never was. I had letters from Ken and him today. They are still in England but expect to be in the trenches very soon. And then—but I suppose we'll be able to endure it somehow. To me, the strangest of all the strange things since 1914 is how we have all learned to accept things we never thought we could—to go on with life as a matter of course. I know that Jem and Jerry are in the trenches—that Ken and Walter will be soon—that if one of them does not come back my heart will break—yet I go on and work and plan—yes, and even enjoy life by times. There are moments when we have real fun because, just for the moment, we don’t think about things and then—we remember—and the remembering is worse than thinking of it all the time would have been.
“Today was dark and cloudy and tonight is wild enough, as Gertrude says, to please any novelist in search of suitable matter for a murder or elopement. The raindrops streaming over the panes look like tears running down a face, and the wind is shrieking through the maple grove.
“This hasn’t been a nice Christmas day in any way. Nan had toothache and Susan had red eyes, and assumed a weird and gruesome flippancy of manner to deceive us into thinking she hadn't; and Jims had a bad cold all day and I’m afraid of croup. He has had croup twice since October. The first time I was nearly frightened to death, for father and mother were both away—father always is away, it seems to me, when any of this household get sick. But Susan was cool as a fish and knew just what to do, and by morning Jims was all right. That child is a cross between a duck and an imp. He’s a year and four months old,
%
