Page:Women Wanted.djvu/144

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WOMEN WANTED

to be a social butterfly. She was a débutante who did not care for a cotillion. You see, it was not yet her hour. She was a tall, rather delicate girl who continued to be known as the beautiful Lady Paget's "quiet" daughter. A few seasons passed and she married her cousin, the British diplomat, Sir Ralph Paget, many years her senior.

She had never known responsibility at all when one day she sat down in the great red drawing-room in Belgrave Square to make out a list of the staff personnel and the supplies that would be required for running a war hospital in Serbia. Her heart at once turned to this land in its time of trouble because she had for three years lived in Serbia when Sir Ralph was the British Minister there. They had but recently returned to England on his appointment as under secretary of foreign affairs. And now she had determined to go to the relief of Serbia with a hospital unit. I suppose British society has never been more surprised and excited about any of the women who have done things in this war than they were about Leila Paget. This day in the great red drawing-room Leila Paget found her metier. She is the daughter of a soldier, General Sir Arthur Paget, and what has developed as her amazing organising and administrative ability is an inheritance from a line of American ancestors through her beautiful mother. But from her reserved, retiring manner none of her friends had suspected that she was of the stuff of which heroines are made. Now, as she laid her plans for war relief, she did it with an expe-