As for Nancy, she was amazing to Dick. She was one of those rare beings of unquenchable faith. With it went an almost universal sympathy. Dick had expected to find her as obsessed with the cause of Serbia as Patsy had always been with that of Belgium, as deaf to other calls, as impatient with Sabinsport's diffused interest as Patsy was. But he discovered at once that her heart was open to every cry, and that her hand instinctively reached out to aid any human being that needed help. She had not been at home a fortnight before she was busy planning with Ralph and Dick and her father for better housing for the girls in the factory around the Point; with Jack Mulligan for better schools at the mines. When war came she was as sensitive as Dick to what the town was going through. She realized, even better than he, how utterly Sabinsport was cut off from all outward manifestation of war, how she saw and heard none of its martial sights and noise. She was obliged to re-create without the help of outward things. It made the girl extraordinarily sympathetic. Indeed, in all Sabinsport at this period of uncertainty and alarms there was no one who kept so confident and serene an attitude or who treated with more humor and commonsense the rumors and fears that ran the streets or saw with more practical eye the things to be done. It was Nancy who first realized what a camp twenty-five miles from Sabinsport might mean to the town--the opportunity and the threat that were in it. Nancy, it will be remembered, had been in London when the war broke out. She had seen Kitchener's army grow. She had lived with soldiers, too, in hospitals and in camps, and she quickly realized that Sabinsport had a part to play. It was to Dick that she swiftly went for consultation. "They will be twenty-five miles away," said Dick. "Oh, yes," said Nancy, "but what is twenty-five miles with our factories full of girls, and the town wide open? With all their homesickness and their need of friends and life, we must get ready for them." "But how?" said Dick. "What shall we do?" "Well," said Nancy, practically, "we women must have our canteen ready for their passing through." But all that Nancy could say at the start had no effect upon Sabinsport. Nothing in her experience could give her an inkling of what it would mean to have a camp of 50,000 men twenty-five miles away. The distance was prohibitive. What would they have to do with Sabinsport, with the City within five miles? It was the City's business to take care of the camp, not hers.