When the war came she was still further bewildered by the change that came over Tom. Every business and social occupation that had engrossed him, the pleasures to which he had been so devoted, he threw them aside as completely as the boy had thrown over college and home. It was Tom Sabins that had been asked to head the draft board of the community, and Mary had never seen him so engrossed or so interested in anything. "Why, why should he give his days to men of whom she had never heard? Why should he be so eager, so enthusiastic, so indefatigable, in this work?" Mary watched him with resentful eyes. Dick had talked frequently with Nancy about their friend, and the two had tried their best to interest her in some form of camp work; but she had refused peremptorily to be enlisted. And here she was now, going regularly day by day to the hospitals. "Tell me about Mary Sabins," he asked Nancy, the first Monday afternoon after his return that he was able to go to the farm. "You know, of course," Nancy said, "that just after you left Young Tom was invalided home. He went into the Foreign Legion when our forces took over the ambulance service, and got a nasty wound in the cheek and shoulder almost at once. It was nothing dangerous, however, but it was very hard for Tom to make Mary believe this, and she raved at her inability to go to him. He got on famously and soon was allowed to come back. You never saw any one so exultant as Mary was when Tom first came. It seemed to her, I think, that her old world, at least part of it, was restored; but it was pitiful to see how soon she discovered that Young Tom's notions of life were utterly changed, that the interests which had absorbed them in the old days had no meaning now; that his one thought was of the war, and his one hope was to return to it. "I saw her get two or three staggering blows, utterly unconscious, of course, on the boy's part. One night I was there, and he was talking about American girls, the nurses and canteen workers. 'Why,' he said, 'I didn't know women could be so wonderful. You haven't any idea of it until you see them working over there. They are not afraid of anything. You cannot tire them out. Maybe they will drop, but they won't give in. Afraid? Why, the Germans bombed the front line hospital I was in, just after I got mine, and those girls never turned a hair, never looked up, never hustled, just went about laughing and cheering us up. They killed two of them--the murderers! And there wasn't a woman there that did not stick. It's great. It's great to know that women can be like that.'