Mary Vance dropped in one evening to tell the Ingleside folks that she had withdrawn all opposition to Miller Douglas 's enlisting . `` This Lusitania business was too much for me , '' said Mary brusquely . `` When the Kaiser takes to drowning innocent babies it 's high time somebody told him where he gets off at . This thing must be fought to a finish . It 's been soaking into my mind slow but I 'm on now . So I up and told Miller he could go as far as I was concerned . Old Kitty Alec wo n't be converted though . If every ship in the world was submarined and every baby drowned , Kitty would n't turn a hair . But I flatter myself that it was me kept Miller back all along and not the fair Kitty . I may have deceived myself -- but we shall see . '' They did see . The next Sunday Miller Douglas walked into the Glen Church beside Mary Vance in khaki . And Mary was so proud of him that her white eyes fairly blazed . Joe Milgrave , back under the gallery , looked at Miller and Mary and then at Miranda Pryor , and sighed so heavily that every one within a radius of three pews heard him and knew what his trouble was . Walter Blythe did not sigh . But Rilla , scanning his face anxiously , saw a look that cut into her heart . It haunted her for the next week and made an undercurrent of soreness in her soul , which was externally being harrowed up by the near approach of the Red Cross concert and the worries connected therewith . The Reese cold had not developed into whooping-cough , so that tangle was straightened out . But other things were hanging in the balance ; and on the very day before the concert came a regretful letter from Mrs. Channing saying that she could not come to sing . Her son , who was in Kingsport with his regiment , was seriously ill with pneumonia , and she must go to him at once .
The members of the concert committee looked XXXXX each other in blank dismay .
So as at before into of on that to under