A footman in a conspicuous livery stood at attention as Helen stopped her car under the covered way. With a silver whistle this flunky summoned a man from the garage to take the automobile. Barton followed his hostess to the other end of the veranda where quite a party--mostly the younger matrons and the girls of Mailsburg’s smart set--were gathered. Tea had been made and two other liveried servants were rolling service tables about from group to group. “Well, I have accomplished something,” Helen said, after an apology for not being at home when her guests arrived and dropping with assumed weariness into a comfortable chair. Immediately her maid put a knitting bag into her lap and her mistress seized the needles with avidity. “Every stitch counts, you know,” she went on. “I only wish I might knit while I drive my machine. But that is impossible. And I told father I’d drive the car myself and so let Charles, our chauffeur, enlist. We women must do our part. Let’s see, Marie; how many of these sweaters have I done for the soldiers?” “That is Mam’selle’s second this fortnight,” said the French maid, without losing her composure. That she did nine-tenths of the work, Helen merely rattling the needles while company was present, was not a matter for the world to know. “You all know Mr. Barton, I think,” Helen went on, placing the manager in a chair near her, as though he were a stray kitten she had picked up on the street and brought home as a curiosity. “I’ve managed to interest _him_ in our garden party. Really, he should be made to do a good deal for the Red Cross. He has not done a sin-gle sol-i-ta-ry thing as yet for the _cause_. I tell him he is a slacker of the first water.” Some who chanced to hear her smiled. Frank Barton’s ears fairly burned. It was no joke for him; yet he admitted that Miss Fuller did not understand--_would_ not understand, perhaps--why he was not in khaki. “Bah Jove!” drawled the high and somewhat effeminate voice of Morrison Copley, “Mr. Barton has plenty of company in this burg. I heard old Hammerly say he thought of offering a reward for the discovery of a single man within the conscription age here who joins from patriotic motives. He says patriotism died out in Mailsburg in the last generation.” “By the way, Morry,” asked a fellow with the bulging shoulders of a prizefighter together with a dissipated face, “how did _you_ get exempted?” “Dependent parent,” returned Copley. “You know, mothaw really couldn’t get on without me.” “That’s true enough,” sneered the other. “Madam Copley would be lost without her baby boy.” Morrison Copley did not, however, lack the keener weapons of retort. “That’s all right, Bradley. I understand you gave the exemption board the names of two dependent barkeepers.”