known to Cousin Sophia, while this aggravating, optimistic Susan was an ever-present thorn in her side.
Just at that moment Shirley was sitting on the edge of the table in the living room, swinging his legs—a brown, ruddy, wholesome lad, from top to toe, every inch of him—and saying coolly,
“Mother and dad, I was eighteen last Monday. Don’t you think it’s about time I joined up?”
The pale mother looked at him.
“Two of my sons have gone and one will never return. Must I give you too, Shirley?”
The age-old cry—“Joseph is not and Simeon is not; and ye will take Benjamin away.” How the mothers of the Great War echoed the old Patriarch’s moan of so many centuries agone!
“You wouldn’t have me a slacker, mother? I can get into the flying corps. What say, dad?”
The doctor's hands were not quite steady as he folded up the powders he was concocting for Abbie Flagg’s rheumatism. He had known this moment was coming, yet he was not altogether prepared for it. He answered slowly,
“I won't try to hold you back from what you believe to be your duty. But you must not go unless your mother says you may.”
Shirley said nothing more. He was not a lad of many words. Anne did not say anything more just then, either. She was thinking of little Joyce’s grave in the old burying-ground over-harbour,—little Joyce who would have been a woman now, had she lived—of the white cross in France and the splendid grey eyes of the little boy who had been taught his first lessons of duty and loyalty at her knee—of Jem in the terrible
