The Catholic bulletin., 1917-09-22

toward the house. ''You know we'll
enough, John Grover!" she said. Il
don't want anything to do with
traitor!" And she held her curly
head very high indeed.
! '4Traitor!" stammered John. "What
do you mean?"
Marine turned round just for min
ute. ANY boy who laughs at the
Stars and Stripes is as bad as a
Htraitor!" she said.
John took a step after her. "Why,
what do you mean, Marnie?' he said.
E"I never laughed at the Stars and
Stripes, never! Why, I had a great
great-grandfather or something that
died in the Revolutionary War! Sol"
Marine turned again, and her eyes
blazed even more than they had be-
fore.
"That makes it all the worse!' she
cried. What would your great-great-
grandfather think if he knew how you
laughed at the flag when you ought to
have saluted it,"
"Oh!" John understood now, and he
felt better rs that what you mean? ?
Why, there wasn't any flag there to
laugh at, Marine Evans. That's the
joke, don't you see? Saluting the
blackboard and pretending it's a
fag!"
'Why, John Grover" cried Marine,
do you mean-why, it is there! |
mean it's just the same as there
Don't you see?" She stopped help
lessly. "Why, when salute or when
sing The Star-Spangled Banner, I
do see it-not a real one, of course,
but something up in the air, bigger
and lovelier than any flag I ever saw
almost And that's what I salute.
o John, don't you understand"
But John shook his head. 'No," he
said firmly. 'It's because you're a
girl that you see things in the air
like that. When see real flag I'll
salute all right, and SOIL the rest of
the fellows; but saluting the black
board is just joke. So! Come on
now and play
But Marine shook her head and
walked slowly up the steps. She had
Something to think about, and wished
to be by herself.
To begin with, Marine had to make
UP her mind to the idea that other
people did not see the great beautiful
flag that she saw up in the sky when
ever she heard The Star-Spangled
Banner or went through the pretty ex-
ercise that they call in school Salut-
ing the Flag. And then someway she
saw that it was not a good thing for
boys to laugh about saluting the flag,
even when there was not any flag
there.
And last, there was the question of
daddy's present that he did not bring
her from New York.
For Marines father had come back
only that morning from New York;
and as he had been too busy to buy
her a present there, as he usually did,
he had promised to let her go down
town with her mother and choose a
present for herself. Sd q 3.eE0l
Now the trouble was that there
were two things that Marine wanted
"a beautiful doll that she had seen
in Shores window and a set of books;
and before John had come over,
Marine had thought that it would take
her every single minute until mother
was ready for her to decide which
D,,t oil 80 n
sudden, here was a strange new idea.
She sat down in the library, per-
fectly still for ten minutes, and then
ran upstairs.
"Mother!" she called. 80 mother!
Could get flag with daddy's money,
do you think?"
"Yes, indeed" said mother.
"A big fag?"
Eyes, fine big flag, I should
think" said mother. Daddy was
going to give you particularly fine
present, you know, because he had to
=disappoint you this morning. But
what do you need of flag? Daddy
and I have a fine one to put on the
front veranda."
Then Marine told her all about the
boys who laughed, and the flag that
she seemed to see but that the boys
did not see, and how she felt that
they must have real flag.
/ Mother smiled and nodded and
smiled again as she listened-and I
think a little bit of mothers money,
too, went into the flag that they
bought that afternoon, for it was just
as beautiful as a flag could be, and
as big as nine-year-old girl could
possibly carry over her shoulder.
But the best thing of all happened
the next morning when she stepped
out of the door, with her head high
and her precious flag waving proudly
aloft. For there on the sidewalk
were all the little boys, with John at
their head. Not Marine or Barbara
Frietchie, or George Washington him
self could have seen a thing to
criticize in the way they saluted the
flag that morning and marched be-
hind it, guard of honor, until it
landed safe and sound in their room
at school.
si Youth s. C0mDdnion.
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