crying has been out of her ken.

[12]

My neck is stiff from the wetting I got. Nothing short of the plumber could have stopped her. When she finally went dry, she began to talk:

“By I’b glad Bolly didn zee be bake zuch a vool ob byself!”

“Well, you had better look after your p’s and s’s or you’ll be taken up as a German spy.” That made her laugh and then she went on to tell me what she meant to do, the p’s still too much for her but her s’s improving.

“What’s the use of my brofession now? I’d like to know that. Miniature painting will be no good for years to come. This war is going to be something that’ll make everybody baint on big canvasses. Who will want to look at anything little? I tell you, Judy, the day of mastodons is at hand! There’ll be no more lap-dogs, no more pet canaries. The one time lap-dogs will find themselves raging lions; and the pet canaries[13] will grow to great eagles and burst the silly wires of their cages with a snap of their fingers——”

[13]

“Whose fingers?” I demanded.

“Never mind whose! Mixed metaphors are perfectly permissible in war time.” I was glad to see she could say such a word as permissible, which meant that her storm of weeping had subsided.

“Are you going as a Red Cross nurse?” I asked.

“Nurse your grandmother! I’m going to drive an ambulance or maybe fly.”

“But they won’t want a woman in the thick of the fight!”

“Well, who’s to know? When I get a good hair-cut and put on some of Polly’s togs, I bet I’ll make as good a man as Pol—no, I won’t say that. I’ll never be as good a man as he is. I’m going to try the aviation racket first. If they won’t take me, I’ll get with the Red Cross, somehow. I know I could fly like a bird. I have never yet seen the wheels that I could not understand[14] the turning of. I believe it is not so easy to get aviators. It is so hazardous that men don’t go in for it. I am light weight but awfully strong.”

[14]

“But, Jo, what are you going to do about your feet?” You remember, Molly, what pretty little feet Jo has.

“Oh, I’ll wear some of Polly’s shoes and stuff out the toes. I 

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