when Walter went—but ‘our house is left us desolate.’”
“I have been thinking, doctor,” old Sandy of the Upper Glen said to him that afternoon, “that your house will be seeming very big the day.”
Highland Sandy’s quaint phrase struck the doctor as perfectly expressive. Ingleside did seem very big and empty that night. Yet Shirley had been away all winter except for week ends and had always been a quiet fellow even when home. Was it because he had been the only one left that his going seemed to leave such a huge blank—that every room seemed vacant and deserted—that the very trees on the lawn seemed to be trying to comfort each other with caresses of freshly-budding boughs for the loss of the last of the little lads who had romped under them in childhood.
Susan worked very hard all day and late into the night. When she had wound the kitchen clock and put Dr. Jekyll out, none too gently, she stood for a little while on the doorstep, looking down the Glen, which lay tranced in faint, silvery light from a sinking young moon. But Susan did not see the familiar hills and harbour. She was looking at the aviation camp in Kingsport where Shirley was that night.
“He called me ‘Mother Susan,’” she was thinking. “Well, all our men folk have gone now—Jem and Walter and Shirley and Jerry and Carl. And none of them had to be driven to it. So we have a right to be proud. But pride—” Susan sighed bitterly,—“pride is cold company and that there is no gainsaying.”
The moon sank lower into a black cloud in the west,
