it to meet the pleasant eyes of Winthrop. 
 
 "Hullo, Citizen Carver!" he said and held out his 
 hand. 
 
 Mildred pressed both her brown hands tight around his 
 and her eyes filled and her throat shut as she tried to 
 answer. Winthrop threw a friendly arm across her 
 shoulders, and drew her out into the hall just in time to 
 meet Andrew Carver coming in. The old man kissed 
 her lightly and set his glasses on his nose, the better to 
 take her in. He had clearly in his mind the picture of 
 the girl at the top of the long stairs with her little, 
 square chin and her baby mouth and her surprised, long, 
 blue glance that and the pretty brown boot vanishing 
 into the motor. And now he looked square into direct 
 fearless, blue eyes eyes no more timid or hesitant than 
 those of Winthrop, who still stood with his hand on her 
 shoulder, the lips were just as full and red, but indefinably
 
 186 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 firmer, and the square shoulders were held low and far 
 back and the brown neck rose not like a flower stem but 
 like the straight bole of a tree. Old Andrew, looking at 
 her speculatively, saw as he had seen before, the lady of 
 breeding and character, the lady of position and beauty 
 and charm, but he was conscious of something more 
 exactly what, he didn t know. He thought again of 
 those other women he had known women quite outside 
 the clan of Carver oh, very much outside, indeed. He 
 had always taken it for granted that their charm came 
 from experience that was unthinkable in his family. And 
 yet, here was this niece of his straight, clean, fine, 
 but with the same subtle charm of wider experience. Old 
 Andrew was a connoisseur in women and he knew charm 
 when he saw it. 
 
 " Come back into the library you and Winthrop 
 and tell me all about it ! " 
 
 There was a gentle wood-fire, the faint perfume of 
 which mingled with the scent of a plant hung thick with 
 blue bell-like blossoms. Old Andrew picked out a straight 
 youthful chair and the two cousins lounged on the big 
 Davenport before the fire. 
 
 " It doesn t seem to have hurt you any, my dear." 
 
 Old Andrew looked her over carefully again from the 
 patch above her eyebrow to her worn brown boots. 
 
 " No, decidedly not. Quite quite the contrary, in 
 fact." 
 
 Winthrop laughed aloud. 
 
 " Haven t I said, ever since the war, that work would 
 be the making of us all ! " 
 
 The old man turned on him sharply. 
 
 " Nephew our family is made already it was 
 made a good while before you were born. And as for 
 what work would do to our girls neither you nor any-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 187 
 
 body else could tell till it had been tried. Mildred is our 
 Government Experiment station." 
 
 Winthrop laughed again; all the younger generation 
 loved the old man for a certain carefree posture of the 
 mind as natural to him as his accent. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Uncle Andrew. I didn t mean to 
 find fault with the family it s the finest I know and the 
 only one I ve got, anyway. I only meant to say that 
 work s good for everybody you lose something out of 
 life if you don t get it." 
 
 " And you lose a lot out of life if you don t get leisure, 
 more, I think. But, that s out of our hands now. The 
 new things the government concerns itself with it s no 
 less than Socialism." 
 
 He paused, eyeing the toe of his dapper shoe appreci 
 atively and only looked up when Winthrop asked Mil 
 dred : 
 
 " Did you have a good Quartermaster? " 
 
 Then they plunged into talk of the technical organi 
 zation of the Service and the Army a comparison and 
 contrast and sifting and sorting of their experiences, and 
 the girl found herself and her work taken seriously, not 
 as a thing to be recovered from and forgotten and ig 
 nored; not as a mere adventure or a lark; but as an im 
 portant part of her life, and a serious concern to every 
 body else. So Mildred s bruised sensibilities were soothed 
 by these two kinsmen, who, even if they were Carvers, 
 had had a sufficiently wide experience to rate her wonder 
 ful year at its full value, and she grew calm enough to go 
 back to the drawingroom. But just as she was inside the 
 door: 
 
 " My dear," whispered Mrs. Carver s sister, "what has 
 happened to Mildred s hands? Look at those broken 
 nails and the calluses on her fingers ! "
 
 188 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Don t talk about it, Emma. I m fairly overwhelmed 
 by the things that must be taken up. The sunburn will 
 go, of course, but suppose there s a scar on her forehead ?" 
 
 "When is Mary going to bring her out?" Mildred 
 overheard a stately cousin inquire. " I want to give 
 something for her before the season gets under way." 
 
 " I imagine that isn t important. You know young 
 Van Arsdale isn t back yet and somebody intimated 
 Mary herself, I think that there was already what 
 amounted to an engagement and no special reason for de 
 laying the marriage." 
 
 That s quite satisfactory, I should think. We ve 
 always known the Van Arsdales." 
 
 Mildred felt herself turn pale under her tan. So this 
 was the life already laid down for her! Well, hadn t 
 she wanted it herself, a year ago? One of her cousins 
 roused her. 
 
 " What are working people like to live with? " 
 
 Mildred, looking up, caught the eye of Wicks, late of 
 the Forestry Service, now engaged in handing salad, and 
 laughed nervously. 
 
 " Exactly like us, Cousin Edmund," she said. 
 
 But when she had said it she knew she was wrong. 
 They were not in the least like her kinsfolk, these young 
 people who had experienced the practical working of 
 democracy. Her family represented not the survival of 
 the fittest but the survival of the preferred. Wasn t 
 there a phrase "preferred stock?" Well, the Carvers 
 were preferred stock. She looked at her older cousins 
 who had gone ahead of her on the social path who had 
 passed from the debutante stage to that of young ma 
 trons, borne their modest quota of children and were 
 pursuing the life ordained to the Carver women. She 
 looked at her mother and her aunts who were at the zenith
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 189 
 
 of a Carver career marrying off their sons and daugh 
 ters suitably, ordering their household perfectly, enter 
 taining distinguished guests in a distinguished fashion, 
 occasionally sitting on charitable boards or furthering not 
 too radical reforms. She thought of Nick dear Nick, 
 who would be coming back soon, expecting to marry her ; 
 Nick, who belonged to this old world of hers and would 
 expect her to belong to it too, and she felt as though a 
 terrible thing were coming nearer, something that would 
 close over her and shut out the air, that would bind her 
 hands and feet and lay an intolerable burden on her 
 shoulders, and unless she had some relief, she knew she 
 would scream. Suddenly she turned to her father: 
 
 " Father, you know about steel isn t there some way 
 of making the saw-edged blades on reapers harder than 
 they are? I had a dreadful time breaking them in Da 
 kota. Isn t there something harder to make them of? " 
 
 Frank turned in his chair and faced her. 
 
 " I think there is or rather that there is going to be. 
 Would you care to go to the laboratory and look at it ? " 
 
 "Oh, father when?" 
 
 " To-morrow, if you like." 
 
 " But, Frank," protested Mary, " Mildred hasn t any 
 thing to wear. I want to get her some clothes to-mor 
 row." 
 
 " Oh, I can wear my uniform ! " 
 
 There was instant silence in the room. They all rec 
 ognized the beginning of the struggle.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MARY CARVER caught at her daughter s life 
 with quick hands. She had no intention of 
 permitting any further interference with the 
 career so definitely appointed by Providence for her 
 daughter. Was not the Service past and the time of 
 pleasures at hand? So she took her young agriculturist 
 to dressmakers and shoemakers and hatmakers and cor 
 set makers and all the other makers of successful de 
 butantes. Mildred revelled in clothes for things that she 
 had almost forgotten could happen, gowns to dance in, 
 and dine in, and go to the theater in, and eat at restau 
 rants in, and drive in, and walk in ; and hats and wraps and 
 shoes and gloves and veils and fans and furs to go with 
 them and all the other lovelinesses that money and taste 
 can provide for a young American princess. It was a 
 matter for time and effort, for racking thought and anx 
 ious consideration, for fittings and drapings and measur- 
 ings and for failures and disappointments as well as 
 successes. Henriette manicured and hairdressed and ex 
 perimented with creams, the dressmakers circled around 
 the hems of Mildred s skirts on their knees, their mouths 
 full of pins, milliners bent and rebent the brims of her 
 hats. Physically it was easy enough to groom her for her 
 part ; mentally it was not so easy. For just at that very 
 year when it had been the Carver habit to take the awak 
 ening mind of the young and set it in stays and 
 circumvent it, and balk its explorations and gropings 
 
 190
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 191 
 
 and joyous adventures, and smother it with outward 
 activities, the Service had thrown the gates wide. Some 
 how Mary Carver felt that she must blot out the Service 
 year. 
 
 " You must remember that that s all past now, daugh 
 ter," she said one day. 
 
 But Mildred answered, " It s never going to be past, 
 mother. I couldn t get away from it if I tried." 
 
 Mary Carver cursed in the terms allowed on the lips 
 of perfect ladies the day when the democratic theories 
 of her ancestors began to clothe themselves in industrial 
 forms and claim recognition even in the best society, for 
 Nick had not come back and, worst of all, Mildred didn t 
 seem to care. 
 
 But the preparations for Mildred s coming out went 
 briskly on; dresses were finished, dates set, visiting lists 
 revised and invitations sent. Mary had not much doubt 
 about Mildred s social success because she was beautiful 
 and people particularly men liked her. 
 
 Old Andrew reassured and frightened her at the same 
 time. 
 
 " One of the most charming girls I ever saw, Mary, but 
 not the kind of girl we ve had before! The men are 
 going to like her," and then after a pause, " All kinds of 
 men, Mary. What are you doing to do with her after 
 you bring her out? " 
 
 " Why, marry her, Uncle Andrew." 
 
 "And then what?" 
 
 " Oh, the usual thing, I suppose ! " 
 
 " Mary, don t you see that there isn t going to be any 
 usual thing about your daughter ? The time is past when 
 marriage is the only career for a lady, my dear. Even 
 the daughters of princes keep shops. This new business 
 of the Service opens more doors than we knew existed.
 
 192 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Can t you agree with your daughter that there are several 
 things she might do with her life? Is it true, something 
 somebody said to me, about Henry Van Arsdale s boy and 
 Mildred?" 
 
 Old Andrew could be as direct as Mamie Epstein when 
 he chose. 
 
 They wanted to be engaged before they went into the 
 Service." 
 
 " I suppose you and Frank wouldn t let them ? " 
 
 " Well, Uncle Andrew, they were so young! " 
 
 "Where s the boy?" 
 
 " Nick isn t back yet at least we haven t seen him." 
 
 " I expect, Mary, that you re going to have a great deal 
 of trouble if you try and bring that match on now, if the 
 boy s as much changed as she is. Unless he s changed in 
 just the same way, there won t be any use trying." 
 
 " I m going to try it, Uncle Andrew just the same. 
 It s a perfect match and exactly what I want for her." 
 
 " You think, my dear Mary, that these girls are all con 
 cerned with marriage and men. Well, you re wrong. 
 This never was true, in the purely physical sense we re 
 afraid to put into cold words. They have been intensely 
 interested, and almost exclusively interested in marriage 
 because it was the most attractive career open to them 
 not because of the men they must marry to achieve it. 
 Now that they ve the choice of so many things to 
 do, marriage loses its monopoly. It s only one of many 
 careers. When they re older it is different; the preoc 
 cupation with men comes later." 
 
 So Mary Carver was greatly disturbed for she knew 
 that Old Andrew was a psychological barometer, and 
 more and more she wished that Nick would come back. 
 
 Mrs. Carver was not the only person distressed at 
 Nick s absence. Henry Van Arsdale, having received
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 193 
 
 instead of his son a letter from him saying that Nick felt 
 he had no right to go home while the Nation needed so 
 many new roads in Arizona in order to move the copper 
 from the mines to where the country needed it, was much 
 disconcerted. Hadn t the boy done what the government 
 wanted him to for a whole year? What more did he 
 think he ought to do ? There were phrases that puzzled 
 him in his son s letter -"The right to good roads" 
 " my patriotic obligations " (did the boy think he was a 
 soldier then?) "Answering the call for transportation," 
 " Being an inland marine for Uncle Sam," " Helping out 
 the people s railroads " - what did the boy think he was, 
 then a public servant? A member of the Civil Serv 
 ice? Didn t he realize that he d done his duty already? 
 That he d finished his Service Year and that the country 
 had no further claim on him ? Why didn t the boy come 
 home ! There wasn t any hint of how long he wanted 
 to stay or what his plans were. 
 
 Henry Van Arsdale, looking around his library, was 
 conscious of a sudden distaste for his surroundings. The 
 low oak bookcases which filled in the spaces between the 
 windows and doors struck him as particularly unattrac 
 tive. The small bronzes and carved ivories and bits of 
 porcelain set on top of them seemed particularly ill chosen. 
 His cigar, just lighted, had a rank flavor, and he tossed it 
 into the fireplace. Even his great padded chair was un 
 comfortable, and he rose sharply from it and strode about 
 the room. The deep springs of feeling carefully lidded 
 down by his breeding were welling dangerously near the 
 top. He wanted his son back, and he was deeply hurt 
 that after a year s almost uninterrupted absence, the boy 
 should choose to potter about in the Southwest. 
 
 But although Nick did not come back the winter hur 
 ried forward and the day came when Mildred, tall and 
 o
 
 194 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 rather splendid, stood beside her mother as the guests 
 came in. The brown edge of her tanned neck was still 
 plain above her white gown and the string of tiny pearls 
 that had been her grandmother s. There wasn t anything 
 of the timid bud about this girl who had drawn straight 
 furrows over half the Mississippi Valley! The Carvers 
 had never before presented a young farm hand as a de 
 butante. Mary Carver, standing beside her dignified, 
 self-possessed young citizen, felt as though she were per 
 petrating a joke on society. 
 
 To Mildred it didn t seem a joke but a delectable dissi 
 pation a bubbly draught that went to her head and left 
 her uncritical. For all these important people had put 
 on their loveliest clothes and their brightest jewels just 
 to welcome her Mildred Carver ! They had sent her 
 flowers, till the whole house was laden with conflicting 
 perfumes. For her the orchestra was playing; for her 
 the rows of motors blocked Washington Square; for her 
 delicate food was set on flower laden tables for her 
 for her ! 
 
 And she sparkled and dimpled under her brown skin, 
 and laughed in a little quick ascending scale, and so blos 
 somed in the sun of favor that her eyes shone with a kind 
 and tender gayety, and her rich lips parted in a frank and 
 generous smile and the same indefinable charm that had 
 drawn John Barton from the flour mill and the Swedish 
 farmhand out of the sunset, encircled her now and men 
 and women stopped to watch. 
 
 Mr. Apperson Forbes backed into the vantage ground 
 of a window and eyed her intently. Andrew Carver, see 
 ing him looking at Mildred, settled his glasses on his 
 nose and watched him shift his position again and again 
 when incoming guests shut off his view of the young girl 
 saw his under lip thrust itself forward and his eyes
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 195 
 
 narrow, and then when the music from the ball room 
 swelled more insistently and the younger people began to 
 drift toward it, saw him shake the kinks out of his long 
 thin legs and lead Mildred toward the dancing. Old 
 Andrew sighed. 
 
 " Almost anything is better than the usual thing 
 sometimes ! " he said to his own memory. 
 
 That night or rather that morning before dawn 
 Mildred lay high against her pillows living the evening 
 through again. The wine of excitement had died out a 
 little, but still there was the feel of the soft scented rush 
 of the ball, like colored lights on a quick stream with just 
 a few things to be remembered, a lady slender and 
 elderly, the very greatest lady in the very greatest family 
 in all New York, holding her hand for a moment and 
 then bending forward with a sudden impulse to kiss her 
 lightly on the cheek and whisper with real emotion in her 
 tired, handsome eyes : 
 
 " My dear I wish I were in your place ! " 
 Her Uncle Andrew, bringing her flowers himself in the 
 old fashioned way, and presenting them as he might have 
 offered them to a reigning sovereign, flowers that she in 
 sisted on holding, though the fashion of that had passed. 
 Mr. Van Arsdale, lured from his books and his club to pay 
 his respects to the girl who might have been his daughter- 
 in-law but with no word of Nick. It seemed to Mil 
 dred that Mr. Van Arsdale had made a very special effort 
 to be nice to her and that he had not been altogether at 
 ease. And then came the picture of Apperson Forbes 
 making his plea for a dance, her mother s quick nod of 
 acquiescence. His thin, elderly arm had guided her fault 
 lessly to the music her first dance at her first ball ! As 
 she thought of it now, there had not been a great many
 
 196 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 young men for her to dance with not nearly as many as 
 there had been at the school-girl dances when she was six 
 teen. She speculated about it there in the warm dark 
 some of them were in college, of course, and a good many 
 of those she knew had gone straight into business after 
 they finished their Service Year. And then those who 
 were as old as Winthrop and David those who had 
 gone to France so many didn t come back ! She re 
 membered that she had danced with several married men, 
 and men almost as old as her father, that night. Now, 
 when they had danced in the barracks, there had been 
 plenty of men. And she considered with rising resent 
 ment that her mother hadn t asked any of her Service 
 friends not even Ruth Ansel whose people she knew ! 
 And then what she had tried to drive below the surface 
 of her mind all the evening the fact that Nick wasn t 
 there and hadn t even taken the trouble to send her word 
 came to the top of her consciousness. Nick had ap 
 parently forgotten that he had asked her to marry him 
 they were to have insisted on being engaged as soon as 
 their year was over ! And to have been married almost 
 right away ! He either didn t care for her any more, or 
 thought the matter of no consequence, or perhaps had 
 found a girl he cared for more. And Mildred found that 
 the dregs of the wine of excitement were bitter in the 
 mouth when she slid down under blankets and tried to 
 go to sleep. 
 
 Her mother and father were talking in their sitting 
 room Mary Carver s hair, almost as long and as golden 
 as her daughter s, had been brushed and coiled for the 
 night, her tired feet were in the softest of slippers and she 
 was sitting forward, her chin set into the bowl of her two 
 hands, looking anxiously into the fire.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 197 
 
 "Well, Mary, what is it?" Frank asked her at last. 
 
 " It s everything! " 
 
 " Why, it seemed a good enough party as parties go 
 was anything wrong? " 
 
 " Frank Carver, I don t believe that you really looked 
 at the party from Mildred s standpoint at all you just 
 thought it must be all right because the people came and 
 enjoyed themselves and it was all so pretty to look at. 
 You didn t see the awfulness of it ! " 
 
 " Why, no what do you mean? " 
 
 " Well, you know everybody knows, that there s 
 just one reason for bringing a girl out and that s to get 
 her married. We may pretend about it, but we know 
 that s what it s for!" 
 
 Frank wound his watch slowly and laid it on the table. 
 
 " I suppose that is it though I hate to admit it even 
 to myself." 
 
 " I don t ! We want her to marry, so why not say so? 
 And we want her to marry the right sort of a man, so 
 why not see that she meets him? " 
 
 " I m not as honest as you, Mary. I d rather not put 
 it into words when it concerns my own daughter." 
 
 " I realize your limitations, my dear, but whether 
 we shall say it or not, isn t the point. What I m blue 
 about, is that there was hardly a man here to-night I d 
 consider letting her marry." 
 
 Frank swung round from the fireplace. 
 
 "What!" 
 
 " I mean it hardly one ! Just think it over your 
 self there were the two Townsends, about the right 
 age and of course they re the right kind of people but 
 Tom s as solemn as one of those gray cranes we saw on 
 the Gulf life would be very dull with him and the 
 youngest has been obviously in love with Minnie Martin
 
 198 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 for six years and it begins to look like the sort of grande 
 passion that s almost extinct. And there were those two 
 from the British Embassy England isn t very bad of 
 course, but it isn t New York there were a few others, 
 but when you come right down to it, they were a rather 
 left over lot. Why, do you know who took her to the 
 ball room for the first dance? Apperson Forbes! " 
 
 "Oh, I say!" 
 
 "Yes, he did!" 
 
 " It wasn t so bad as that in the Service those men I 
 saw there were at least young and strong not desic 
 cated remains, residual legatees of another genera 
 tion!" 
 
 " Oh, why isn t Nick Van Arsdale back ! Then we d 
 arrange that marriage right away and she d forget all 
 about this foreman and the Swede and that terrible Serv 
 ice!" 
 
 She ll forget the men anyway, I think but how 
 about the work? " 
 
 " Oh, Frank, as though work was a thing anybody 
 liked to do!" 
 
 But Frank Carver, remembering the rapt face of his 
 daughter above the wheels of the reaping machine, was 
 not so sure.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IT was true that Henry Van Arsdale was offering a 
 tacit apology for Nick s absence by his presence at 
 Mildred s debutante dance. He was bewildered 
 and distressed by the situation. What was this boy 
 up to? That Nick was high strung and excitable his 
 father knew, what if he had got into some scrape and 
 was afraid to tell him about it! Well, suppose he had, 
 wasn t it the part of a wise parent to let him fight through 
 it alone? Did it not make for strength of character? 
 But Henry Van Arsdale could not comfort himself with 
 this thought. A picture of all the things that could 
 possibly happen to Nick began to keep him awake nights, 
 began to steal in through the curtains of his bedroom and 
 lie in wait for him in the corners of his library, and in 
 trench themselves under the dining room table. He 
 might have some crazy idea of prospecting a mine for 
 himself silly thing to do when he didn t need the 
 money! There was a lot of political filibustering and 
 half-baked revolution still going back and forth across 
 the Mexican border ; perhaps he was playing D Artagnan 
 to some intrigue, that would appeal to his sense of ad 
 venture. It might be that he had a touch of malaria or 
 something like that ! But anyway the fact that Mildred 
 had made her debut ought to have brought him home. 
 Henry Van Arsdale dropped his book that might be 
 the trouble ! The boy might have fallen in love it had 
 been a long time since he had seen Mildred! He had 
 
 199
 
 200 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 heard that those Mexican girls were as lovely as Spanish 
 sefioritas ! 
 
 In Henry Van Arsdale the need for action, imme 
 diate physical action, had almost entirely lapsed. His 
 impulses were mostly born into an unreal world where 
 they died without even the intent of fulfillment. But 
 this danger to his son upheaved the rock strata of his 
 habits. 
 
 " I wish," he said to Arnold, who answered his bell, 
 " that you would have them pack a bag for me, and get a 
 check cashed, and will you see when the next train goes 
 West and make arrangements for me to go on it? " 
 
 " Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. I am afraid that the bank 
 is closed for the day, sir, and I shall have to get the money 
 out of your safe." 
 
 " Fix it any way you like, Arnold, only tell them to 
 hurry everything." 
 
 And so Henry Van Arsdale, a little tremulous from his 
 nervous tumult, found himself on a slow train crawling 
 into Arizona. The people about him made up part of his 
 distaste for his position. They were thin, and colorless, 
 as though the hot sun had bleached them out instead of 
 ripening something fine and rich within. They were ill- 
 shaped and carried themselves lumberingly. Their shoes 
 in particular, and he looked appreciatively at his own 
 custom made boots were very trying to the aesthetic 
 eye. The women, he thought resentfully, were the type 
 that should have been in sunbonnets, but were not. 
 
 When he turned from the people to the dry desert 
 about him, he was still more unhappy. It was so deso 
 late, so inhuman ! The dry land billowed away from the 
 railroad tracks in ill-shaped, ragged waves that seemed 
 to beat on the low lines of red rock against the horizon. 
 Instead of trees, tall gray cactuses stood about the desert
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 201 
 
 as though some prehistoric pile driver had driven them 
 in. The only color was in the little spots of green about 
 some settler s cabin, or near some infrequent spring. This 
 unmitigated barrenness was what his son had preferred 
 to New York what was the strong tie that held him ? 
 
 Nicholas Van Arsdale, assistant foreman in a govern 
 ment road-making gang working in Arizona, was thor 
 oughly enjoying his job. The work of reshaping the 
 earth to the uses of man; of blasting and digging and fit 
 ting and grading and topping and dragging till the moun 
 tain side was ready for burden of wheels, seemed to 
 him a great act of creation. And the sense of his duty as 
 a citizen which had been born during his year in the Uni 
 versal Service was satisfied also, for he could see how the 
 road he was helping to build would make it easier for the 
 Secretary of Mines to get out the copper. Day by day 
 the time drew near when the tiny mine tractors would 
 drag their trains of cars up the grade. Nick felt his 
 heart pound at the thought of the first load of copper that 
 would come down over his road. 
 
 But though the work itself was satisfying the life he 
 had to lead was dreary enough. He wondered why any 
 thing so indispensable to the welfare of the race as cop 
 per should hide away below the surface of the desert 
 where nobody he cared about lived ; where Mildred Car 
 ver in particular could not possibly be expected to make 
 her home. For his mind was full of Mildred these days 
 Mildred on the other side of a tennis net, Mildred with 
 her shoulder against his in the little gray racer, Mildred on 
 the veranda, that wonderful night when the silver, per 
 fume-laden mist came up the valley, and Mildred going 
 away with his ring on her finger. It wasn t possible to 
 bring Mildred to a place like this to have her live in 
 the cheap little hotels in the mining towns or to camp
 
 202 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 about from place to place as the road progressed. She 
 wasn t the kind of girl that would fit into such a casual 
 existence it wouldn t be right to ask her. Why, she s 
 just "come out!" Her time was probably filled with 
 dances and receptions and theaters and lots of fellows 
 would be wanting to marry her. Nick kicked viciously 
 at a particularly rich piece of copper-bearing rock as he 
 thought about it. He wouldn t have any right to marry 
 her and make her unhappy; and he couldn t let himself be 
 a slacker and go back on his job, not as a citizen in a 
 real democracy he couldn t! No! There was nothing 
 for him but work that was a man s job. 
 
 And just as he had settled the matter for the thousandth 
 time came his father from New York. The afternoon 
 sun was glaring brazenly on the bare, unshaded street ; on 
 the square, cheap railroad hotel with the despondent flower 
 boxes pulled back into the protecting shade of the shallow 
 veranda ; on the two churches fronting each other bellig 
 erently across the street; on the stores with their limp 
 awnings ; on the abandoned offices of the old mining com 
 pany; and on the rows of miners cabins straggling up the 
 sides of the canyon on stilts, dreary, flimsy, absolutely 
 stereotyped living places baking in the sun, as Henry Van 
 Arsdale greeted his son. What a place his boy had chosen 
 to live in ! 
 
 After they had dined on the stereotyped, standardized 
 food which the remote hotels of the United States keep 
 continually on hand, they found places for themselves on 
 the hotel veranda beside the drooping plants. It had 
 been ninety in the shade most of the day and the street 
 had been empty; but now with the drop of the sun the 
 desert was losing its heat and a little cold wind came up 
 from nowhere and blew upon them. 
 
 The slow, shuffling steps of the Mexican and Spanish
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 203 
 
 miners sounded in the dark street and they would sud 
 denly emerge into the glare of the arc light as though a 
 curtain had been lifted from before them. The high 
 laughter of the women who greeted them jarred out of 
 the darkness, there was the occasional clatter of a cheap 
 automobile and the quick pattering footsteps of the little 
 burros as a pack train came back from the mountains. 
 But over and through these sounds, which were much the 
 same as those which had filled the evenings in that region 
 ever since copper was first mined there, came the young, 
 fresh laughter of the boys in the Universal Service. 
 From them came bursts of song, usually exaggeratedly 
 sentimental in intent but inharmoniously matter of fact 
 in rendering. They scurried in and out of the picture 
 show, and bought the little drug store out of ice cream; 
 they skylarked about the streets and engaged in wrestling 
 matches on the pavement. The Mexican miners watched 
 them in uncomprehending stolidity. Why should not 
 all one s leisure be spent in the sensible pursuit of resting? 
 
 It was easy enough to start Nick talking about roads 
 and how to make them and where they ought to go 
 easy to get him to talk about the town which he had ex 
 plored carefully easy to get him to talk about the desert 
 which he found wonderful and entrancing in spite of its 
 barrenness. Henry Van Arsdale quieted his minor fears 
 which related to mining, malaria and sporadic revolution 
 almost at once. But the question of the possible inam 
 orata hadn t been broached. 
 
 A bold-eyed girl stole cautiously to the veranda and 
 peered over at them smiling. Nick turned his shoulder 
 with a shrug of distaste. 
 
 " Do you know any of the people who live in the 
 town? " his father asked diplomatically. 
 
 " I know the new road contractor. And there s the
 
 204 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 night clerk in the hotel, he s a college man, came from 
 Chicago. I ve talked with the two mining engineers who 
 are working for the company oh, yes, I know several 
 people who live here." 
 
 " I mean don t you know any men who have homes 
 here? Any people with families? Any women, or 
 girls?" 
 
 The smiling girl stole furtively past again. 
 
 " That s about the only kind of women there are here, 
 sir," and his lips curling with distaste for this particular 
 characteristic of a mining town. 
 
 " I don t understand exactly what you want to stay out 
 here any longer for, Nick. It seems to me that you ve 
 gone into this business of making roads a good deal, why 
 not study something else? I d like to have you home 
 again, and Mildred is back." 
 
 Nick got up and walked to the edge of the veranda 
 his hands in his pockets. 
 
 " I know she s back but - I don t want to go home. 
 I d rather stay here." 
 
 " But Mildred must be expecting you. Have you 
 written her that you are delayed ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " You ought to, Nick. She will wonder what has hap 
 pened." 
 
 Nick braced himself against the veranda rail. 
 
 " I don t pretend to misunderstand you, sir. I suppose 
 you think I ought to go back and ask Mildred again, but 
 I just can t see it. I was an entirely different person a 
 year ago and I don t think she would like me now as she 
 did then, only she might not know I was different and 
 marry me anyway." 
 
 " How do you mean you are different ? " 
 
 " Well, there are such a lot of things I want to do.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 205 
 
 When I went away I just thought that there was college, 
 and I would go to that; then there was all the world to 
 travel about it, and I would travel about in it; then there 
 was Mildred, and I thought we would keep on doing to 
 gether just the same sort of things that we had both been 
 doing all our lives." 
 
 " But what do you want to do now? " 
 
 " I want to make roads. Why, father, there s a man 
 who was head of our gang up in Iowa told me that he 
 thought the day of railroads was past. That it wasn t 
 enough to lay steel rails just in a few places over the 
 surface of the earth and have just a few railroad trains. 
 He said, and I don t see any reason why he isn t right, 
 that you can build a kind of railroad train that will run 
 on any road that is good enough for an automobile. He 
 said, and I don t see why it isn t true, that a farmer way 
 up in the edge of Dakota should be able to load his own 
 wheat crop right on his own farm and then take the car 
 down the regular road if it was the right kind of road 
 and have it attached to a train and carried on till it is 
 hitched on to a longer train and goes on down to the mills 
 where it is made into flour. He says that we would 
 make over the whole world if we had the proper kind of 
 roads everywhere, government and education and al 
 most everything and I don t see why he isn t right. 
 They would tie all the people of the United States to 
 gether, and all the people of the world together, if there 
 were enough of them, and they were good enough. It 
 seems to me that it s my job to help put these roads 
 through." 
 
 Henry Van Arsdale smiled a little sadly. So many 
 people had thought they had turned a new leaf in the book 
 of democracy! He remembered the white-haired gentle 
 man who believed that the parcels post was the opening of
 
 206 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 a new door for all the race to pass through, and who pro 
 ceeding on that belief, had actually forced his idea upon 
 a reluctant Congress and got that one definite bit of pub 
 lic service done. He remembered another enthusiast 
 who felt that the problems of housing the multitudes of 
 the great cities was the most acute the world needed to 
 solve, and gave his heart s blood for measures that he 
 thought would bring lower rents, lower buildings, more 
 sunlight and air and better places to live in. And then 
 there was that great group who felt that the Single Tax 
 on land was the doorbell to the millennium, and others 
 who thought the problem of universal happiness would be 
 solved by Socialism, and still other groups who thought 
 it would be solved by Bolshevism. And here was this 
 son of his, with the seer s light in his eyes feeling that it 
 would be solved by good roads ! 
 
 Henry Van Arsdale felt himself very old as he looked 
 at his boy. Who was he to stand between him and his 
 chance of usefulness? And then came the old code of 
 the gentleman bred into his race for many generations. 
 
 " Nick," he said, " this is all very well, but there is 
 your very definite personal duty. You have asked a girl 
 to marry you, and it is up to you as a gentleman to go 
 through with it." 
 
 " Father," said the boy, " I don t think it is. I think 
 it is up to me, as a man, and incidentally a gentleman too, 
 not to lure her into a marriage where she would not be 
 happy." 
 
 " Well, it is up to you, my son, to make her happy after 
 you have married her." 
 
 " Do you think, father, that to make a woman happy is 
 the whole duty of man? " 
 
 " I am not sure that it isn t, Nick. At least you could 
 be in a worse business than making Mildred Carver
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 207 
 
 happy." Henry Van Arsdale was tired, he couldn t pur 
 sue the conflict with his son that first night, so he let the 
 subject drop. 
 
 The next day he went with Nick over a trail to a newly 
 opened mine. The company wanted to make the trail 
 into the kind of a road over which they could bring the 
 ore down to the smelter without laying a track. Nick 
 showed him where the road would have to lift on the out 
 side as it turned a sharp curve, and where the grade would 
 have to be cut to just the proper number of feet to the 
 mile, and how to prevent washouts in the spring and 
 freezing and cracking of the roadbed in the winter. It 
 was a new kind of interest for Henry Van Arsdale, and 
 he got just a little of Nick s enthusiasm for this job. 
 
 But again after dinner they sat on the veranda and 
 again Henry Van Arsdale tried to make his son see his 
 duty through his father s eyes, and again he failed utterly. 
 
 " It s like this, father. Suppose I went back to New 
 York and married Mildred. And then suppose I had to 
 be traveling about building roads, first in one place and 
 then in another. Would I leave Mildred in New York 
 by herself, or would I keep her out here winter and sum 
 mer, living in a tent with nobody to talk to but the road 
 gangs and nothing to do but watch the same thing being 
 done over and over again. No, sir, it isn t any way to 
 treat a girl." 
 
 " Well, Nick, of course there is the other alternative. 
 You might go back and live in New York." 
 
 " Father, it wouldn t be right ! It s my duty as a cit 
 izen to go on with my work just as though I were in the 
 army. I am in the army just as much as if I were fight 
 ing in the trenches. The Service Year was just a be 
 ginning the real thing keeps on all your life. I want 
 to marry Mildred more than ever, but you wouldn t want
 
 208 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 me to be a slacker in order to make her happy, would 
 you?" 
 
 Henry Van Arsdale regarded his son with a mixture 
 of exasperation and pride. It warmed the very lining of 
 his heart to realize how thoroughly the lad meant what 
 he said, and yet 
 
 " Do I understand you to say, Nick, that you absolutely 
 refuse to stand by your word and marry Mildred? " 
 
 " I wish you wouldn t put it that way, sir, it sounds 
 like a thoroughly caddish thing." 
 
 " It is a thoroughly caddish thing. There is no other 
 word for it." 
 
 " No, it isn t, only I can t make you see it, sir." 
 
 Another day Henry Van Arsdale stayed in the town, 
 another evening he sat on the veranda and plead with his 
 son. 
 
 " Undoubtedly it won t be long before Mildred marries 
 some one else," he said finally. 
 
 Nick jumped to his feet. 
 
 "No," he protested, "Oh no!" 
 
 " Of course she will why shouldn t she? " 
 
 " She doesn t have to marry! We ve got past that! " 
 
 The older man shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Well, we don t have to discuss it, anyway. It s you 
 are making it quite definitely not your affair." 
 
 Nick turned from him in silent resentment. 
 
 " What I hope," the elder man continued cautiously, 
 " is that she doesn t make any horrible matrimonial blun 
 der get herself into a tragedy." 
 
 " I don t see why you think there s any such probabil 
 ity!" 
 
 " Perhaps there isn t perhaps not. I imagine there 
 won t be any lack of applicants! " 
 
 "Don t, father!"
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 209 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I can t stand thinking of her marrying anybody else!" 
 
 " There isn t any doubt you ll have to ! " 
 
 The next day Henry Van Arsdale started east again 
 feeling that a barrier had grown up between him and his 
 son which could never be broken down; a barrier not of 
 age or conduct, but of the different ideals which this new 
 life had brought to the surface, arid he was filled with a 
 bitter resentment that anything should come between him 
 and this boy who was the only person he really loved in the 
 world. To him it seemed that the high places of chiv 
 alry and honor and truth were laid low, and that all the 
 finer things that had been bred into his line through the 
 generations had been swept away in a murky stream. 
 There was a great deal of anger at Nick in this feeling 
 too. If he had been a feudal baron he would have cut 
 the boy off with a shilling. But what would have been 
 the good of that in a modern society ? What would he do 
 with his shillings when he came to die? And besides 
 Nick had money enough of his own. So there was the 
 long journey back through the stifling desert with the dry 
 gray cactus rising like daytime ghosts to overpower him. 
 There was the long companionship of the dull, washed- 
 out people who filled the slow trains. 
 
 But as the train dallied along through the dust, Henry 
 Van Arsdale began to get a new picture of his son. He 
 had always felt Nick s brilliance and a certain dogged 
 quality which might make that brilliance count for a good 
 deal. The boy might do some gallant piece of explora 
 tion might chart the inchoate region of Hudson Bay 
 or follow up the lost riverbeds of Thibet. He had al 
 ways recognized a quality of adventure in his boy that 
 might lead him to aero racing or to toy revolutions in 
 South America. But now ! Had he been mistaken
 
 210 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 in Nick all these years? Blind to the big practical side 
 of him? And the idealist side? And the unselfishness? 
 It began to grow in his mind that what he had to deal 
 with was not a Service boy, but a changed civilization. 
 Nick had been inducted into a new age and had left the 
 codes and standards of his father as far in the past as the 
 decrees of Amenhotep. Henry Van Arsdale felt the 
 growing pains of a new respect for the ideas of this later 
 world as the train hurried him back to his home empty 
 without his son.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE obligations and engagements of a debutante 
 closed like waves of the incoming tide over 
 Mildred. There is no question that she en 
 joyed herself. But the social diet palled surprisingly 
 soon. It palled also for most of that year s flowering of 
 debutantes, and the mothers, who were in the main un 
 comprehending, had much difficulty in keeping their 
 daughters in hand. More marriages than usual took 
 place across the social line, and they were less cried out 
 upon than formerly because the supply of eligible hus 
 bands inside was so patently inadequate. But Mildred 
 didn t formulate her rebellion, even to herself, till Mamie 
 Epstein put into words her own envious longings. 
 
 It was a Sunday afternoon and Mildred had brought 
 the big car to take Mamie out riding. The chauffeur, 
 under the guiding intelligence of Wicks his twin as to 
 sombre braid-trimmed uniform had found the way 
 down the Bowery, across on Rivington Street, not unused 
 to the sight of limousines searching out the Settlements, 
 and south on Orchard Street where the social life of the 
 Ghetto drifted back and forth on the sidewalks. It was 
 cold for New York but Yiddish-e-f raus sat at the door 
 ways of the dingy tenements, wrapped in crocheted capes 
 above knitted sweaters, their tired feet resting wide apart 
 and multitudinous skirts draping down into the vast laps 
 that had held many children. The week-day dikes of 
 push carts were gone from the curb and the tide of chil 
 dren played back and forth from street to sidewalk, so 
 
 2ir
 
 212 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 that the motor had to bray its way slowly among them. 
 The young girls, quite unbelievably smart in their hard 
 earned clothes and with the wonderful eyes of the Orient 
 looking out into Occidental streets, strolled back and forth 
 by twos and threes casting long glances at the groups of 
 young men smoking their cigarettes and lounging at the 
 corners. It was the great democratic drawing room on 
 the day when the New York Ghetto was " at home." 
 
 Wicks after one glance at the doorway where they 
 stopped, overstepped the bounds of his duty and followed 
 his young mistress silently up the stairs, leaving the chauf 
 feur unassisted to repel boarding parties. 
 
 Mamie was ready and waiting in fact she had spent 
 the last hour hanging out of the window in company with 
 all the Epstein family who were not doing scout duty up 
 and down Orchard Street. When the door opened 
 Mamie stood out against a gay background of bright 
 figured wall paper, large patterned rug, flamboyant sofa 
 cushions and gilt framed pictures, in new and startling 
 simplicity, a plain serge dress and a plain, dark hat and 
 an imitation but modest lace collar and plain black shoes. 
 This much sartorial wisdom Mamie had gained since she 
 and Mildred found themselves side by side in the troop 
 train. Her complexion, however, had taken on all its old 
 elaborate frankness. 
 
 As they went down the stairs Mildred was conscious of 
 doors carefully pulled ajar and bright, dark eyes watching 
 them curiously, and Wicks following in his livery found 
 the doors opening wider yet as he passed and a little extra 
 flutter and craning of necks after him as the special vis 
 ible hall mark of the wealth and position that was passing 
 through their building. 
 
 Quite an obstruction had been formed in Orchard 
 Street by the crowd gathered around the low bodied, high
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 213 
 
 powered car with its liveried chauffeur who looked re 
 sentfully at the returning Wicks. Is it any part of the 
 duty of a high salaried automobile engineer to wrestle 
 personally with the young of the proletariat? 
 
 " Get right in, Mamie. Wicks, is the heater under 
 Miss Epstein s feet? " 
 
 The dark fur spread over their knees, the door 
 slammed, the crowd of children became vocal. 
 
 " Oh, say Mamie. I know you oh, say, gimme a 
 ride " 
 
 " I guess I know her better n you do ain t Izzie Ep 
 stein in my room by the school? Ain t he? " 
 
 Their grimy fingers caught at the mud guards, their 
 feet tried to stay on the running board as the car began 
 to move. As a great moose might shake free from harry 
 ing wolves, the sleek automobile freed itself from the 
 children and felt its way around into Rivington Street. 
 
 Mamie balked her impulse to catch at the gleaming 
 handle of the door as the car at last finished its slow 
 threading of the crowded quarters and turned swiftly up 
 Fifth Avenue. 
 
 " Lean back, Mamie, you ll be more comfortable." 
 
 " Say, Mildred this is something grand ! Just like 
 being in Heaven it must be to go riding in automobiles 
 every day." 
 
 " I do like riding, Mamie only I like to run the car 
 myself I can almost think it s the tractor again when 
 I do." 
 
 : You should worry with two men in grand suits al 
 ways to run it for you ! " 
 
 " But I like to do it you didn t do much tractor driv 
 ing so you don t know what fun it is to feel the machine 
 do what you tell it to." 
 
 " Well, all that s inside them tractors I cleaned it every
 
 214 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 day it ain t so much fun that I should be getting home 
 sick if somebody else does it a while now." 
 
 They were sliding along up Fifth Avenue and Mamie s 
 quick glance swept from the window displays of the smart 
 shops to the Greek temples of the money changers back 
 to the towering cathedral, and then settled happily as they 
 came abreast of the great houses. 
 
 " Any of them you could stop and see the people in ! 
 Now you got an introduction to society ain t it so? " 
 
 "Oh, no, Mamie I don t even know the names of 
 ever so many people living along here ! Tell me, Mamie, 
 just what is it you do at the Shirt Waist factory? Do 
 you sew them or cut them or what ? " 
 
 " Oh, I m an operator I m shop chairlady now." 
 
 Mamie s voice was indifferent as though she didn t 
 wish consciously to make the everyday part of life too 
 vivid in this moment of exaltation. 
 
 " That s splendid, Mamie let me congratulate you ! 
 I suppose a shop chairlady is like a foreman, isn t it? 
 Like Mr. Barton?" 
 
 " Well, not so you would notice it ! Say, ain t that 
 the house Mr. Astor lives in? I seen it in the paper." 
 
 " Yes that s the house. But, Mamie, what does op 
 erator mean? What do you operate? " 
 
 " Oh, it s sewing on the power machines rows of 
 stitching with six needles like your gang of plows, I m 
 doing now. Ain t that Mrs. West s house that gave the 
 dance there was a princess to last Thursday ? " 
 
 " Yes, that s where Mrs. West lives." 
 
 "Were you to it?" 
 
 " The dance ? For a little while I was there was a 
 crowd." 
 
 " Honest, did you see her? " 
 
 "See who?"
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 215 
 
 " Why, the princess." 
 
 " Yes, I d seen her before." 
 
 "What s she look like?" 
 
 " Why, she s rather tall and very thin and her eyes 
 are so big and black that you don t notice much else about 
 her. She dances beautifully. I think she isn t very 
 young. That must be wonderful, Mamie to sew with 
 six needles at once ! I had such an awful time just sew 
 ing with one! And to make shirtwaists that everybody 
 needs so, it s serving the country to make them ! Isn t 
 it exciting to do it? " 
 
 "Exciting? Say, it s something fierce it s that dull! 
 All day the same thing over and over it is. You gotta do 
 something different all the time from your breakfast till 
 the next day you get the excitement, Mildred." 
 
 " Oh, no, Mamie it isn t exciting it s just the 
 same thing over and over it isn t nearly as interesting 
 as being in the Service." 
 
 " I can tell you, Mildred, when I got a automobile like 
 you got, and a house to live in like you got, and a mamma 
 with real pearls like you got, working by the machine I 
 wouldn t want I should ever do it again! " 
 
 The motor was stopped in the fifties by the cross town 
 traffic and Apperson Forbes sauntering slowly south in 
 the formal afternoon dress of the perfect gentleman 
 stepped to the curb beside it. His glance at Mildred was 
 as warm and encircling as he could well make it his 
 glance at Mamie in spite of the deferential bow under 
 the raised hat was extremely chill. 
 
 " I was just going down to Washington Square to 
 beg your mother for a cup of tea." 
 
 " I think she s at home," Mildred told him with mis 
 chievous simplicity. 
 
 " But I ve changed my plan."
 
 216 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Oh have you when? " 
 
 " Since seeing you going the other way." 
 
 Mildred felt herself blushing not so much at what he 
 said and the evident intention of his look, as at having 
 Mamie a witness to it. But Mamie was silent until the 
 car began nosing itself into the curving ways of Central 
 Park. 
 
 " And beaus rich like millionaires even if they ain t 
 so young ! " 
 
 There was no use repudiating Mamie s inference for 
 Mildred knew that it was true. She turned again to 
 the thing that oppressed her. 
 
 " I wish I were working at something I wish I were 
 doing anything that anybody needed to have done as you 
 are. I feel guilty all the time a traitor or something 
 like that. When there are such a lot of things that people 
 need to have done and me doing nothing at all. When 
 you make a shirtwaist you know that some one is going 
 to wear it. And it s so dull, Mamie! You may think 
 I am an idiot to say so, but when I remember that work 
 with the Unit- especially when w r e were in the flour 
 mill and how there was always something interesting 
 and different to do all day long, and people that you liked 
 to talk to, and who could tell you things you didn t know 
 why I almost cry I m so homesick ! " 
 
 " Well, Mildred Carver, it s ashamed to say it you 
 should be, with everything just like it was heaven some 
 body told you about! It s if you was working by shirt 
 waists you should worry." 
 
 " Oh, Mamie, it s finding every day just like the day 
 before and not doing anything that anybody needs and 
 not having anything to interest you and nobody to talk 
 to who knows about what you like it s those things 
 that are so awful ! "
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 217 
 
 " Honest, Mildred, you make me mad. With not hav 
 ing to get up in the mornings and clothes like every day 
 was New Year s going to dances by grand gentlemen 
 friends in automobiles every night If you would be 
 working by machine operating all day and only dances 
 when the Shirtwaist Union gives a Annual Grand Ball, 
 and Banquet in Avenue A Casino you could say think 
 ing of the Service it makes you lonesome! And the 
 grand young man, to come by you in the railroad station 
 when at Christmas time we came back and kissing you 
 like getting engaged and just as easy you could marry 
 him! Ain t it so! " 
 
 "Mamie you re entirely mistaken. I m not en 
 gaged to Nick Van Arsdale. I m not and I m not 
 going to be! I don t even know where he is! I don t 
 want to know! " 
 
 " Just friends you can be if you want to, but such a 
 grand young man 
 
 * Please, Mamie, let s not talk about it see, isn t that 
 a battleship anchored in the river? " 
 
 They had slid through the Park by now, following its 
 swinging curves without a break and over to the river 
 edge. The girls leaned forward watching a tiny launch 
 leave the companion ladder and turn toward shore. 
 
 " Perhaps they are Service boys coming ashore I 
 can t see their uniforms from here can you? " 
 
 " Not so good. A cousin I got in the navy somewhere. 
 Last month he went in the Service. Mamie, he says, 
 not to working by cloaks and suits do I come back 
 again! " 
 
 " I ve a cousin in the navy too he gave his yacht to 
 the government during the war and then he liked it so 
 much that he enlisted in the navy and stayed right along. 
 He s a captain now. They might be in the same ship."
 
 218 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 They sped up Riverside Drive, the river below now 
 veiled thinly by the bare branches of trees, now showing 
 clear for miles to the north till the last worn down 
 rounded billows of the palisades cut it off. The crisp 
 wind brought a brighter color than Mamie s to Mildred s 
 cheeks. And as the sun began to sink and transmute the 
 river into gold, they turned and went back through the 
 Sunday afternoon quiet of the middle class respectable 
 quarters back through the desert silence of the busi 
 ness district, back among the ever crowding, ever noisy, 
 ever ailing children of poor food and darkness and bad 
 air back to Orchard Street and Mamie s home. 
 
 " Never did I think in an automobile I should ride up 
 Fifth Avenue. Every day I would think how great a 
 pleasure it would be." 
 
 " Mamie it isn t so much fun every day. It s like 
 operating the machine." 
 
 It was a week later that Mildred lunched with Ruth 
 Ansel. Ruth s mother was out and the little maid 
 brought in the little lunch and set it before the two girls 
 in the tiny sun-lit dining room of the apartment over 
 looking Columbia University. 
 
 " Do you like it, Ruth the scientific management 
 you re studying? " Mildred asked wistfully. 
 
 " Oh, I love it ! It s like making a great machine out 
 of people, or doing an experiment in physics that s got to 
 turn out according to the law if you only know the 
 law! It s this way: you take a machine that cuts off 
 pieces of iron 
 
 And Ruth launched into a careful description of the 
 joys of scientific management as far as she d got with it. 
 It was good picturing clear, restrained, thoughtful ; 
 her father, the professor of science, would have been grat 
 ified, even proud to hear her but Mildred s attention
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 219 
 
 slipped gradually away and though she continued to re 
 gard her hostess with polite attention, still there was no 
 spontaneity nor lift in her response. Ruth was a little 
 slow in the uptake, as was natural to one trained in the 
 creed that knowledge for its own sake would inevitably 
 awaken interest, but at last she stopped short, considered 
 Mildred critically, and asked : 
 
 "What s the matter?" 
 
 Mildred looked up with a start. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon, Ruth I seem to be dread 
 fully stupid to-day I didn t get much sleep last night ; 
 that dance at the Eltons didn t begin till almost mid 
 night and I " 
 
 Her voice trailed off into silence. 
 
 Ruth considered her soberly as though she were an im 
 personal problem to be solved, and then melting into a 
 rather rare tenderness put her hand over Mildred s on the 
 table edge. 
 
 "What is it, Mildred?" 
 
 Mildred started to draw her hand away in defense of 
 her reserve, and then breaking a little, turned it palm up 
 to meet Ruth s. 
 
 " I guess there s nothing the matter but me I guess 
 it s because I m a fool and inadequate and everything. 
 But it just seems to me that I can t stand it, not to do any 
 thing that s worth doing or that anybody needs to have me 
 do ! I like to go to dances and the theater and dinners and 
 things only I don t like to do it all the time. There 
 are just about the same people at everything, too, and 
 they re all so much alike and they say the same things 
 Now in the Service everybody was a good deal different 
 from everybody else it was quite exciting every day 
 doing work that was important like helping to grow 
 crops."
 
 220 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 It was a very long and self -revealing speech for Mil 
 dred Carver to make. 
 
 " I suppose they want you to marry somebody," Ruth 
 said quite impersonally. 
 
 " That s the way everybody acts, though of course they 
 don t say so." Mildred was quite as impersonal as Ruth, 
 but she felt her color rise. If Mamie had seen Nick kiss 
 her at Christmas, Ruth might well have seen it too. And 
 here was this awful humiliation that he didn t seem to 
 care anything about her. She couldn t let Ruth know 
 that. 
 
 "Well, why don t you?" 
 
 " It s so awful to have that the only thing expected of 
 me and there s no one I want to marry anyway, too 
 old, or too dull or something. I don t see why I should 
 marry just to get out of the way! " 
 
 " I don t either, Mildred. I wouldn t stand it if I 
 were you." 
 
 " What would you do? " 
 
 There was a little mist in Mildred s blue eyes. 
 
 " I d tell them I wouldn t marry till I wanted to and 
 nobody could make me." 
 
 " Well, Ruth, what good would that do ? Everything 
 would go right along just the same." 
 
 "Don t let it!" 
 
 " It s all very well to say don t let it but what can I 
 do?" 
 
 " You might go out and get a job. Go to work doing 
 something that s important. Pretend that your father 
 hasn t got all that money and do as almost everybody 
 else has to do go to work ! " 
 
 Mildred looked at her wide-eyed, her lips a little apart. 
 
 "How could I find something to do?" she asked 
 breathlessly.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 221 
 
 This was a facer for them both at last Ruth ven 
 tured : 
 
 " You might go to an employment agency." 
 
 " I suppose I might ! " Mildred felt a little catch in her 
 throat at the possibility, and then : 
 
 " It would be pretty awful for mother! " 
 
 " Well of course if you re going to be sentimental about 
 it you ll just let yourself be married to somebody you 
 don t care anything about and then you ll be like all the 
 prehistoric women that never did anything with their 
 lives. Your cousin David says that all the women in 
 your family always do what is expected of them anyway 
 he says you 
 
 "David Carver?" 
 
 :< Yes I I ve he s been here several times since 
 I met him at your Christmas party I Well, Mildred, 
 you ve got to break away from it all and be something. 
 Come and study scientific management with me it s 
 perfectly fascinating! And you d be surprised how im 
 portant it is." 
 
 " Oh, Ruth, I don t care anything about scientific man 
 agement! That wouldn t help at all. It isn t just to 
 find something to do I ve got things to do all day and 
 all night, now." 
 
 " But Mildred, something useful " 
 
 "I know that s perfectly all right but I want 
 something that interests me something I want to do 
 to have done ! And useful besides ! " 
 
 " Well, what do you want to do? " 
 
 " I don t know exactly. I d have it so that every 
 body in the world can have all they want to eat I guess 
 to help raise things or grind them or something to do 
 with them anyway I don t want always to drive a 
 tractor or always to work in a flour mill of course but 
 something I m interested in."
 
 222 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Well, Mildred, you re a perfect fool not to do it a 
 perfect fool! You haven t got to stand it at all. It s 
 your life you re living, not your father s or mother s. It s 
 your own work you ve got to do ! Just go right out and 
 do it. Nobody can stop you ! " 
 
 It appeared to Mildred as she thought over what Ruth 
 had said, that there wasn t any real reason why she 
 couldn t do as she liked, shouldn t at least try the kind of 
 life that she wanted to live. Nobody could stop her, of 
 course. Ruth had said to her that there was no use being 
 rich, and popular and a debutante, if you were just in 
 prison all the time. Ruth thought she was missing all 
 her chances standing it like this. And besides, what 
 right had she not to do her share just as though she were 
 a soldier? 
 
 " What s the use of having everything if it doesn t do 
 you any good? " she had asked. " It s awfully corking 
 to learn something you want to know, the way I m doing, 
 and you know yourself what it s like to work and you 
 can t do any of it ! Why, if I was as rich as your people 
 are, I d work all I wanted to ! I d go where I liked and 
 talk with whoever I chose I think sometimes rich 
 people are perfect fools." 
 
 Mildred sitting quiescent while Henriette coiled her 
 light hair with the elaborate simplicity appropriate for 
 the debutante; standing dully while the maid slipped the 
 filmy folds of her gown over her shoulders so that she 
 might dine with people she didn t care for, and go after 
 ward to a musical comedy in which she hadn t the least 
 interest, kept repeating to herself Ruth s words: 
 
 " Sometimes rich people are perfect fools ! " 
 
 At the dinner, Apperson Forbes sat beside her, watch 
 ing her out of his heavy lidded eyes and flatteringly 
 monopolizing her attention. He made this monopoly
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 223 
 
 tantamount to extreme devotion, and carefully, subtly, he 
 displayed the goods he had to offer. 
 
 " I m running down to New Orleans for the races next 
 week got a colt entered for the handicap. I d like to 
 have you see him start. Do you think your mother would 
 come down in my car ? We could ask a pleasant party 
 the youngest Townsend and Minnie Martin, and Van 
 Dorn s back got his divorce last week and there s 
 that young English actor, Whitehall, clever fellow 
 lots of amusing stories. And perhaps Alice DuVal, just 
 to give it snap if Mrs. Carver doesn t object." 
 
 Mildred felt herself flush. It sounded so amusing, so 
 different from the rather subdued gayety countenanced in 
 the breaking in of the young women of the Carvers. 
 That kind of thing had a forbidden charm, she wanted 
 to see what it was like, the possibility excited her, but she 
 answered soberly enough : 
 
 " I m afraid we ve got a pretty full week. I know 
 mother is giving two dinners, and there s the Junior 
 League play, I m to have a part in. But wouldn t it be 
 fun if we could go! " 
 
 "It would be fun if you could come without 
 having to consider other people in any way." 
 
 The remark was half a question but Mildred was al 
 ready deft enough not to take notice of that fact. 
 
 Apperson Forbes changed the basis of his attack. He 
 was in no sense a bird-like person to flit from bough to 
 bough he was simply in command of many avenues of 
 approach. 
 
 " I was in Tiffany s the other day they ve got some 
 new things made by this Frenchman that s gone in for 
 jewelry Dunois, isn t it? showed me some of those 
 pale blue sapphires set into a collar with yellow diamonds. 
 Rather splendid thing. Be just right on you blue and
 
 224 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 gold. I thought I d buy it would have bought it if 
 there d been any chance of it s being worn." 
 
 His intent eyes, trying to look straight into Mildred s 
 and being shut out by the protecting droop of her lashes, 
 fixed themselves on the rose white of her young shoul 
 ders. 
 
 Now there is a great difference between being finan 
 cially able to buy jewels and actually buying them. Mil 
 dred s ornaments were the simplest that a young girl with 
 all the command of wealth tempered by taste could ex 
 pect. Her mother s jewels were rich and sedate. But 
 this collar sounded like barbaric splendor, like a revolt 
 against limitations, and being in a state of general revolt 
 anyway, it drew her. 
 
 " It must be wonderful ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 "If you d drop in there to-morrow perhaps? I d 
 like to have them show it to you of course if you hap 
 pened to like it " 
 
 There was another tentative pause as his sentence died 
 without an ending. And all through the dinner, and at 
 the theater afterward when he drew his chair close behind 
 hers in the box, there was the persistent suggestion of the 
 kind of amusement which would be more exciting than 
 the stereotyped social life of the debutante which was 
 obviously palling upon her. And Mildred, rising a little 
 to the talk, as to something easier to fill her life with than 
 the study of scientific management or working in a fac 
 tory, and not involving any heart-breaking conflict with 
 her family, dimpled and blushed and laughed in her little 
 rising scale, and found the comedy not so dull as it might 
 have been, and took just a little scared enjoyment in the 
 thinly veiled vulgarity of it, and came home to lie high 
 against her pillows with a half determination to take this 
 way of spicing the flattening flavor of life. Nobody
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 225 
 
 expected her to do anything but amuse herself. Nobody 
 even thought about her working for the country because 
 she was a citizen as Mr. Barton was working in the flour 
 mill. It was perfectly evident that Nick didn t care 
 about her. She hadn t had a letter from him for two 
 months and then only the most impersonal sort of a one 
 about nothing in particular. She took her thoughts from 
 Nick and put them back on Apperson Forbes, and race 
 horses, and people who were said to be very good fun but 
 whom some folks would rather not meet; and startling 
 jeweled collars. And then drifting to the man himself 
 and those long slender hands, and long narrow eyes. 
 Suppose it had been he out on the veranda at Torexo last 
 year ! Suppose his arms had gone round her, and his lips 
 had met hers and 
 
 She slid down from her pillows and pulled the coverlet 
 over her head as though she were afraid.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 I WISH," said Mildred at breakfast one morning, 
 " that I had something to do ! " Frank looked 
 over the top of his paper; Mary stopped with an 
 unopened letter in her hand ; Wicks standing immovable 
 beside the sideboard jumped. 
 
 " I thought I heard somebody complaining recently 
 that she never had any time to herself." 
 
 " Oh, Father that isn t what I mean. I mean work." 
 
 " I should think, dear, you d find what you re doing a 
 good deal like work it takes all day and most of the 
 night." 
 
 " I know it does, Mother, and it doesn t amount to any 
 thing when it s done." 
 
 " What," said Frank, slowly, " do you want to do, 
 daughter? " 
 
 " I don t know, Father not exactly Ruth Ansel is 
 going to be scientific manager and help people run their 
 mills; and Mamie Epstein is in a shirtwaist factory and 
 they ve made her shop chairlady; but I don t want to be 
 either of those things I don t think I could." 
 
 " But, my dear, the conditions are so different ! Mamie 
 Epstein has of course to earn her living and I suppose 
 that Professor Ansel wouldn t be able to provide his 
 daughter with an adequate income either." 
 
 " Oh, Mother, I don t want to work because I want 
 money I want to work because I like it it interests 
 me, and because the government needs me to help." 
 
 226
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 227 
 
 Mary Carver pointed out to her dissatisfied daughter 
 how impractical her idea was. Would it not make it 
 utterly impossible for her to go on with the things she was 
 doing now? And would any sane girl give up these 
 things ? 
 
 Mildred listened in the silence of a slow forming de 
 termination. After all, nobody could make her keep on 
 with it, just because of money ! She didn t have to spend 
 her life doing nothing when she knew she ought to work. 
 She wouldn t be a fool in the sight of Ruth Ansel or any 
 body else! 
 
 And so she began surreptitiously to knock at the doors 
 of industry. She didn t know just how to go about 
 it. The advertisements " Help Wanted Female " in 
 the papers were mostly for nursemaids or stenographers 
 or some one to do specialized work that she didn t under 
 stand. Besides the advertisements seemed to be for girls 
 who were obliged to think first about earning money 
 not about doing something that needed to be done. She 
 had followed up one or two wrong leads a sample 
 clerk, work in a doctor s office which proved to be 
 opening the door and dusting the table, an indefinite 
 job in Harlem which materialized into taking tickets at a 
 moving picture show. All these discoveries she made 
 without letting any one know. If the chauffeur and 
 Wicks wondered at the strange addresses to which they 
 drove their young mistress, no gossip from them ever 
 crept above stairs. And then she advertised, carefully 
 modeling her advertisement on those in the papers and got 
 nothing but offers of work as a clerk or an office girl or a 
 " learner " in millinery. And she wanted to really make 
 something to create ! to do work that was public 
 service. After two discouraging weeks she discovered 
 the Public Employment Agency.
 
 228 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " I haven t," said Mildred to the woman at the desk, 
 " ever worked before except when I was in the Service," 
 and she held out her " honorable discharge " card. 
 
 " I see you made a good record but it s agricul 
 ture. Not much help to you in New York City. Here s 
 this time in the flour mill though did you like that ? 
 We might get you a place in a factory." 
 
 The woman began to look hastily through a card cata 
 logue, and Mildred had a quick vision of Mamie Epstein 
 working " by ladies waists." 
 
 " Not in a factory where they make clothes, if you 
 please I d rather not sew." 
 
 "Well, I don t blame you I hate it myself only 
 there s more girls in that than anything else in the city, 
 and since the Service takes so many out, they re always 
 short handed." She dipped into another file. " How d 
 you like human hair or paper box making? I could place 
 you in either of them." 
 
 "I I will you tell me what I d be expected to do ?" 
 
 " You d make switches and wigs and all sorts of fake 
 hair here s a place in Sixth Avenue wants a beginner 
 
 they pay five a week to start. It s a pretty good place, 
 I guess, we haven t had any complaints from it anyway." 
 
 " I think perhaps the box making " 
 
 The woman filled in two blanks with addresses and 
 pushed them toward her. " Try em both," she said 
 finally, " I tell you what it is though, you re a nice 
 clean looking girl and I think you d learn easy enough. 
 If you want a place as waitress or chambermaid in a pri 
 vate family you can get better wages than anywhere else 
 
 if you want to do it." 
 
 Mildred gasped a little and felt herself flushing. 
 
 " I think I ll go and see the other places thank you." 
 
 " Well if you don t get either of these come back and
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 229 
 
 I ll see if there isn t something else. I m sure we can 
 place you." 
 
 Mildred gave the address to Wicks as he opened the 
 door of the limousine for her. It turned out to be on 
 Sixth Avenue not a mile from her home in Washington 
 Square. She climbed two flights before she came to the 
 office. The boss, a squat man in shirt sleeves, took her 
 slip and seemed glad to see her. 
 
 " Ever done hair? " he asked her. 
 
 Mildred was tempted to say that she didn t even do her 
 own. 
 
 " Well, it s bad you ain t had the experience but I think 
 we take you as a learner. You can come up to the work 
 room and I ll make you acquainted with the forelady." 
 
 He preceded her through the door and up two flights 
 of dirty, narrow stairs. 
 
 "Miss Cavello ! Say, Miss Cavello!" he called at 
 the door of a low ceilinged, dim room. A thin, worn 
 woman who looked like an Italian came from the far 
 end. 
 
 " Here s a new hand I ve brought you, Miss Cavello, 
 she s green yet but she looks bright. Whadde ye say to 
 putting her on the rolls ? " 
 
 " There ain t no place in there. I gottanough. I m 
 short of weft girls. Only it ain t so easy." 
 
 " Well, give her a tryout." 
 
 The forelady looked Mildred over critically. 
 
 " You can come and see the work," she said and led 
 her to a little low garret. The roof sloped over the win 
 dows, which were small and caked with dirt. Above each 
 of the forty girls who sat on either side of the long tables 
 was a green shaded gas jet. The gas seemed to have 
 been leaking and the room was heavy with the smell, but 
 the windows and doors were tight shut lest the long hanks
 
 230 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 of hair should be blown about the room. The forelady 
 showed Mildred a seat at the far end of the room before 
 a wooden frame with string stretched along the top. On 
 the table was a hank of brown hair held in place by a large 
 red brick. Miss Cavello showed Mildred how to bunch 
 a few of the hairs and knot them into the string close to 
 gether until a fringe was formed. 
 
 " When you get a yard done you give it to the finish 
 ers up by the door see ? " 
 
 Mildred looked at the brown hair before her with un 
 speakable distaste. 
 
 She was trembling and a little sick as she came down 
 the long stairs to the office. It was probably important 
 that people who needed them had wigs consider Aunt 
 Millicent ! it might even be a public service to help 
 make them but Mildred couldn t feel that it was her duty. 
 
 " You can come tomorrow," the boss said as she re- 
 entered the office, " you get five dollars a week to start. 
 If you make good I give you more when you get learned." 
 
 " That s very nice of you," she stammered, " but I 
 think I had better not try it it isn t exactly what I was 
 looking for. But I m ever so much obliged." 
 
 " Say, whadde you think you can get? I pay my help 
 good ! You get steady work and you make good money 
 when you get on wigs. If you work hard maybe I give 
 you $5.50 after only one week!" 
 
 " Thank you very much, but I think I won t do it." 
 
 " You think you get a better job. Well, that s where 
 you make the grand mistake! When you change your 
 mind you come back and I take you on." 
 
 The box factory where she went next turned out to be 
 a rickety old red brick building in the tangle of Greenwich 
 Village. The entrance was flanked by waiting trucks, 
 so the chauffeur was forced to stop some distance away
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 231 
 
 and Mildred walked to the door. A man in shirtsleeves 
 took her slip, looked her over carelessly one blue serge 
 suit is very much like another blue serge suit to the 
 uninitiated. 
 
 Ever worked at boxes?" he asked briefly. 
 
 " No, I never have." 
 
 " Finished your Service year? " 
 
 " Yes, I was through in October." 
 
 " What you been working at since then? " 
 
 " I haven t been working at all." 
 
 " All right I guess we can take you on in the pasting; 
 five-fifty to start. Report Monday morning. Eight sharp." 
 
 And then calling toward the back of the room : 
 
 " Hey! Jim! Got those invoices ready? Well, bring 
 em here, can t you? " 
 
 There seemed nothing further for Mildred to do but to 
 go out through the door, past the trucks, and into the 
 limousine again. She took her seat trembling a little 
 she had a job! She was going to work! "Monday 
 morning at eight sharp." It was quite necessary to have 
 paper boxes. It was a useful work because there had to 
 be something to put things into. Though of course it 
 wasn t so important as growing things to eat. She 
 looked up suddenly to find herself still in front of the 
 box factory with Wicks standing expectant. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon I forgot ! Home please ! " 
 and then suddenly on the impulse : " Wicks, I ve got a 
 job." 
 
 The footman started, then smiled slowly up to his gay 
 eyes : 
 
 " Thank you, miss, I hope you like it. I thought 
 you d be doing something after the Service." 
 
 And touching his cap, he sprang up beside the chauf 
 feur.
 
 232 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Mildred thought of it exultantly as Henriette coiled her 
 hair afresh and brought her a gold and white dinner dress, 
 for it was the night of Mrs. Carver s weekly dinner. 
 
 " The decorations, Mademoiselle Mildred, are of yel 
 low. Orchids the most wonderful from the gardener at 
 Torexo! This white with the gold, if Mademoiselle 
 pleases, will give the effect." 
 
 " Oh, thank you, Henriette it s quite all right it s 
 very clever of you to have thought of it." 
 
 After dinner, Apperson Forbes settled himself beside 
 Mildred at the coffee table. Mrs. Carver didn t under 
 stand just why she asked him so frequently perhaps 
 because he was so obviously glad to come. And then 
 he was an amusing companion. People seemed glad to 
 find themselves beside him. He watched the girl s strong, 
 slender hands filling the cups from the silver urn in silence 
 for a while he knew how to make a silence count to 
 ward what he was going to say. 
 
 " Do you know what I always think of when I see you 
 at this coffee table and I come to watch you as often as 
 Mrs. Carver will ask me? " 
 
 " It must be monotonous if you always think the same 
 thing." 
 
 During the moment before he answered, she thought 
 that her remark was unexpectedly clever and was pleased 
 with her own finesse. 
 
 " Not if it s the thing I want to think of all the time." 
 
 Quick recovery on Mildred s part and right about face. 
 
 " Well, I don t like to think the same thing over again 
 and again. I ve just decided to do something different." 
 
 Waiting for his reply she felt reintrenched behind her 
 indeterminate declaration. 
 
 " What have you decided to do marry ? " 
 
 There was an uncontrollable change in his voice.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 233 
 
 " Oh, not that I m going to work! " 
 
 The man settled himself into the relaxation of relief. 
 
 " Oh, well, if you want to see what it s like, but I should 
 think the Universal Service would have given you enough 
 already. I never find you with time to spare for me." 
 
 " But all this doesn t count and the Service was just a 
 beginning. I m going to really work on something nec 
 essary and be paid for it five dollars and a half a 
 week." 
 
 " My dear girl, what are you going to do? " 
 
 There had been no considering pause before the ques 
 tion. 
 
 " I ve got a job in a paper box factory in the pasting 
 department. The boss told me to begin Monday at eight 
 sharp." 
 
 The man was silent, trying to recover his conversa 
 tional poise. He began two quite unrelated sentences 
 and stopped them both. 
 
 " Why are you doing this will you tell me please ? " 
 he said at last. 
 
 " I just can t stand everything being so dull ! Nothing 
 happens that s different from anything else, nothing ! 
 And besides, such a lot of things need to have somebody 
 do them ! And I feel as though I were cheating to be do 
 ing nothing all the time." 
 
 The coffee was all poured now and the room was full of 
 soft talk. Apperson looked hastily about. There was 
 no seclusion so he boldly trusted in the privacy of the 
 crowd. 
 
 " Things don t have to be dull ! They don t have to be 
 always the same. I could put more variety into your life 
 than you know there is in the world. You re right about 
 too much of this sort of thing getting on the nerves. But 
 why have too much of it. Mildred, let me show you how
 
 234 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 much amusement there really is in life if you know how 
 to get it. You know I adore you. Marry me and let me 
 give you the real good time you ought to have. Mildred 
 darling if you knew how I worship you! " 
 
 The girl rose straight out of her low seat and Apperson 
 Forbes rose with her, almost forgetful of the people about 
 him almost forgetful of himself. She turned a little 
 unsteadily and walked toward the library, then as a sound 
 of light laughter stopped her, retraced her steps and sat 
 down at the table again, face to face with the question she 
 had settled so many times ! 
 
 No one seemed to have noticed them, but some one had. 
 Old Andrew Carver who had dropped in after dinner, 
 pattered across to the table. 
 
 " Well, my dear, you re a niece for an uncle to be 
 proud of. Have you coffee there for me? " 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Andrew Uncle Andrew! " the emotion 
 was clear in her voice. " But I thought you didn t drink 
 coffee at night? " 
 
 " It depends on the provocation," the old man pulled 
 a light chair forward and crossed his immaculate trousers, 
 so perfect that it seemed impossible for anything so 
 human as legs to be inside them. " How do, Forbes. 
 That your horse won the Steeplechase ? Yes yes 
 thought so! Sounds like a good race. I don t go my 
 self but I keep em in mind a little." 
 
 " Uncle Andrew," Mildred began breathlessly, " I ve 
 just been telling Mr. Forbes that I m going to work in 
 a factory making paper boxes ! " 
 
 "Well, that s interesting. When do you start?" 
 
 " They told me to come Monday morning at eight 
 sharp." 
 
 His matter of fact tone relieved the tension. 
 
 Old Andrew stirred his coffee absently.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 235 
 
 " It s a new thing to me thinking of a niece of mine 
 as going out into the world and working for wages. I 
 have to get adjusted to it. But then I ve spent all my life 
 getting adjusted to one thing after another. It s the way 
 things go now, that all our girls and boys should work, 
 and as for me I don t see why not. We seem to be get 
 ting ready to try out democracy a little further and I m 
 inclined to believe it s a good thing. But why a box fac 
 tory in particular, my dear? Have you an affinity for 
 boxes ? " 
 
 " Of course, I don t care any more about boxes than 
 lots of other things. I just happened to get a job there, 
 and boxes are useful things people do have to have 
 them." 
 
 " Personally I see no inspiration in boxes. But some 
 of these people who can get enthused over anything might 
 teach me better. How did you find this opening of a 
 career? I m sure Mr. Forbes won t mind if we go into 
 this a little further. He ll excuse a certain family inter 
 est." 
 
 So Mildred told him of her search for work, and how 
 the things most people did seemed only valuable to her 
 because they could earn money that way. And how 
 " human hair " and domestic service and moving picture 
 tickets and other things hadn t appealed to her as what 
 she wanted to do. Old Andrew, watching Apperson 
 Forbes as he listened, hoped that the box factory at eight 
 sharp was enough of a barrier.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MILDRED at " eight sharp " found herself con 
 fronted with an intricate combination of 
 belts and rods and sliding knives and levers 
 not in the least resembling either the machinery of the 
 flour mill or the internal workings of a farm tractor, 
 From the other side of this machine a pale, blond girl of 
 not more than sixteen began to feed a seemingly endless 
 strip of thick gray paper in between two rollers. She 
 threw back a lever and out toward Mildred moved a suc 
 cession of little tack boxes freshly pasted and all done 
 except that the flaps at the bottom were not dovetailed 
 together. 
 
 " What do I do with them? " Mildred screamed above 
 the sound of the machine to the pale girl opposite. 
 
 The girl stopped the machine with a jerk. 
 
 " Ain t you ever done ends ? " she asked scornfully. 
 
 The foreman came and showed her how to dovetail 
 together the ends of the boxes and then patting her on 
 the shoulder told her to " go ahead, dearie! " 
 
 The young girl watched her impatiently as she fitted 
 the first boxes slowly together. " Say, get a move on I 
 gotta get busy." 
 
 When Mildred had got the pile in front of her some 
 what reduced the girl started the lever and the little boxes 
 began to move toward her again. Mildred did not find 
 it difficult work after she got the knack of it. There 
 was plenty of light and air and she didn t seriously ob- 
 
 236
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 237 
 
 ject to the smell of the glue. The stool on which she sat 
 was the proper height and there was a rest for her feet. 
 But the speed and continuity with which the machine 
 emitted tack boxes was incredible! Box after box in a 
 stream that she could not dam they moved toward her 
 box after box ! box after box ! They would pile up be 
 fore her and by a spurt of speed she would catch up a 
 little on them. But the moment she relaxed, they began 
 to accumulate again. There was no getting ahead and 
 having a moment of leisure for the machine could no 
 more be hurried than it could be retarded steadily, re 
 lentlessly for eight hours a day it turned out tack boxes 
 of exactly the same size and color and at exactly the same 
 rate and for eight hours a day Mildred Carver sat 
 dovetailing the bottoms of them ! 
 
 After the first day she brought her lunch as the other 
 girls did for the half hour allowed them was not long 
 enough for her to go home and back. 
 
 " Oh gee," said the pale child opposite Mildred, pulling 
 down the lever and throwing up her arms as the noon 
 whistle blew, " Gee, don t I wish it was Saturday instead 
 of Monday! " 
 
 " Why? " asked Mildred innocently. 
 
 " Why ? Wouldn t I have my work done and my pay 
 coming to me? Ain t I got all the work between now 
 and Saturday to do yet before I get it? " 
 
 " But don t you want to work ? " 
 
 "You bettcha life I do! I gotta hold my job until 
 they take me into the Universal Service cause the old 
 man s on the drunk most of the time." 
 
 They were eating their lunches now, all the girls in the 
 factory standing and sitting about in a little space outside 
 the washroom. Such meagre little lunches, most of them 
 seemed to Mildred, and so unappetizing !
 
 238 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Say, was you in the Service? " asked another young 
 girl of Mildred " You look like you might of been - 
 that old ! " 
 
 " I finished last October." 
 
 There was silence among the girls. 
 
 "What did you work at?" A tired, middle-aged 
 woman had asked the question. 
 
 " I worked in Agriculture on farms you know." 
 
 A dark Italian turned to a staring companion and 
 translated, and Mildred quite unthinking joined in their 
 talk. She flushed when she saw the others staring. 
 
 You don t look like a Guinney," commented her com 
 panion on the machine. 
 
 "I m an American only I learned Italian when I 
 was little." 
 
 There were a number of these immigrant girls who had 
 come to America when they were just past the draft age; 
 about a third of the workers were girls between sixteen 
 and eighteen sure to be drafted ; the others were 
 older women who had been more than eighteen when the 
 Universal Service was established. All of them looked 
 on Mildred with considerable wonder. Why should a 
 girl who had been in the Service go into box making ? 
 
 "Well, why would you be makin boxes, then?" an 
 elderly Irish woman answered her query. You that s 
 had the grand chance getting a starut on a real job! 
 There ain t nothin to it! I been pasting boxes twenty 
 years there ain t a girl in the trade s quicker at it - 
 an where am I now? Just ready to paste boxes for 
 twenty years more if I got the strenth! Would I be 
 doin that if I had a chanst to hold down a grand job in 
 the Service ? " 
 
 " But people need boxes things have to be put into 
 something! " objected Mildred.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 239 
 
 "Do they now! Well if makin boxes is that cruel 
 hard on them that makes em, ain t it up to somebody to 
 find somethin else to put things into ? There s the clom 
 whistle again ! I gotta start putting them miles of paper 
 sthrips over the tops av them thousand boxes ! And do I 
 get enough out av it to dress dacent and lay by something 
 for me funeral ? Oi do not ! " 
 
 This was the nearest to a philosophy of work that the 
 box factory yielded, the idea that if the work of mak 
 ing anything was " cruel hard " on the workers, then it 
 was "up to somebody " to find a substitute. This was 
 discouraging to Mildred ! Here she had gone to work 
 because she thought it was her duty to help make some 
 thing that people had to have and now she had dis 
 covered that in the particular thing she had chosen it was 
 more important to find out either how to make it a good 
 thing for girls to work in, or how to do away with box- 
 making altogether. Just folding in the bottoms of tack 
 boxes for eight hours a day wasn t helping much. 
 
 One noon when she and her machine partner had gone 
 into the street for a breath of air they found themselves 
 walking just ahead of another of the young girls whose 
 arm Mr. Jake Fisher was affectionately holding as they 
 strolled back and forth. 
 
 " Oh gee," said the child giggling, " don t I wish I 
 could believe you but I ain t got the noive ! " 
 
 " It s just like I tell you, dearie. You ain t gotta keep 
 on workin if you drather not see? Leave it to me ! " 
 
 And when they had turned at the corner and were 
 passing again, the man said : 
 
 " An there ain t goin to be no jobs in box makin much 
 longer anyway. I been talkin with a feller s got a new 
 process. You take the stuff paper s made of while it s 
 soft and sort of pour it out into a mold that s the right
 
 240 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 shape, cover and all, and when it gets dry it s a box. 
 There ain t no cutting, nor pasting, nor folding left for 
 anybody to do. So if you don t quit your job like I m 
 asking you to, it s going to quit you see ? Only keep 
 it dark." 
 
 So here was the solution of this part of the problem 
 anyway the whole of this " cruel hard " work was to 
 be done away with. There would be things to put 
 things in without her doing anything about it, and no 
 public service in her keeping on. So at the end of the 
 week Mr. Jake Fisher received a carefully written note 
 with the number at Washington Square North engraved 
 at the top. 
 " My dear Mr. Fisher : 
 
 " I have decided to resign my position in the pasting 
 department of your box making factory. I think I should 
 prefer to do some work which is really necessary. It 
 was very kind of you to give me the position and I hope 
 my leaving will not inconvenience you. 
 " Very sincerely, 
 
 "MILDRED CARVER. 
 
 " Saturday the tenth." 
 
 Jake Fisher carried the letter over to the dirty window 
 and reread it. 
 
 " Well, whadde ye think of that ! What s the game 
 anyway ? " he ejaculated. " And she was getting five 
 fifty a week, too ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 MILDRED felt herself caught again in the 
 trap. Here were cards for teas, and invita 
 tions to dinner, and to dances; and theaters 
 to go to and lovely music to hear and beautiful pictures 
 to see, and costly clothes to wear all the sweets of life 
 but no bread ! Balanced against them was the making of 
 tack boxes, or human hair or some other occupation which 
 she could not see as a public service but only as a means 
 of earning money. How was she going to give her coun 
 try the service due from a loyal citizen? How was she 
 going to help in some work essential to the nation ? The 
 sense of frustration grew; and the temptation to stop 
 trying and go in for the things she knew she could have, 
 perpetual, hectic amusement, and Apperson Forbes ! 
 almost overwhelmed her. 
 
 And then one day when she was particularly blue, came 
 Waddell, still, swift, dignified in his obsequious serving, 
 to say that a Mr. Barton wished to see Miss Carver. The 
 gentleman had no card. Was Miss Carver in ? 
 
 Mrs. Carver was quite uncomprehending until Mildred 
 reminded her softly : 
 
 " She is in, Waddell," she answered after an irresolute 
 pause. 
 
 Following her mother down to the drawing room Mil 
 dred was conscious that her heart was riding so high in 
 her breast as to interfere with the processes of respira 
 tion. She had had occasional letters from John Barton 
 carefully written letters telling about the work in the 
 E 241
 
 242 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 mill and its relation to the great work of feeding the coun 
 try letters which were a distinct compliment to her 
 intelligence but which had evidently been produced with 
 considerable effort, rather than dashed off as spon 
 taneous ebullitions of emotion. They were, from the 
 standpoint of the high school, almost literary. There had 
 not been anything of real love-making in them, but he had 
 said repeatedly that he would be in New York, and there 
 was in her a growing sensitiveness to emotional atmos 
 pheric pressure, which revealed the unsaid. 
 
 John Barton was seated serenely in the drawing room 
 looking out upon bare, brown Washington Square. It is 
 doubtful if the quiet curtains, the dim Persian rugs, the 
 graceful old furniture seemed so magnificent to him as 
 crimson plush, satin damask and more gilt. At the soft 
 click of the curtain rings, he rose, his face shining, 
 only to have it fall ludicrously at the sight of Mrs. Carver. 
 He hadn t asked for her ! He had never called on a mar 
 ried woman in his life there must have been a mistake ! 
 But Mildred followed her mother before he could fall 
 into the error of trying to explain. 
 
 The call was evidently not satisfactory to John Barton, 
 and Mildred in a French gown looked quite a different 
 person from Mildred in a khaki uniform. Neither did 
 Mary Carver, though irreproachably courteous, conduce 
 to his conversational ease. But after a few moments he 
 gathered his determination together and asked Mildred 
 to go walking with him just as though they were in some 
 little New England town. Had he come all the way from 
 Minnesota to talk with Mildred s mother? And the girl, 
 reverting suddenly to the unconventional independence of 
 the Service, forgetting that she was a society bud, almost 
 forgetting that she had a mother, jumped up delightedly 
 and ran for her coat and hat.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 243 
 
 Mrs. Carver felt herself helpless. Obviously Mildred 
 was no longer a carefully guarded American Princess, 
 unceremoniously approached by a member of the prole 
 tariat, but a humble private being honored by the notice 
 of a superior officer. It was a revival of the part of her 
 daughter s life in which she had no authority, no respon 
 sibility. 
 
 "Haven t you a park somewhere? Central Park or 
 some name like that? " John Barton asked when they had 
 turned up Fifth Avenue. 
 
 " It s ever so far up," Mildred objected. 
 
 " Isn t there a way to ride there? " 
 
 They took a bus, lumbering like a green buffalo and sat 
 shoulder to shoulder on the top of it. Mildred tried to 
 interest him in the famous thoroughfare but he had never 
 been so near her before and couldn t fix his attention on 
 anything but her personal loveliness. To him, the trim 
 coat, the exquisite little hat, the rich furs, appealed not in 
 terms of elegance or cost, but as part of the girl s beauty. 
 
 And when they reached the Park and had followed one 
 of its curving walks into the seclusion of mid-afternoon, 
 broken only by children and nurse maids, John Barton 
 spoke quite suddenly and with awkward sincerity. There 
 was no pretence of altruism in it, no attempt to make it 
 anything but his wish as a man for her as his wife. But 
 to Mildred the romance of the work of giving bread to 
 the nation still hung around him ; he personified the great 
 est experience of her life; he seemed to stand on a little 
 hill and hold out to her her chance of service and patriot 
 ism. She did not think of her parents or Apperson 
 Forbes. She did not even think of Nick Van Arsdale. 
 She did not think of John Barton as a man, but as a very 
 big, very impersonal force that would make all the rest 
 of her life a service of citizenship. And trembling she 
 reached out both her hands.
 
 244 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " And so I told him that I would be very proud and 
 very glad to be his wife." 
 
 Mildred had come back to the house alone and found 
 her father and mother in the library. Something told 
 her that it would be best for her to tell them what she had 
 done before John Barton came to ask them quite formally 
 in the morning. And now as she looked into their 
 stricken faces she knew she had been wise. 
 
 It came into her mind as she stood there, how much 
 better Nick had told them a similar story now so long 
 ago. She faltered and stopped as she remembered it, and 
 then went resolutely on. 
 
 Mary and Frank didn t dare look at each other when 
 she had done. They hardly dared speak. The silence 
 didn t break in a storm ; that was not the Carver reaction 
 in emergencies. There was rather a tangible heaving and 
 resettling of the basis of thought. And even then they 
 didn t say much, so great was their fear of saying the 
 wrong thing the irrevocable thing. They had had 
 their warnings, but their class security had kept them 
 blind; neither of them had been able to take the menace 
 seriously. Now the thing they thought impossible had 
 happened. Still it was a question of gentle argument, of 
 reasons and persuasions and tenderness. 
 
 "Are you sure that you love him, Mildred?" her 
 mother had asked sadly and got the counter question : 
 
 "How could I help it?" 
 
 Mary Carver thanked God that she and Frank had an 
 engagement that evening. She felt that she must get a 
 chance to talk with him alone and lay down a plan of cam 
 paign. 
 
 " Very slowly, Ellis," she said as she entered the 
 limousine and after the door was shut : " Frank 
 Frank what are we going to do ? "
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 245 
 
 "I I don t know, Mary but we ve got to do some 
 thing we can t very well let it go on." 
 
 " Oh, that such a thing should happen to us ! I was 
 sorry enough when Francis boy married that little school 
 teacher from Montana and when the Nortons eldest 
 girl married that Frenchman, who wasn t anything in the 
 world but a traveling salesman, even if he was a count. 
 But those are nothing compared to this a workman, 
 Frank ! A foreman in a mill ! " 
 
 " It s pretty bad, my dear. We ve got to stop it some 
 how, for all I think he s a fine fellow." 
 
 " A fine fellow to try and entrap a girl like that? " 
 
 " Oh, Mary, I don t think there s any entrapping about 
 it. He quite evidently didn t know anything about us 
 when I saw him in Minneapolis. Don t you remember 
 that I told you he asked what my job was ? " 
 
 " I don t believe it, Frank besides now that he s 
 been here ! " 
 
 " Well there s the fact that he s never been in New 
 York before. To live in a red brick house in a block 
 without any grounds wouldn t betoken riches to a man in 
 whose home town every one but the very poorest had 
 grass and a garden." 
 
 " Oh, Frank, he must know ! " 
 
 " I think not. But if he does we re in a much more 
 difficult position than if he doesn t we ve one weapon 
 the less." 
 
 The chauffeur at last set them down at the house of 
 Mrs. Agatha Porter, which as everybody knows is a very 
 old house on upper Fifth Avenue where most of the 
 houses are new. Mrs. Porter is a great lady so great 
 that she need not consider such things as social lines or 
 levels. So very great that even the intellectuals come to
 
 246 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 her, and the great artists and writers and actors ; and the 
 little ones too, when they can get a chance, never turn up 
 their hungry little noses and call her bourgeoise. So 
 great, indeed, that even labor leaders and socialists and 
 anarchists who are not at all philosophical, and all sorts 
 of other real people never even try to look down upon her, 
 but come quite humbly to the wonderful parties that 
 have made her famous in that new aristocracy which has 
 been slowly circling the globe since the old one, based 
 merely on descent and position and money, went down 
 under the terrible blows of the war. And a thin trickle 
 of the culture of the Orient that is seeping into the newer 
 world eddies into this great house ; and little yellow men 
 with a sense of humor quite different from ours; and 
 brown indefinite gentlemen from the Levant with wit 
 like a serpent s tooth ; and tall dark people from the high 
 castes of free India with no sense of humor at all are 
 to be met in this hospitably democratic and rigidly ex 
 clusive house, famous now, wherever the new basis of 
 social intercourse is establishing itself. 
 
 Tonight there was to be music such music as is not 
 to be had for the asking or for money, but only for love. 
 They were met at the door of the drawing room by the 
 wonderful little great lady whose creation this special 
 manifestation of Democracy is. Agatha Porter s gray 
 hair was piled high in the latest mode, her clothes were 
 lovely and smart as of one who gives herself the luxury 
 of following the fashions; her eyes were full of the beau 
 tiful sincerity and generous sweetness that transforms 
 her guests into their super-selves by some magic of the 
 moment, so that the train of people who come and go in 
 her house are always a little better than their best through 
 her, and thereby happy and anxious to come again. Even 
 Mary and Frank felt themselves lightened of their trouble
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 247 
 
 as they took Agatha Porter s hand and passed into her 
 drawing room. 
 
 And there just inside the door where he could pursue 
 his favorite occupation of watching people and their 
 ways and most particularly Mrs. Porter and all her 
 little looks and gestures, stood Andrew Carver. No one 
 of Mrs. Porter s gatherings but Old Andrew held much 
 the same place; and he had held it since out of the tragedy 
 of the great war, this new social order began to rise. For 
 there were those who said that even Old Andrew was a 
 little better than his best in that house, and that if he had 
 found his way there a generation earlier if indeed there 
 had been such a place then, or such a democracy to foster 
 it he would not have been the lonely exquisite he was, 
 but a real man in a real world. 
 
 Mary and Frank had no more than time to greet their 
 kinsman when there was a great swell of sound from the 
 violins, and in the sudden stopping of the talk a voice 
 caught the very top of the note and poured out what 
 might have been the essence of all the songs that all the 
 milk-maids ever sang only much truer and sweeter and 
 far more simple than any real milk-maid s song ever was 
 because the singer had gone clear through the trammels 
 art sets and come out on the other side. And when this 
 liquid song stopped as naturally as though the particular 
 emotion that had induced it was gone, you realized how 
 Amaryllis must have sung to herself by the river and were 
 carried back to the times of the Fauns and Dryads and 
 such innocence as never was. 
 
 " But," Mary said to Frank as they moved forward 
 after the song, " we have put all that out of the world now 
 to make way for work!" 
 
 " Now does that mean the girl is a little hard to break 
 into harness ? " Old Andrew twinkled at her. " I thought 
 she would be I thought so."
 
 248 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Mary was just answering him when Mrs. West broke 
 in: 
 
 " What are we to do with our young people, Mrs. 
 Carver? Have you heard that Nannie Wintermute has 
 run away from home to be of all things! the ad 
 vance agent for a public educational lecture bureau ! " 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! What will they do with Arthur s 
 death and everything ! " 
 
 " Now you must be talking of the Service girls I think," 
 said Lady Nieth. "It is the strangest thing to see your 
 debutantes this season ! When I used to be in and out of 
 New York before the war, the girls were a docile lot, 
 playing about as they were told, and marrying as duti 
 fully as a collie goes to heel. But now ! why they 
 marry anybody, or nobody, as they choose and they go 
 about as though they were anxious to get out on bail ! I 
 think we manage them better in England, without the in 
 terference of the government at the critical time." 
 
 " Have you heard that young Hope has married a 
 Mexican girl he met in Texas when he was serving in the 
 mines ? We re more or less used to pretty girls from the 
 stage, and even to these brilliant young Russian Jewesses 
 from the East Side but Mexicans are new. So there s 
 one less man for our girls and the crop short, too! " 
 
 At the door of the smoking room two keen-eyed busi 
 ness men greeted each other. 
 
 " I hear you ve put the Talbot boy in as manager of the 
 up-state cannery? What s that for? " 
 
 " Had to do it, old man had to do it! One strike 
 after another, and the Union organizers hammering away 
 at Albany to get more laws passed against us every time 
 there was trouble. Old Waldron couldn t seem to get 
 used to the idea that you could run a factory and make 
 money and be good friends with the hands at the same
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 249 
 
 time. He d never been any nearer doing factory work 
 himself than keeping the books. So we just sent him out 
 to California to enjoy the climate, and put in Talbot. He 
 did his Service year in the shipyards. First thing he did 
 was to get the men together and ask them how they 
 wanted the place run. Put it up to them." 
 
 " Does he make it pay ? " 
 
 " So far he has. He sees to it that there s nothing to 
 strike for and so the work isn t interrupted the way it 
 used to be." 
 
 The new point of view induced I suppose by the 
 fact that every one of these young fellows have done 
 work themselves certainly does hit up production." 
 
 ; Yes, they take it as a patriotic duty to turn out more 
 cans of corn and peas per man per day, and to pay higher 
 wages and work shorter hours and sell at a lower price 
 than the next factory and so far young Talbot s doing 
 it." 
 
 " I don t see how they get across with it myself, but 
 the facts bear them out so far." 
 
 It was a wonderful mingling. Money magnates chat 
 ted with leaders of East Side women s organizations 
 famous painters ate ices with oriental diplomats, and so 
 ciety women and city politicians and soldiers and inven 
 tors ceaselessly wove together the fabric of such a real 
 society as the world had never before known. 
 
 But tonight Mary could not feel herself a part of it 
 she was too rebellious at what the underlying principle of 
 it all had dealt out to her personally. 
 
 " Let us go home, Frank Agatha Porter has so many 
 she will not notice." 
 
 " And all I can think to do, Frank, is to keep him here, 
 and take him about with us everywhere, and let Mildred
 
 250 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 see how perfectly impossible it is Of course, we could 
 get him into something, I suppose 
 
 " Yes, keep him here, Mary. Take him about all you 
 can we may do it that way. But if you succeed, I 
 think it will be by showing him that Mildred doesn t fit 
 into his world rather than by showing her that he is out of 
 place in hers ! And Mary, don t bring him to Agatha 
 Porter s that is where he would be happy and at home. 
 If he thought there were more houses like that 
 
 " There aren t, Frank. And I guess you are right 
 about keeping him away." 
 
 They both agreed, and that without saying it, that their 
 one chance was to outwardly acquiesce and play for time. 
 
 " Do you realize, Frank," said Mary suddenly, " that 
 none of us has even mentioned Nick Van Arsdale ? Oh ! 
 if it were only he! " 
 
 " I m not sure," they were at their own door again, 
 "that I d feel right about it even if it were. After all, 
 Mary, our daughter isn t like the girls of twenty years 
 ago and she s in a different world. She s better able 
 to choose than you were at her age even if I have no 
 fault to find with your decision, my dear." 
 
 Mrs. Carver, lying sleepless as the gray dawn came in, 
 was marshaling her forces and planning her campaign! 
 Mildred should not marry John Barton that was her 
 starting point and the end of her argument. In between 
 were her possible defenses, the chief and perfect one 
 would be Nick Van Arsdale, if he were only at hand to be 
 utilized. Well, why shouldn t he be? Confronted with 
 Nick, surely Mildred could not persist in marrying the 
 foreman of a mill! A workman! A common laborer! 
 Everything else she could do, Mrs. Carver knew, was 
 merely in the nature of a feint, a decoy, a diversion. 
 There could be no certainty of success in any of them.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 251 
 
 But Nick would be a solid barrier. At intervals all the 
 next day Mrs. Carver wrote letters to Nick wrote and 
 destroyed them as being either too undiplomatic, too ob 
 scure or possible to misunderstand. At last she came 
 out flatfootedly and told him that John Barton, the fore 
 man of a flour mill, wanted to marry Mildred and that 
 the girl was so dazzled and hypnotized that there was 
 great danger of her marrying him before she came to 
 herself, and so spoiling her life. Mrs. Carver admitted 
 that she didn t know what to do about it and that she was 
 quite hopeless. Wouldn t Nick just run back to New 
 York and see what he could do ? 
 
 Nick went out into the dark after he had read the let 
 ter and sitting down with his back to a strong trade wind 
 almost steady enough to lean against, began to fight 
 through again the same long round of argument he had 
 had with his father down in Arizona the same round he 
 had gone over so many times by himself. 
 
 He could go back and ask Mildred to marry him, and if 
 she did, bring her here. He looked off over the dim 
 prairie it was flat and dull and dead, now that the har 
 vest was past. The horizon line, do what you would, 
 was low, and the only drama was in the black infinity of 
 the sky from the outermost confines of which each star 
 seemed hung by a quivering invisible thread. No girl 
 like Mildred could be content with the drama of nature 
 when the human interest was left out. Or he could give 
 up all this wonderful new existence that he had come into 
 through the Service, could renounce his duty to his coun 
 try, and stay in the old life that the sort of people he used 
 to know took for granted the life of leisure and travel 
 and pleasant social intercourse and the spending of much 
 money. But could a man who knew himself a slacker 
 make a girl like Mildred happy?
 
 252 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 And yet if she married this mill foreman ! Nick had had 
 his attention reluctantly focused on this John Barton be 
 fore, Mildred s letters from Minneapolis had been so full 
 of him that Nick had got a disconcerting reflection of the 
 Sun God s luminosity. And there was the talk he had 
 heard about him at the Christmas party, particularly from 
 that impossible Miss Epstein, of whom Mildred seemed 
 so fond. And they d talked of him in Iowa, when he met ( 
 Mildred s Unit in the summer ! 
 
 He sprang up and beat his way against the steady pusKJ 
 of the wind back to his lodgings. 
 
 The foreman, sending an exasperated message after 
 him the next day, discovered that he was gone.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 TWO days later as John Barton came down 
 the Carvers stone steps whose costly white 
 ness he was blind to, a young man stepped 
 up to him. 
 
 " Is this Mr. Barton? " he asked; " I m Nicholas Van 
 Arsdale. If you are going to your hotel, may I walk 
 with you ? " 
 
 John Barton had never heard of Nicholas Van Ars 
 dale, but he expected surprises in New York and the lad 
 did not look formidable. 
 
 Nick had to call on every bit of that Dutch determina 
 tion which had held him building roads in the desert be 
 cause he thought it was his duty to his country, in order 
 to get started on his talk with John Barton. Out of the 
 corner of his eye the boy studied the man of whom he had 
 heard so much; whom he hated with a fierce, young jeal 
 ousy; whom he wanted to persuade. Nick appreciated 
 the tall, thin figure, the strong, clean features, and most 
 particularly the charm which his age and experience 
 might have for Mildred, as he plunged desperately into 
 his talk. As they swung up Fifth Avenue through the 
 alternate patches of bright light and deep shadow, the city 
 was tidying up for the night and putting itself to bed. The 
 last rumbling buses went by with their young Service con 
 ductors whistling on the back step; Universal Service 
 postmen were making their last collections from the 
 
 253
 
 254 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 boxes; burly night policemen had begun their rounds. 
 New York was settling slowly upon its pillows. 
 
 " Do you want to marry her yourself? " John Barton 
 asked bluntly when Nick had blurted out the case between 
 them as he saw it the case which determined Mildred s 
 career by her marriage and hung her happiness on the 
 man she accepted as a husband. 
 
 Nick was silent while their heels beat out the time for 
 half a block. 
 
 " No," he said slowly, " I don t! If it were a question 
 of marrying Mildred just that all by itself, its well, 
 you know how I feel about that I guess. But I couldn t 
 take her out to wherever I might be making roads ; she d 
 be miserable! And I couldn t come back to New York 
 and just live the way her people do." 
 
 " They seem pretty comfortable to me." 
 
 " They are they re deadly comfortable I couldn t 
 stand it." 
 
 " Couldn t stand being comfortable ! " 
 
 " Not that way not giving up the work I know I 
 ought to do not stopping helping making roads that 
 the government needs to move the crops and the ore and 
 the lumber on ! I can t go back on my duty to my coun 
 try because I want to marry Mildred! I m not such a 
 poor sort as that ! " 
 
 " But you ll be moving about and perhaps you ll get 
 into something better than road making. If you waited 
 a few years don t you think you d be able to support her 
 comfortably? " 
 
 " It isn t that," said Nick, " it isn t being able to support 
 her, it is being able to make her happy! That s why I 
 am talking to you, Mr. Barton. What I want is to make 
 you see the reasons why Mildred ought not to marry me, 
 are just exactly the reasons why she ought not to marry
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 255 
 
 you. If you care anything like as much as I do, you have 
 no right to marry her at all." 
 
 John Barton stopped abruptly and turned on Nick. He 
 was obviously angry with the slow white anger of New 
 England that turns men speechless. His hands clenched 
 themselves in his pockets, his teeth set hard. How dared 
 this young whippersnapper try to dictate what he should 
 or should not do ! 
 
 Nick faced him bravely. Like two primitive warriors 
 they stood opposite each other fixing the destiny of the 
 woman they both desired. To them she was a lovely and 
 desirable appendage the flower of some man s life 
 only they differed widely from their prehistoric ancestors 
 in that it mattered desperately to both of them that she 
 should be happy. Was not the life they took for granted 
 for her the natural life of the fortunate woman? Wasn t 
 the choice they conceded to her the choice between 
 possible husbands ? Weren t they torn now with the in 
 tention of saving her from the contingency of a foolish 
 choice? If she was not literally the prize of some man s 
 bow and spear she was at least the prize of his powers of 
 persuasion. That she might be expected to have plans 
 for herself not bounded by marriage had not occurred to 
 either of them. At last John Barton turned and walked 
 on up the avenue. 
 
 " You don t seem to remember that she has promised 
 to be my wife," he said finally. 
 
 " Yes, I m considering that and also the fact that she 
 once promised to be mine." 
 
 " What ! " cried the man, turning on him. 
 
 " Oh it was when we were both kids before we went 
 into the Service. Nobody would let us be engaged then 
 and when our Service year was over I couldn t stop work 
 ing for the U. S. just because I didn t have to any more. 
 So I didn t come back."
 
 256 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " I see. You thought you couldn t give up your work 
 and she wouldn t be happy the way you had to live. Well, 
 it s different in Minneapolis. I can give her a good home 
 there. I guess we d be able to hire help if she needed to. 
 I can get a brick house through one of those building and 
 loan associations and furnish it up right. I m saving 
 money every year. They tell me the schools are first 
 class when we get around to need them. The city is 
 pretty and the climate is good. I m not going to say how 
 much I care for her, because that is a question between 
 her and me, but I will make it quite plain to you, young 
 man, that I care enough." 
 
 "You don t care enough if you marry her you 
 wouldn t marry her if you did. You don t care as much 
 as I do, if you don t just let her alone ! " 
 
 The older man kept himself in hand. 
 
 " I look at it this way ; the girl is grown up and she has 
 the right to choose what man she ll marry. If she wants 
 you, all right. You are young and good looking, and I 
 suppose you re well educated. Road making isn t the. job 
 I would pick out for myself, because you can t settle down 
 and have a home of your own and a woman likes a 
 home of her own, and ought to have it; but you look 
 smart and I guess you could get into something else easily 
 enough. You knew her pretty well before she went into 
 the Service, and I have known her pretty well since, and 
 I don t see any reason why she wouldn t be happy enough 
 if she married me. It all comes back to what she wants 
 to do." 
 
 " No," Nick broke in, " she might want to do some 
 thing that would make her miserable. I want to save her 
 from the chance of making mistakes." 
 
 " And still you don t intend to ask her yourself? " 
 
 " No, I don t. Because I think she oughtn t to marry
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 257 
 
 either of us the kind of a girl she is, and the life she s 
 had!" 
 
 " She was a good little worker in the mill," said John 
 Barton. 
 
 "I know," said Nick desperately, " it isn t that ! Mil 
 dred would work or do anything else she had to do. It s 
 the things outside of your work or mine that would make 
 the difference. It s the whole life that matters she 
 ought to be quite a different kind of a girl." 
 
 " Well," said John Barton slowly, " you haven t con 
 vinced me and you haven t persuaded me. I care for 
 her and I am going to marry her. You have got the 
 right to cut me out, if you can but she s engaged to 
 me now and I ll keep her if I can. There is just one 
 thing I think that we ought to agree about. That is, not 
 to tell her that we talked it over. I should think it would 
 make a girl mad to be talked over like this." 
 
 " Yes," said Nick, " I think it would, and if you told 
 her that I have been trying to persuade you not to marry 
 her, I know just what she would think of me." 
 
 The older man held out his hand and Nick with his 
 lips trembling and his brown eyes filling, put his slowly 
 into it. 
 
 " I don t think," said John Barton slowly, " she would 
 make a mistake in taking either of us." 
 
 " And I think," said Nick unhappily, " that it would be 
 just like death for her to marry either you or me." 
 
 To neither of them did it occur that Mildred Carver 
 might be anything but the natural " second " in the game 
 of some man s career. She had spent her required term 
 in the government service, but what of that? Wasn t 
 she the same feminine complement she had been before? 
 
 Nick knew that having had a year of work, it was his 
 patriotic duty to go on with it. John Barton s work was
 
 258 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 his personal, inseparable religion. But both of them took 
 it for granted that the duties of Mildred s citizenship had 
 all been paid. 
 
 Nick flung round and started south again and John 
 Barton stood watching him. 
 
 " Poor kid he s in love with her all right, but I don t 
 see what I can do about it. Besides he probably wouldn t 
 be able to support her for a good while." 
 
 John Barton walked on to his hotel, thinking content 
 edly of the little home in Minneapolis out in one of 
 those new suburbs where he could buy through a building 
 and loan association. He d get her an upright piano 
 perhaps a Victrola, if Mildred would rather have it 
 and they d keep a girl. His mind pictured transiently a 
 golden oak dining table with a highly varnished top and 
 machine carved chairs and a sideboard to match. He 
 seemed to get a flash of bright color from the rug and see 
 lace curtains hanging primly at the windows. All these 
 dreams of the future were plain to John Barton, but the 
 realities of the present were heavily obscured. He could 
 see the straight road from the mill where he earned his 
 modest salary to the little red brick cottage where he 
 meant to spend it, but he never even suspected the devious 
 network that led from mines and mills and factories, from 
 railroads and public utilities, from government bonds and 
 steamship securities, from foreign investments and do 
 mestic holdings, to the house on Washington Square. The 
 signs of great wealth were not visible to him because they 
 manifested themselves in forms he did not know. Had 
 Mrs. Carver been bedecked with diamonds instead of 
 wearing around her neck a modest string of what looked 
 to him like white beads, had she rustled in silk had 
 Mildred s arms clinked bracelets and her clothes dripped 
 lace he might have understood. But what was a simple
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 259 
 
 red brick house facing an imperfectly groomed park that 
 it should enlighten him. He intended to have a red brick 
 house himself shortly and there were plenty of parks in 
 Minneapolis. Of the cash equivalents of pictures and 
 draperies, rugs and china he knew nothing. He had 
 never bought a chair or a table or a dish in his life. There 
 did seem to be a good deal of " help " about, but that was 
 probably a New York custom and they did have a 
 motor. Well, didn t he hope to buy a Ford when they got 
 the house paid for? The Carvers were well off he 
 could see that but he was not conscious of any over 
 whelming financial disparity between him and Mildred. 
 And then his mind settled on something very small and 
 soft and warm, being rocked by the fireside, and some 
 thing very fat and blond learning to walk, and something 
 very active and vigorous, and perhaps a little unruly 
 swinging his books by a strap on his way to school. And 
 John Barton s eyes crinkled up at the corners and his 
 teeth gleamed between his lips as he entered the lobby of 
 his modest hotel. 
 
 The next day Nick entering the Carver house just as 
 luncheon was over, saw John Barton catch at Mildred s 
 hand as they left the dining room. 
 
 " Nick," cried Mildred when she saw him. " Oh, 
 Nick!" and then recovering herself, she held out her 
 hand quite formally. Mrs. Carver greeted him with a 
 little anxious catch of the breath and Ruthie and Junior 
 fell upon him in glee. 
 
 Mildred turned to introduce the two men but John 
 Barton said gravely : 
 
 " I met Mr. Van Arsdale last night." 
 
 There was something of the condemnatory preacher in 
 his tone. 
 
 Mildred looked from one to the other in surprise. 
 
 " We took a walk together and had a talk."
 
 260 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 Yes," said Nick with a quaver in his voice, " we had a 
 talk and I want to have another now and Mildred with 
 us." 
 
 " I don t think that would be necessary and I don t 
 see that we have anything to talk over anyway. I 
 thought we settled it last night." 
 
 Mildred, the last vestige of color gone from her face, 
 turned into the library. 
 
 " Come in here, please," she said in a high little voice. 
 
 Her mother hesitated on the threshold and then let 
 the three go in without her. She realized that her work 
 on that situation was done. She had written for Nick 
 and he was here. The immemorial triangle of two men 
 wanting the same woman had been created and they must 
 solve it between them. As she went up the long curving 
 stairs she was trembling so much hung in the balance 
 of the next half hour ! 
 
 Out by the great fireplace Mildred faced the two men, 
 though her cheeks were white and her lips trembling. 
 
 " Well ? " she questioned in a clear, light voice, as sober 
 as a bell and as insistent. 
 
 They were dumb before her she seemed to them 
 both quite suddenly, to be another person from the young 
 girl whose happiness they were so concerned in safe 
 guarding an individual, an independent human being 
 quite able to determine her own life and with plenty of 
 characteristics in addition to charm and lovableness. They 
 had both thought of her as looking at life through eyes 
 only half opened to the things they saw in it. What 
 could the obligation to serve the state mean to her now 
 that her Service year was done ? But she stood as a new 
 thing, a judge set over them. 
 
 " Well? " she questioned insistently. 
 
 John Barton turned to Nick as if to offer him the first 
 chance to speak and Nick regarded him resentfully.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 261 
 
 " Mildred, I heard that you were going to marry Mr. 
 Barton and I came back to ask you not to ! " 
 
 John Barton interrupted him : 
 
 " He waited for me when I left you last night and tried 
 to persuade me not tp marry you I thought we agreed 
 not to mention the matter to you but Mr. Van Arsdale 
 seems not to have understood it that way." 
 
 " I know that was what we said, but I ve been thinking 
 of it ever since and I know we were wrong and that I 
 hadn t any right to keep my agreement about it. It s so 
 awful anyway that just breaking my word doesn t seem 
 to matter. I care so much more about not having you 
 miserable than looking like a cad," Nick plunged ahead. 
 
 " I did ask him Mr. Barton, not to marry you. I 
 told him he d no right to ask you to live in such a differ 
 ent way and among such different people. And the 
 things girls like to do just aren t in Minneapolis to be 
 done. You d hate it ! You wouldn t be happy and I 
 couldn t stand it not to have you happy Mildred ! " 
 
 Nick, growing incoherent, put the weakest side of his 
 case foremost. As Mildred looked at him her color 
 came back and her eyes began to flash with a light that 
 was not at all gentle. 
 
 " I don t see, Nick, how it can matter to you." 
 
 The boy crimsoned. 
 
 " I know Mildred I should think you d feel just that 
 way only you know, don t you that s the reason 
 I stayed away? I knew you d hate the kind of life out 
 there in the desert or anywhere else where there weren t 
 any roads and had to be some built. It wouldn t be right 
 to take you way out there even if you " 
 
 " Even if I wanted to go? " 
 
 Nick looked at her unhappily. 
 
 " What do you think I want to do, Nick ? "
 
 262 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Why, what every other girl does, I suppose, have 
 a good time and get married." 
 
 " Well, I don t or at least that s only part of it. I 
 want to work! I m a citizen just as much as anybody 
 else and I ve got to give my share of patriotic service just 
 like any man or any ten men. I ve got to do something 
 that needs to be done ! " 
 
 A light began to grow in Nick s eyes and he stepped 
 hastily towards her; this was a new Mildred he had never 
 dreamed of but she drew near to John Barton s side 
 and slipped her hand in his 
 
 " And so I m going to marry the most splendid and 
 noble man there could be, Nick. It doesn t matter 
 whether I live in Kamchatka or the middle of the Sahara 
 Desert it s all the same. I m going to help him to see 
 that the flour s made right and packed right, and shipped 
 on time; and I couldn t help being happy doing that, could 
 I ? I can get along without the concerts and the dances 
 and the dinners and the shows we didn t have any of 
 these things in the Service and I didn t miss them half as 
 much as I miss the Service now. And as for the people 
 Why, Nick, I met every kind of people there are while I 
 was out there, and now I just meet all the same kind. It s 
 so dull. I can t stand it, being so uninterested all the time ! 
 And so I m going to be married, Nick, and work and do a 
 lot for the country just as though I were in the Service 
 all my life. You needn t bother about my being happy 
 I couldn t be anything else! " 
 
 Nick stood looking at her, his mouth a little open 
 he tried to interrupt her several times and failed. He 
 was younger than John Barton and the implications of 
 what she said struck him more quickly the real Mil 
 dred of the new day was more visible to him. He felt 
 that he must define his own changing attitude, but John
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 263 
 
 Barton drew Mildred s hand through his arm and stood 
 beside her. 
 
 " You said, last night, Mr. Van Arsdale, that if I cared 
 for Mildred, I wouldn t marry her because the life she d 
 lead would make her unhappy. I guess you can see that 
 that wouldn t be so. Of course she won t have to work 
 the way she s thinking of. I earn enough to take care of 
 her." 
 
 "Not work? Why, of course, I ll work. It isn t a 
 question of having to ! It s what I want to do ! " 
 
 It was evident that John Barton didn t take her se 
 riously. He had got just so far in democracy as the idea 
 that it was the patriotic duty of all men to serve their 
 country all the time, but he hadn t extended his idea to 
 include all women, certainly not to include his pro 
 spective wife. 
 
 Nick felt he must try to make her see. 
 
 " But just marrying and going to live in Minneapolis 
 isn t all there is to it, Mildred; and just working in 
 Minneapolis doesn t make the people or the place any dif 
 ferent. If you don t mind the way it is away from New 
 York why, you know, it isn t much worse in Arizona 
 or Kansas or anywhere else where they re making roads. 
 And they re as important roads are as anything ! 
 Why, you can t even get the wheat up to the flour mill 
 without them! So, if you d go to Minneapolis to live 
 why wouldn t you 
 
 Nick was stopped because he couldn t understand why 
 Mildred was looking at him from some remote glacial 
 epoch. He had no idea what he had done, but he stopped 
 abruptly in his certainty that he had done something. 
 
 " Nick," said Mildred at last, very slowly and with 
 a dangerous iced intensity, " Nick, suppose you don t go 
 on with that. You don t seem to understand that I love 
 John Barton."
 
 264 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 The boy looked at her silently, while the new light died 
 out of his eyes, and then said hoarsely : 
 
 " No, I didn t understand. I beg your pardon, Mil 
 dred. But don t you see that he doesn t understand 
 either ? " And turning, he went out through the swishing 
 velvet portieres over the silence-compelling rugs. 
 
 Mrs. Carver, watching him down the street, saw the 
 droop of his shoulders and the uncertainty of his steps, 
 saw how he started to turn automatically up Fifth Av 
 enue and then as automatically went south and plunged 
 into the mazes of Greenwich Village and realized that her 
 attempt at direct action had failed. There was nothing 
 for it now but a flank attack. 
 
 Mrs. Carver made her next appeal subtly and indirectly 
 to John Barton. The only stipulation she made she 
 got Frank to agree to it was that before there was 
 any formal engagement Mildred and John Barton should 
 have a chance to know each other better. Ostensibly to 
 that end, the Carvers began to take him about and intro 
 duce him socially as they would if he had been lord of 
 an independent dukedom. 
 
 " Does your father put on his glad rags every 
 night? " John Barton inquired of Mildred. 
 
 " Why, yes ! " she answered innocently. 
 
 So he betook himself to a ready made clothing store 
 that he saw on Broadway, and bought evening clothes 
 recommended by the clerk never in his life had he had 
 a suit made to order. As a matter of fact it sat well on 
 his lank frame better than he thought it did. His 
 shoes were not quite right, and his tie was not quite right, 
 and his hat and coat were very wrong, indeed but he 
 didn t know it. 
 
 The first thing was a dance of the debutante set. John 
 Barton danced? Yes, certainly! He waltzed with the
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 265 
 
 sure swing of the raw-boned New Englander, in the old- 
 fashioned way which so few of the younger people have 
 taken the trouble to learn. But he only waltzed. As he 
 swung Mildred out upon the floor, she fell in with his 
 step with the adaptability of a good dancer. Had they 
 been alone in the ballroom she would have been perfectly 
 happy. As it was, she felt uncomfortably conspicuous. 
 In between the dances John Barton got on very well, so 
 long as the talk was impersonal, for the girls had been in 
 the Universal Service. But there were older women 
 there, and with them John Barton was wholly at a loss. 
 
 He could look at them and admire them, and watch the 
 twinkle of their jewels, but there was no basis of common 
 experience for talk between them. Occasionally he 
 waltzed with Mildred. After he had seen the newer kind 
 of dancing, he did not dare try it with any one else. 
 For the most part he stood silently looking on, his appre 
 ciative eyes following the young girls, their delicate gold 
 and silver slippers, their well coiffed heads, their 
 fragile, glistening clothes, their flower-white shoulders. 
 His eyes followed Mildred about, the Spirit of Felicity 
 she seemed to him, as one man after another danced with 
 her. There were a few boys of her own age with whom 
 she frolicked frankly, some older men, not so acceptable 
 in his eyes, and repeatedly Apperson Forbes, whose name 
 he did not know, but whose tall, lean frame, an inheri 
 tance from pioneer ancestors, was not unlike his own. 
 Somehow, John Barton resented his dancing with Mil 
 dred. 
 
 He was looking forward to the ride home as the best 
 part of the ball, when Mrs. Carver dropped in from 
 where she had been dining. She stood beside him and 
 pointed out the people with significant explanations. 
 
 " Ah there is Mrs. Deversey see, in white over by
 
 266 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 the door I didn t know she was in town. And young 
 Tommy Sloan dancing with the girl in pink they re the 
 Railroad group, you know." 
 
 And so on and on the old names that are interna 
 tional and the new names that are coming in. John Bar 
 ton had never read the society columns of a newspaper in 
 his life, but this sounded to him like a financial rating. 
 He was visibly disturbed by it. What his untrained ob 
 servations hadn t told him, what his ignorance of society 
 values in general and New York conditions in particular, 
 had left him ignorant of, Mrs. Carver s seemingly casual 
 comments were beating in on his consciousness. But 
 were the Carvers necessarily rich because their friends 
 had money ! 
 
 The drive home was unsatisfying. How affectionate 
 can a diffident man be in the presence of his intended 
 mother-in-law ? 
 
 Mildred had caught her foot in the frill of her gown, 
 making an ugly rent. 
 
 "Is that the little dress Annette made you?" her 
 mother asked her casually. 
 
 " No, mother, it s one of the French ones, and I m 
 afraid Henriette can t mend it." 
 
 " Probably not," said Mrs. Carver indifferently. 
 
 This, too, was disconcerting to John Barton. The 
 wife of the foreman of a mill could have no such de 
 tached attitude toward clothes. 
 
 They took John Barton to the opera and he sat there 
 wondering what it was all about, and looking at the lovely 
 ladies, some of whom he had seen at the dance, and at 
 Mildred in front of him in the box Mildred in quite a 
 different dress, of which she was apparently unconscious, 
 carried away from the things of this world by music 
 which seemed to him to have neither melody, time nor
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 267 
 
 meaning. What did he know of this art that gave her 
 so much pleasure ? She would never hear opera in Min 
 neapolis was she going to miss it much ? There would 
 be concerts, of course, and the theater. It would cost 
 them let s see, three dollars, every time they went. 
 It wouldn t be often they could go. 
 
 And after the opera, the rich limousine and the uni 
 formed Wicks seated beside the uniformed chauffeur, and 
 stopping for a very wonderful little supper at Sherry s on 
 the way home; and there finding people they knew, also 
 richly dressed and eating delicate and costly food and 
 talking gayly about a great variety of things he under 
 stood as little as he had understood the opera. And then 
 on again in the motor to his modest hotel. 
 
 John Barton was conscious of extreme exasperation as 
 he struggled out of his white tie. He had come to New 
 York with a great hope in his heart; he had asked Mildred 
 to marry him and she had consented. The most wonder 
 ful and still the most natural thing in the world! And 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carver had made no real objection that 
 they should ask for a chance to know him better before 
 there was any talk of immediate marriage was no more 
 than reasonable and he was seeing Mildred every day, 
 a wonderful thing in itself! But what good did it do 
 him ? He was all meshed up with other people and other 
 things, clothes and dancing and music, and restaurants 
 and jewelry and motor cars and servants and various ex 
 traneous affairs, that no sensible human being would thinl; 
 had anything to do with his marrying Mildred and which 
 yet seemed to form a perfect abatis between her and 
 him. 
 
 He flung his hated dress coat on the bed and throwing 
 himself on a chair, thrust his hands into his pockets as he 
 tried to think out this social organization which made the
 
 268 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 love of men and women the slave of up-getting and down- 
 sitting, of eating and drinking and talking and riding. It 
 seemed to John Barton as though he were in the processes 
 of suffocation consequent upon being swallowed. He 
 wasn t getting better acquainted with Mildred he was 
 simply rinding out how she lived. 
 
 He was beginning slowly to grasp the significance of 
 the Carver menage. Waddell and Wicks and the other 
 servants, whom he had rather ignored before, began to 
 rise before his startled eyes. The bevy of motors, the 
 country estate, the talk of travel, could only mean one 
 thing. Did he John Barton who earned his living 
 by the sweat of his brow and liked the job, want to be 
 under the stigma of marrying a rich wife? Money had 
 not been mentioned by any one since he came but he be 
 gan to know the signs of it. 
 
 They were really pretty well fixed, he thought but 
 just what vast stores of wealth, inherited and acquired, 
 lay back of them he didn t yet dream. And should he 
 let the fact of money come between Mildred and himself? 
 Wasn t it just as bad for a girl as for a man to lose the 
 one she loved? He wouldn t have let Mildred refuse him 
 if she d been poor and he d been rich and since she 
 loved him ! 
 
 One night Mrs. Carver gave a dinner, and John Barton 
 was full of trepidation at the prospect. This formal eat 
 ing, even in the modified form practiced in restaurants, 
 disturbed him. 
 
 He found himself next Lady Nieth gorgeous in 
 satin that seemed to him to have several colors at once; 
 sparkling as though a vast number of jewels had been 
 poured upon her haphazard and caught where they fell, 
 some in her hair, some on her neck, and many casually 
 adhering to the front of her gown. Lady Nieth exhib-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 269 
 
 ited, also, an unexampled amount of very beautiful skin 
 at which it embarrassed him to be seen looking. Exactly 
 how to address her he didn t know and tried to avoid it by 
 circumlocution. And then Mildred was not beside him 
 where he could touch her hand, but on the other side of 
 the table, dimpling and sparkling between Mr. Apperson 
 Forbes and an English diplomat, handsome, flaccid and 
 very tired, who seemed to drink in her youth and beauty 
 like an elixir, and to defer graciously to her words. John 
 Barton saw this in surprise, for to him Mildred was not 
 an incipient intellectual force but a lovely young female. 
 But he was kept busy trying not to be disconcerted by 
 Waddell and the footmen, or to trip over his forks, and 
 to conceal the fact that he thought he had finished after 
 each course and was surprised when another dish was 
 offered him. Mildred, glancing across at him between 
 the courtesies of the diplomat and the amorous attentions 
 of Apperson Forbes, could not help being conscious of 
 these fumblings. And John Barton, struggling distress 
 fully, could not avoid seeing that she saw. Mildred felt 
 herself flush with embarrassment; not, she told herself, 
 that they meant anything or were of the least consequence. 
 It \vas so much more important that a prophet should 
 prophesy greatly than that his use of table silver should 
 accord with the customs of the Carver family. But be 
 cause it brought before her a sudden picture of Nick with 
 his white lips and hurt eyes and she wanted to put him 
 out of her mind. 
 
 And then, some one spoke across the table in a softly 
 worded criticism of the policy that had put the control of 
 the grain traffic into the hands of the farmers, and the 
 answer came back with a gentle stricture on leaving the 
 management of business to a government that didn t pro 
 ceed on business principles. And John Barton caught 
 the quick skipping rope of the talk with a firm hand.
 
 270 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 "It seems to me to be working very well, from the 
 standpoint of getting things that the people want done 
 as they want them." It was almost the first word he had 
 initiated and Lady Nieth hastily took her shoulder out of 
 his way as she turned toward him. 
 
 " Yes, but oughtn t they to be done efficiently, if they re 
 to go on? " It was the diplomat beside Mildred who had 
 spoken. 
 
 " Isn t the first count in efficiency what you re doing 
 it for? You see I m the foreman of a government flour 
 mill and it s always seemed to me that the basis from 
 which all efficiency had to start, in my work, was getting 
 fiour milled and shipped to the people." 
 
 Mildred was leaning back in her chair now, smiling 
 straight at him. This was the prophet she followed ! 
 John Barton saw it and gathered up the skein of the 
 talk. Again it was the tongue of flame and the eyes of 
 the seer! He would have made a great priest, Frank 
 Carver thought as he listened. He painted the picture 
 again as Mildred had heard him in the Unit when she had 
 thought his head was touched with light and his lips with 
 the fire of God. The wheat grew under his words and 
 all the world was fed it was the romantic passion of 
 a great obsession. The table was his congregation and he 
 carried them with him. Even Mary Carver was com 
 pelled to admiration, and Frank told himself that this was 
 a man of power, of whose kinship he should be proud. 
 But then John Barton faltered, and picking up his fork 
 he thrust it absently into the table cover and his wine glass 
 overturned and the gold of his enthusiasm was trans 
 muted into embarrassment. 
 
 And then the blessed end to the eating came and the 
 women, in harem-derived custom, floated into the draw 
 ing room, leaving the men behind them.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 271 
 
 With the men alone, John Barton was more at ease. 
 He answered their questions as to the development of 
 the Northwest and the democratization of industry as one 
 who had real things to say. A trim, gray-haired man 
 moved over beside him to ask just how effective he had 
 found the Service boys and girls in the mill; were they 
 really good workers in the purely business sense ? Frank 
 Carver overheard the query and laughed a little. 
 
 Trying to find out if the boy earned his salt at the 
 road making, Van Arsdale ? " 
 
 "Van Arsdale! " So this was the father of the boy 
 who hadn t wanted him to marry Mildred! Obviously 
 that boy belonged with these people who lived so differ 
 ently from the way people did in Minneapolis the way 
 he himself intended to live. Not that it was a matter of 
 any consequence, of course. 
 
 John Barton showed well as a human being in that brief 
 interval before they came into the drawing room, out of 
 the smoke of the men s cigars into the smoke of the 
 women s cigarettes, and to Mildred at the coffee table in 
 the old fashion which still pleased the Carvers. He 
 found Mildred a little flushed and rebellious for she had 
 heard Lady Nieth ask her mother where she had dis 
 covered John Barton, as though here were a new variety 
 of garden gourd, and had heard her mother answer 
 with truthful but most deceptive unconcern : 
 
 " Oh, it s his mill my daughter worked in last year. 
 Mr. Carver met him out there and thought him rather 
 remarkable." 
 
 "Distinctly!" 
 
 And Lady Nieth turned, cigarette in hand, to watch 
 him come in as though he were something between a 
 trained dog and an African Prince.
 
 272 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 " Didn t you tell me in Minneapolis that you wanted to 
 see a steel mill ? " Frank asked John Barton next day. 
 "We can motor down, if you care to a small, sub 
 sidiary mill, but you ll get the processes." 
 
 Can one refuse a coveted father-in-law ? John Barton 
 won so much of grace that Mildred joined the party. 
 
 Here the foreman was on his own ground and there 
 was clear man s talk with the workmen in the different 
 divisions of the mill a talk between craftsmen in which 
 Mildred wanted to join. 
 
 " Show us again that very hard steel they re exper 
 imenting with, father, please." 
 
 And they were led into the laboratory. 
 
 "It s for reaper blades Mildred explained. "I 
 told father how they broke on my machine in Dakota and 
 he s having them try this hard kind of steel for them." 
 
 John Barton stopped abruptly and turned on Frank. 
 
 " Do you own this mill ? " 
 
 " Well well practically I do." 
 
 Then you re the Carver the one in steel? " 
 
 " Yes I that is yes." 
 
 " Oh, God ! Why didn t I know ! " 
 
 The next day was his last in New York and John Bar 
 ton had begged that he and Mildred might have it to them 
 selves. 
 
 " I want to see her alone, Mrs. Carver," he said frankly. 
 " I want to go somewhere in the morning and take her to 
 lunch, and then be by ourselves in the afternoon." 
 
 "If you take the motor 
 
 " No, not the motor," he said firmly, " just Mildred 
 and me." 
 
 And they went.
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 273 
 
 It was a hard and wonderful day for both of them; 
 happy, a little ecstatic, and tragically sad. They had gone 
 in mid-morning over to Staten Island and out along that 
 beach, dropped like a jewel in the pocket of the town, 
 and then turning inland had struck across the frozen 
 marshes toward the high land. 
 
 John Barton had waited his whole life for this splendid 
 young mate. His heart sang and the blood sped to his 
 cheeks as he tramped up the beach beside her. It was 
 love of her little hands and trim feet of her blue eyes 
 and her gold hair her swift gleaming smile and the 
 quick up-scale laugh that followed it the soft red that 
 flooded to her low, well set little ears when he kissed her 
 suddenly. In between these moments of joy he tried to 
 make love to her in words. 
 
 But here he met with difficulty. Mildred wanted him, 
 when it came to talking, not to tell her how beautiful she 
 was, or how he thought of her night and day, or how 
 happy they were going to be in Minneapolis, but of the 
 wonderful work of feeding the people and how she was 
 going to help him do it. She wanted him to paint her 
 future as an assistant priest at the altar. It was a sort 
 of religious exaltation she craved from him, a thing that 
 neither the church nor any social effort had ever been 
 able to give her nothing but John Barton himself 
 speaking as the Priest of the Service. She wanted from 
 him the same things that earlier generations had got 
 from the perfume of ascending incense, from the Per 
 petual Adoration and the chanting and the rolling organ ; 
 what, earlier still had come through the witch dances and 
 the dervishes ; and way, way back in the dim, almost pre 
 human stage, from the shaking of the war gourds, the 
 sight of the war feathers and the swift rush of the tribe 
 on the common foe, this, and a chance to put her de-
 
 274 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 veloping creative instinct into work, a chance to serve 
 her country. With John Barton it was the mating in 
 stinct, strong, clean and direct. With Mildred it was 
 something quite different, more complex, and far more 
 difficult to satisfy. She got much more joy out of the 
 sound of his voice telling how the farmers of the north 
 west organized the Nonpartisan League, than out of the 
 touch of his lips on hers. She didn t analyze her own 
 sensations, was quite unconscious what they meant; but 
 again and again she turned the love talk into talk of the 
 things he was doing and that she would do with him ; and 
 again and again he turned it back. At last he seemed to 
 understand and fell silent. They were climbing up Tode 
 Hill Road when they came to a little leafless wood with a 
 carpet of fallen oak leaves and the blue bay spread out be 
 fore them. Mildred stopped to catch her breath. Her 
 cheeks were flushed with the crisp air, her eyes were shin 
 ing, her lips were smiling with happiness. Never had she 
 looked more beautiful. 
 
 " Will you be too cold if we sit here on this little wall 
 for a moment?" he asked very gravely. 
 
 He took her left hand out of her muff pulled off the 
 glove finger by finger, and put it gravely to his lips. 
 
 " Mildred, I love you with all the love there is in me 
 but I m afraid that you don t love me." 
 
 The girl protested in frightened haste. 
 
 " I know you think you love me, dear it isn t that. 
 It s that you don t know." 
 
 It was a very sober hour for both of them when John 
 Barton put the case against himself. Honestly and de 
 liberately he did it, as an upright man who would not 
 take what was not his merely because he could get it. The 
 case was two-fold, the first and lesser part, that the 
 things she must give up as his wife would make life a
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 275 
 
 hardship for her. The second and great part, that she 
 didn t care for him as she thought she did. John Bar 
 ton said in everything but words that the role of prophet 
 wasn t the one he cared to fill. He was a lover and he 
 wanted to be loved, not as a leader, but as a man. 
 
 There was one moment when Mildred turned to him, 
 holding out her hands. 
 
 "But I can t give it up I can t! Don t leave me 
 with nothing in the world to do! Why, it s like being 
 dead!" 
 
 Then he caught her to him again, but only for a mo 
 ment. He sprang to his feet and tramped resolutely up 
 the road and resolutely back. Out of his pocket he took 
 a little case and out of it a ring, perfectly conventional 
 and set with a little diamond. Catching up her bare left 
 hand, he slipped it on the third finger. 
 
 " Mildred, this is a sign that I m not going to marry 
 the woman I love more than my own soul will you 
 wear it for me ? " 
 
 When they got back to the house in Washington Square 
 she was white and drawn as she had never been before. 
 
 " I must see your father and mother before I go." 
 
 John Barton stood bravely before them, his arm around 
 Mildred. 
 
 " I want to tell you that we are not going to be mar 
 ried. I have found that I love your daughter too much 
 to take her, even with her own consent, unless I am sure 
 that she loves me more than she loves the work I am do 
 ing. She has told me that she hasn t anything to do 
 any real work that she cares about. I wish that you 
 would let her go on working. She made a good record 
 in the mill, and in the field, too. I don t suppose you 
 knew that what she was really going to marry me for, 
 was a job and that s almost as bad as marrying for a
 
 276 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 home. I d just like to say, now that I m at it, that I ap 
 preciate the way you ve acted toward me you ve been 
 white. I know how you must have felt about Mildred s 
 marrying me brought up as she s been and living the 
 way you do. You didn t think I cared about the money, 
 I know, because I guess it must have been pretty plain I 
 didn t know about it. You knew I wasn t a fortune 
 hunter, anyway. It s a bad thing when anything has got 
 to come between a man and a woman except not loving 
 each other when we get the world fixed right, there 
 won t. Well, good-bye." 
 
 Frank Carver wrung his hand. 
 
 " John Barton," he said thickly, " I wish my daughter 
 did love you." 
 
 Mary, standing by her daughter, victorious, had noth 
 ing to say. 
 
 "If I could just speak a word to her alone the 
 man faltered a little. 
 
 Frank swept his wife out into the hall. 
 
 Half an hour later Wicks coming to turn on the lights 
 found his young mistress crying, alone, on the arm of the 
 great leather sofa before the fire and stole noiselessly 
 away.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 MRS. CARVER had not taken John Barton s 
 request that they let Mildred go to work at 
 all seriously. Wouldn t a girl of any spirit 
 turn against the suggestions of a man who had refused to 
 marry her ? Wouldn t she therefore be more susceptible 
 to the attentions of some one else? Unfortunately Mrs. 
 Carver had no suitor in sight but Apperson Forbes. The 
 list of eligibles seemed even smaller than at the time of 
 Mildred s debut. So many of those who had seemed to 
 escape the infection of the Service at first had succumbed 
 to it later and gone into some sort of work that took them 
 out of their traditional setting! Mary Carver couldn t 
 reconcile herself to Apperson Forbes, and she began mak 
 ing plans to take Mildred abroad. Things couldn t be so 
 bad in England! 
 
 But Mildred didn t want to go to England or to France 
 or the Orient. She wasn t interested in marriage, she 
 wanted to work and she would by no means accept the 
 practice of philanthropy or uplift as a substitute. Even 
 Old Andrew was a Job s comforter. 
 
 " What you doing with the girl, Mary ? " he inquired. 
 " Going to let her marry Forbes? " 
 
 " Not if I can help it!" 
 
 " What does she want to do? " 
 
 " She wants to go to work." 
 
 " Well, why not let her? Can t Frank find her a job? 
 Frank ! " as his nephew came to greet him, " Why don t 
 
 277
 
 278 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 you give your daughter a job? " and then pattering over 
 to his grand niece behind the silver coffee urn, " Mildred, 
 I m trying to get your father to set you to work seems 
 to me you re a useless ornament. I want Frank to break 
 you in at the Long Island Steel Plant." 
 
 " But there aren t any women working there," ob 
 jected Frank Carver, " at least I think not." 
 
 " Well, put em in. Perhaps we ve got an industrial 
 imagination floating around in this part of the family and 
 we don t want any hated rival to get the advantage of 
 it." 
 
 " Oh, father, would you let me work there on the 
 super-steel, you know? " 
 
 " Certainly, Mildred," said Frank, looking into the 
 earnest eyes of his daughter and remembering the en 
 treaties of the foreman of the mill, his almost son-in-law. 
 
 It is probable that the promise of work on the super- 
 steel which Frank Carver had given his daughter so 
 lightly might have been laid indefinitely on the table of the 
 family council if an official document had not arrived to 
 keep it before the house. It was a large formidable doc 
 ument very much like the one that had summoned Mil 
 dred into the Universal Service, except that it was marked 
 " Department of Agriculture " and instead of being a 
 command to service, was an offer of work. 
 
 The document stated that her record in the Service had 
 been high enough to entitle her to a position as profes 
 sional tractor driver and leader of a tractor team in the 
 field service. She would be paid her living expenses and 
 sixty dollars a month from the beginning of April to the 
 last of October with two weeks rest in July. If she 
 wished the position she must accept it within a month. 
 
 Mildred showed the document to her parents. 
 
 " That is something that needs to be done," she com-
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 279 
 
 mented significantly. " It s a patriotic service helping 
 to feed the people of the United States. I d be going on 
 with my duty as a citizen. Besides, I like it and I know 
 how." 
 
 " Mildred, do you want to do it ? Do you want to 
 leave us for as long as that ? " 
 
 " No, Mother, I hate to go away from home, but I don t 
 want to go back on my job, either. I wouldn t have any 
 right to do that, and there doesn t seem to be anything 
 here for me to do. The uniforms are almost exactly 
 like the ones we wore in the Service only the collars are 
 blue and after the first year I get a band on my sleeve. I 
 think the place to get them is the Agricultural Commis 
 sary down by the river." 
 
 Mrs. Carver thought her determined young daughter 
 had never looked so beautiful as now that she held the 
 winning cards in the struggle between them. It was the 
 leverage of this official offer of work that stirred Frank 
 Carver to bring his rival job of work on super-steel into 
 quick competition. 
 
 So a square, business-like desk in the little office next 
 to the laboratory was the door of the world that finally 
 opened to Mildred, and she set her feet joyously and with 
 a good deal of confidence in the new country she found 
 beyond. Her first interest was to find uses for the new 
 super-steel in agriculture. The fact that she had broken 
 so many reaper blades in North Dakota was her point of 
 departure, and from that bit of sure knowledge acquired 
 by original research, she had to find out other directions 
 where super-steel could be used. And this led her into 
 the realm of mechanics and she sat at the feet of machin 
 ists in the mill, and studied trade journals and technical 
 papers, and this again led to a study of advertising as a 
 means of making the people who ought to use super-steel
 
 280 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 know that such a thing existed. Mildred, provided with 
 a stenographer of her own, plunged into all these fields at 
 once. 
 
 Early, six mornings in the week, Mildred went over to 
 the factory office. She arrived there at nine late for 
 a factory hand early for Mildred. To be sure this 
 promptness required the cooperation of Henriette who in 
 a state of moral protest woke her and helped her to dress; 
 of the cook who in a state of overt rebellion rose spe 
 cially early to get breakfast for her; of Wicks, who in a 
 state of wistful exaltation drove her to the railroad sta 
 tion in time to catch her train. But though it seriously 
 disrupted the smooth running domestic machine in Wash 
 ington Square, it accomplished its purpose of getting the 
 new super-steel manager to the factory on time. 
 
 All day Mildred worked in the office trying to discover 
 new uses for super-steel, or getting in touch with people 
 who might use it. Her letters signed " M. Carver " were 
 taken to be from a member of the firm and treated with 
 respect. But when she called in person on representatives 
 of manufacturing plants, the appearance of a lovely young 
 girl where they had expected to find a mature business 
 man, sometimes created confusion. 
 
 It is not probable that Mildred was the best promoter 
 the firm might have commanded how could she be? 
 But that was not the reason she was there. Frank Car 
 ver gave her that chance, as he would have given her 
 necklaces and rings as he had given her dolls in the 
 past or would buy her a duke in the future if she wanted 
 it. But it is true that some of the qualities that had been 
 bred into the Carver line from generations of having what 
 they wanted ; the tacit habit of success ; the expectation 
 of being listened to; carried her a long way. And then 
 there was the old commercial ability latent in the family
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 281 
 
 and under these favoring circumstances it began to sprout 
 and grow. 
 
 All day Mildred stayed at her work and at five made a 
 dash for her train, and as she entered New York was met 
 by the motor and took up her old life again. There was 
 time to dress for dinner; there were dances and theaters 
 to go to ; there was quite as much attention from men as 
 she had received before more of it perhaps. Her 
 mother thought at first that it would be easy to divert 
 her from the factory on occasion, but the year s discipline 
 held, and what social life she couldn t get in the evenings 
 she seemed willing to do without. 
 
 All but one of her problems were solving themselves. 
 She was doing something that she felt needed to be done 
 for the country ; something she liked to do and that inter 
 ested her! something that John Barton, still her prophet 
 of industry, would approve; but 
 
 Well, she sometimes thought of Nick coming back and 
 saying how he loved her, and begging her to marry him, 
 and of her saying, very stern and noble : 
 
 " No, Nick, the Mildred that you cared for is gone 
 It isn t me you love. I have plans that your wife couldn t 
 carry out. The world is going to be better fed because 
 I have lived." 
 
 And Nick would go on with his life of idle pleasure 
 which he had taken up when he tired of road making, but 
 always saying with Lord Tennyson in his heart : 
 
 " We needs must love the highest when we see it ! " 
 
 And then another picture showed her Nick being killed 
 somewhere in Arizona, where he was supposed to be now 
 killed just because he was careless or something, and 
 herself going out to his grave on the lonely mesa and 
 planting flowers about it, and then coming back saddened 
 to her great work for the world. And every year she
 
 282 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 would go there on the same day. And her hair would 
 gradually turn white, and people would look at her and 
 whisper to each other : 
 
 " See, that s Mildred Carver! She s the one who did 
 the great work of introducing super-steel to the world. 
 Oh, no, she never married. It is said that she once loved 
 a young man, and he died, but of course nobody really 
 knows. Such a sad and noble face!" 
 
 And there was another picture of herself cut off by 
 an untimely death, brought about in some undefined way 
 in the pursuit of her job. And as she lay cold and still, 
 Nick came and looked at her and the slow, hot tears ran 
 down his cheeks at the thought of what had gone out of 
 his life. There was a variant of this picture that brought 
 Nick back after many, many years to stand beside the 
 grass growing long over her grave. His wife would be 
 beside him a wholly unattractive young person as dif 
 ferent as possible from herself and he would mentally 
 compare them, and think how he had lost the best thing 
 out of his life, but all he would say to the young person 
 beside him was : 
 
 " She was Mildred Carver, and she died long years 
 ago." 
 
 Mildred was very sorry for herself as she looked at 
 these pictures. It had been settled that Ruth Ansel and 
 her cousin David were to be married and manage the 
 Northfield Mill together, but it was quite clear that she 
 must go through life unloved. Only men that she 
 wouldn t think of marrying cared for her. John Barton 
 had refused to marry her, and Nick had forgotten !
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 NICK wasn t in Arizona as Mildred thought. He 
 was helping to lay a road which would 
 provide an additional highway on which the 
 wheat crop of the Red River Valley could be rushed down 
 to Fargo on its way to Minneapolis. It was pleasant 
 work, not over difficult there were no great changes 
 of level, no serious bridging or excavating or filling in, 
 just a straightaway problem of making the best road for 
 transport trucks from the materials at hand. But Nick 
 was moody about it he didn t see why the expert at the 
 head of the gang did as he did when any one of a half 
 dozen ways he himself could have suggested would have 
 been so much better. He had moments when the whole 
 business of covering the country with roads seemed of 
 obscure value anyway. Let em pack their traps on their 
 backs as the Indians did ! Or let em go live in New York 
 City where the roads were made already ! 
 
 And one day when he had flung himself down in the 
 dreary little lobby of a dreary little town hotel to wait till 
 a heavy rain stopped and the work could go forward, who 
 should come stamping in, shaking the water from his rub 
 ber coat, but John Barton. Nick jumped to his feet in 
 a sudden involuntary spasm of rage. The man seemed 
 so to embody all that made life hateful to him. But 
 after a moment he turned away, and then after another 
 self-conquering pause, turned back and held out his hand 
 to the man who he supposed was his successful rival. 
 John Barton took it in considerable embarrassment. He 
 
 283
 
 284 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 had been so certain that Mildred loved him had so in 
 sisted on that fact to Nick and then had convinced 
 himself that she didn t! Could the boy know all this? 
 If he did, how amused he must be at the situation! And 
 yet he didn t look amused, he looked embarrassed and un 
 happy. 
 
 " I thought you were working in Kansas," commented 
 John Barton. 
 
 " I was, but they ve sent me up to help on these roads. 
 They tell me they re so bad that they ve fallen down on 
 the job of getting the wheat into the mills on time." 
 
 " They have ! That s what I m here to see about. The 
 supply was short at the mill and I sent to Fargo to find 
 out about it and they told me the trouble was farther 
 along they weren t getting the wheat themselves. 
 So I came on to look into the business, and I guess it s a 
 matter of transportation of roads the trucks don t 
 stand the wear and tear. We seem to be on the same job, 
 Mr. Van Arsdale. What are the prospects? " 
 
 " I don t think they re very good. The material we ve 
 got to make roads of is poor and the rains wash them into 
 ruts. It looks to me as much a question of getting bet 
 ter built, tougher trucks as of getting better roads. We 
 can only build roads up to a certain grade, so we have got 
 to get trucks to suit them." 
 
 "You want to synchronize them? Well, can you do 
 it?" 
 
 "As far as I can see you know I m only assistant 
 foreman, Mr. Barton it gets right back to the quality 
 of the steel. If they can get hard enough, tough enough 
 steel for the essential parts of the trucks, we can build 
 roads they can travel over." 
 
 " What you need," said John Barton slowly, "is super- 
 steel."
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 285 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 " A new product got out by the Carver Mills that Mil 
 dred Carver is trying to put on the market." 
 
 "What do you mean? Where is she? I thought 
 she you ! " 
 
 " Come out here, Van Arsdale will you? It s only 
 fair to tell you about it if you haven t heard." 
 
 As honestly as he had told the girl he loved why he 
 would not marry her, he told Nick what had happened. 
 
 " I guess you were right about her not being happy with 
 me but not for the same reason. I hope she ll be happy 
 with somebody." 
 
 And that was why Waddell opening the door one Sun 
 day afternoon at the end of March ushered Nick Van 
 Arsdale into the still, sweet air of the old settled, easy ex 
 istence which he thought he had left so far behind him ! 
 As the hangings- swung together a wave of perfume rose 
 from a bowl of Chinese lilies a rich, heavy, indolent 
 perfume, that somehow mingled with the afternoon 
 sunlight saturating the silk curtains, and with the quick 
 frivolous tick of the French clock, and with the slow soft 
 ness of the Persian cat that came stepping toward him. 
 It was a world where it was inconceivable that anything 
 could happen suddenly or without due consideration, a 
 world fixed beyond the thought of change. Nick walked 
 over to the white fireplace and set his shoulder defiantly 
 against it. The Persian cat, stealing softly after him, 
 circled round his feet. 
 
 As Mildred came slowly down the long stairs to re 
 ceive him she felt herself dipping into a stream of emotion 
 and threw up her chin as though to keep it above water. 
 When she stepped through the curtains Nick looked up 
 and caught his breath. Her lips were a little apart, her 
 color came and went, her eyes were twin blue stars; but
 
 286 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 the light that was in them he didn t understand. He 
 didn t think or reason he didn t remember that there 
 was such a place as Kansas or such things as roads; he 
 forgot that this old life was a suffocating thing which he 
 couldn t go back to he forgot everything but Mildred 
 as he caught her in his arms and kissed her. But after 
 the first moment he felt both her hands pushing against 
 him and stepped quickly away. 
 
 " Oh, Nick Nick don t ! " she cried. 
 
 They stood apart from each other these two young 
 citizens of the democracy in embarrassed silence, fright 
 ened at their own emotion. This was not what they had 
 intended. It had done itself. 
 
 Mildred looking at Nick thought that he had never 
 seemed so definitely an aristocrat, so far removed from 
 any possible understanding of the new kind of things she 
 had grown to care for of work, and what it ought to 
 mean to everybody to be a citizen. And yet never had he 
 seemed so attractive, so personally dear and desirable. 
 But she knew she was going to stand by her resolve ! 
 
 " Mildred," said Nick, and there was a new tone of 
 assurance in his voice, " Mildred, I ve come back to ask 
 you to marry me. I ve tried to make myself believe that 
 I could get on without you and I find I can t. I m not 
 going to wait while you try and decide whether you love 
 me more than anybody else or even if you love me at all. 
 I m just going to make you marry me because I love you 
 so much." 
 
 The girl colored with resentment. 
 
 " I know I acted like a fool when I was here before, 
 when I talked to Mr. Barton. I guess I didn t know how 
 sore I was till afterward, and I know I hadn t an idea how 
 much I loved you. But you ve just got to forgive me be 
 cause I know better now you ve got to."
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 287 
 
 Mildred looked down at her fluttering fingers they 
 were a little stained with the ink with which she signed 
 the firm letters Henriette couldn t get it all off. When 
 he paused for breath she began. 
 
 " Nick! " her voice was very low, " Nick, I ve got to 
 tell you something right away. It s it s very import 
 ant. I I don t think you d like to marry me now 
 even if you think you would I m quite different from 
 what you think I am from what I used to be I m not 
 the kind of a girl you d like any more at all." 
 
 " Not the kind of a girl? Oh, Mildred, there couldn t 
 be anybody else in the world I d care for. I know you re 
 trying to let me down easy. And I can t bear to think of 
 it but but." 
 
 "Nick!" 
 
 " But I ve got to make you understand." 
 
 Mildred s face was changing, the boy plunged on. 
 
 " You see, Mildred, I just can t go on with the kind of 
 thing you re used to not after my Service year, I can t. 
 Why, when I think of Torexo and seats under every tree 
 and the cut grass; and then of the way it looks in Arizona 
 when you re up on a rock at sunrise and the valley below 
 gets blue and purple and pink and then you plan out 
 where a road ought to go and help to put it there Oh, 
 Lord! I got to thinking of that house in Fifty-sixth 
 Street father s keeping for me to live in just the same 
 sort of a house I ve always seen and even when I 
 thought of your being there, I couldn t seem to stand it 
 at all. It s beastly to say this to you only it would be 
 worse for me not to." 
 
 Nick caught his breath but he didn t look up and forced 
 himself to go on. 
 
 " And so, Mildred, that was why I stayed away. I 
 didn t think I had any right to ask you to go away from
 
 288 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 
 
 everybody you knew and everything you cared for. And 
 I knew I hadn t any right to give up my work. I couldn t 
 be a slacker, Mildred, even if there wasn t any war. I 
 never thought you d feel the same way about it till you 
 said how you were going to work with John Barton 
 and even then I thought you didn t understand it your 
 self. And I was too jealous of him to try and think it 
 out anyway. But I met him in North Dakota and he told 
 me that you weren t going to be married after all, and 
 how you were working on super-steel that I d never heard 
 of before. And after that I thought I d never get leave 
 to come here, and then that the train would never get in ! " 
 
 Nick stopped literally for lack of breath. Mildred still 
 stood fluttering her ink stained fingers. 
 
 "I I was going to tell you too, Nick, that you d be 
 disappointed in the way I felt about things you see I 
 couldn t tell myself last year what I know now ! But 
 it s so dull here ! I like to ride and dance and everything 
 only there s nothing else at all ! And when I was driv 
 ing a tractor in Minnesota and sometimes not seeing any 
 thing but a rabbit for half a day why I was part of 
 everything myself ! I was part of the government and I 
 was almost as important as the crops themselves. Why, 
 it mattered to everybody in the country how I did my 
 work ! But it doesn t matter to anybody how I dance or 
 dress and that s all I had to do here. I couldn t stand it 
 so I m working every day in father s steel mill. They re 
 making super-steel for reaper blades because I broke so 
 many in Dakota. And I m finding other things that 
 ought to be made of steel that won t break, and trying to 
 get people to make them of it and then to use the things 
 after they re made. Oh, Nick, it s wonderful! And 
 that s what I wanted to tell you about I ve got to do 
 my work as a citizen too. I can t give it up ! "
 
 MILDRED CARVER, U. S. A. 289 
 
 Mildred tried to look at him dispassionately in the 
 light of her weakening resolution. She repeated to her 
 self that in spite of what he said about his work he hadn t 
 cared enough about her to come back all winter and 
 was surprised to find that this had become a matter of 
 no importance! She called up her intention to devote 
 her life to the great work of feeding the world, and 
 found that it didn t stand in her way ! How was it that 
 the Chinese lilies in the corner smelled so much like the 
 late tuberoses at Torexo? What was this sea of riotous 
 disquieting perfume that invaded the staid drawing room 
 in Washington Square? Mildred trying to lift her chin 
 above it, looked straight into the eyes of Nick Van Ars- 
 dale. Was he coming toward her or was it her own 
 footsteps that were bringing them together? She tried 
 to pull herself together and decide what she was to do. 
 Then in answer to her own question she heard her voice 
 say : 
 
 " Nick, if you think we could do it together " 
 
 Printed in the United States of America.
 
 following pages contain advertisements of a few of 
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 side of the different industries. Here the art of paper making furnishes 
 the background. The theme is somewhat humorous in nature. A young 
 wife picks a quarrel with her husband because he is commonplace, and 
 elopes with a man of high intellectual ability. Finding him, however, 
 extremely prosaic and a bore, she is glad in the end to return to her first love. 
 
 The elopement, it might be explained, was purely a nominal one, carried 
 out on a high moral basis with the most tender respect for the lady s repu 
 tation and character. This fact leads to a number of unusual and fre 
 quently amusing situations. 
 
 From Father to Son 
 
 BY MARY S. WATTS 
 
 Author of "Nathan Burke," "The Rise of Jennie Gushing," "The Board- 
 man Family," etc. 
 
 Cloth, 12 mo. Preparing 
 
 The hero of Mrs. Watts new story is a young man belonging to a very 
 wealthy family, who has had every sort of luxury and advantage and who, 
 upon entering his father s office after leaving college, finds that the huge 
 fortune founded by his grandfather was mainly made by profiteering on 
 the grandfather s part during the Civil War. The question is what is this 
 young man of the present day to do? He is high-minded and sensitive 
 and the problem is a difficult one. What, too, is his own father to do also 
 a man of sterling character, though of a sterner type. The theme which 
 grows out of this situation is one of singular interest and power and involves 
 a moving crowd of characters. 
 
 Among these is the hero s sister, who marries a German attach6 at the 
 embassy in Washington ; and another sister, who marries a young man of 
 the same social set and things happen. There is a drunken scalawag 
 of a relative who might be worse, and there are one or two other people 
 whom readers of Mrs. Watts books have met before. The dates of the 
 story are from 1911 to the present year. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork
 
 NEW MACMILLAN NOVELS 
 
 The Rising of the Tide : The Story of 
 Sabinsport 
 
 BY IDA M. TARBELL 
 
 Cloth, i2mo. 
 
 A great many people will be interested in the announcement that Miss 
 Tarbell has written a story of the war perhaps not so much of the war as 
 of the American spirit which contributed to so large an extent to early 
 victory. The scene of her book is a mining and manufacturing town, 
 which, when the national emergency arises, becomes a munitions making 
 center. The way in which America awakes to the fact that it has a distinct 
 part to play in repelling lawlessness and world aggression is vividly shown 
 by means of a story in which dramatic incidents occur frequently. There 
 is also an interesting love theme. 
 
 The war is over to be sure, but this fact, perhaps, makes Miss Tarbell s 
 narrative of the days when this country was being tested of even greater 
 appeal. 
 
 The Jervaise Comedy 
 
 BY J. D. BERESFORD 
 
 Cloth, izmo. 
 
 This novel is just what its title implies a comedy, a humorous story 
 that will interest and amuse the reader through its situations and characters, 
 and will delight them because of the charm with which it is told. 
 
 A young dramatist, making a week-end visit with people he hardly 
 knows, suddenly finds himself involved as an onlooker, and later as a par 
 ticipant, in a planned but only half-executed elopement. The incidents 
 leading up to the elopement and following it are spiritedly narrated and the 
 love story which develops between the dramatist and the sister of the male 
 "eloper" is handled with rare skill. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 NEW MACM1LLAN NOVELS 
 
 Our House 
 
 BY HENRY S. CANBY 
 
 Cloth, ismo. Preparing 
 
 Mr. Canby, known as a teacher of literature and critic, also as a writer 
 of books on literary subjects, has written a novel, and one of singular appeal. 
 Its central character is a young man facing the world, taking himself perhaps 
 over-seriously, but genuinely perplexed as to what to do with himself. 
 Coming back from college to a sleepy city on the borders of the South, 
 his problem is, whether he shall subside into local business affairs, keep 
 up the home which his father has struggled to maintain, or whether he 
 shall follow his instinct and try to do something worth while in literature. 
 This problem is made intensely practical through the death of his father. 
 The story of what the young man does is exceedingly interesting. It takes 
 the hero to New York and into the semi-artificial life of young Bohemia 
 and ultimately brings him back home, where he finds the real happiness 
 and success. 
 
 All the Brothers Were Valiant 
 
 BY BEN AMES WILLIAMS 
 
 Cloth, i2mo. Preparing 
 
 This is a stirring story of the sea somewhat suggestive in manner of Jack 
 London s work. It has to do with two brothers of a sea-going family who 
 go on a cruise with the hope of ultimately finding their older brother, Mark, 
 who was lost on his last voyage. The adventures which they have on a 
 mid-sea island, where Mark, pagan, pirate, pearl-hunter, is found, are 
 absorbing. Hidden treasure, mutinies, tropic love, all these are here. The 
 book thrills with its incident and arouses admiration for its splendid 
 character portrayal. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hiigard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
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