"Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Amazing Interlude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

got to go. I just have to, that's all!"

"Go how?" demanded Aunt Harriet.

"I don't know. I'll find some way. I've had a letter from Mabel.
Things are awful over there."

"And how will you help them?" Her face worked nervously. "Is it going
to help for you to be shot? Or carried off by the Germans?" The
atrocity stories were all that Aunt Harriet knew of the war, and all
she could think of now. "You'll come back with your hands cut off."

Sara Lee straightened and looked out where between the white curtains
the spire of the Methodist Church marked the east.

"I'm going," she said. And she stood there, already poised for flight.

There was no sleep in the little house that night. Sara Lee could hear
the older woman moving about in her lonely bed, where the spring still
sagged from Uncle James' heavy form, and at last she went in and crept
in beside her. Toward morning Aunt Harriet slept, with the girl's arm
cross her; and then Sara Lee went back to her room and tried to plan.

She had a little money, and she had heard that living was cheap abroad.
She could get across then, and perhaps keep herself. But she must do
more than that, to justify her going. She must get money, and then
decide how the money was to be spent. If she could only talk it over
with Uncle James! Or, with Harvey. Harvey knew about business and money.

But she dared not go to Harvey. She was terribly frightened when she
even thought of him. There was no hope of making him understand; and
no chance of reasoning with him, because, to be frank, she had no
reasons. She had only instinct - instinct and a great tenderness toward
suffering. No, obviously Harvey must not know until everything was
arranged.

That morning the Methodist Church packed a barrel for the Belgians.
There was a real rite of placing in it Mrs. Augustus Gregory's old
sealskin coat, now a light brown and badly worn, but for years the only
one in the neighborhood. Various familiar articles appeared, to be
thrust into darkness, only to emerge in surroundings never dreamed of
in their better days - the little Howard boy's first trouser suit ; the
clothing of a baby that had never lived; big Joe Hemmingway's dress suit,
the one he was married in and now too small for him. And here and there
things that could ill be spared, brought in and offered with resolute
cheerfulness.

Sara Lee brought some of Uncle James' things, and was at once set to
work. The women there called Sara Lee capable, but it was to take other
surroundings to bring out her real efficiency.