represented a higher social station. Mrs. Carruth was a widow, but she kept two maids and a gardener who on occasions donned cap and gloves to guide the family automobile. Victor, his mother well knew, admired Amy from afar with infinite diffidence. His fancy never vaulted to the height of paying her attention. Now, he smiled on her as on an equal, and although rather an awkward lad-his mother would have denied such a charge warmly-he swung himself out from the moving platform and with one swift arm deftly caught the roses which she threw him. There was a look in the girl's eyes

that for him was never there before. That, also, his mother saw. Her voice didn't swell the cries of good-by and good-luck which rattled among the bass-viol honks of the motor horns; but she waved her handkerchief and kept bravely the stiff smile on her face until the train dwindled to a long thin blur and vanished among the switch lights and the shadows.

Then she dabbed at her eyes and tried to swallow a sob, when a hand on her shoulder, very kindly and gentle, roused her. "May I take you home, Mrs. Hardy?" asked the Captain's mother.

The private's mother turned and

9

one could see that she limped ever so slightly.

"It would be very good of you, Mrs. Winthrop," she answered gratefully. "I turned my ankle on that bad walk in front of the Library, two months ago, going out of the Woman's Club in too much of a hurry; and it hurts still now and then."

Mrs. Winthrop was politely sympathetic. Little Mrs. Hardy felt a glow of gratitude. They were two mothers who had sent their sons away to unknown danger.

CHAPTER II

HER EXPERIENCES

"Isn't war terrible?" she sighed. "Yes," the other agreed, "but sometimes it is necessary." By now they were in the machine moving swiftly and with incredible ease and smoothness down the street. A faint intangible perfume exhaled from the roses in a little vase on the door panel. The soft summer night air came in through the open window. They could hear the noises of the street and the talk vibrating with excitement. "Oh,

tell me," persisted Mrs. Hardy, "do you think we shall really, truly have a war-fighting and killing people?"

"I hardly think we shall this time," replied the other woman very gravely. "And it would only be a little war, did it come, but I feel sure that we shall have a war later and that it will not be a small affair. Perhaps it is as well that we should have this little one now."

"Do you mean we shall get into the war with Germany?" faltered Mrs. Hardy. "That would be horrible!"

"Very horrible, but I doubt if we shall be able to avoid it."