I did not wait to begin my work in the hospitals.  Everywhere I went, where there were wounded men, I sang for those who were strong enough to be allowed to listen, and told them stories, and did all I could to cheer them up.  It was heartrending work, oftentimes.  There were dour sights, dreadful sights in those hospitals.  There were wounds the memory of which robbed me of sleep.  There were men doomed to blindness for the rest of their lives.

But over all there was a spirit that never lagged or faltered, and that strengthened me when I thought some sight was more than I could bear.  It was the spirit of the British soldier, triumphant over suffering and cruel disfigurement, with his inevitable answer to any question as to how he was getting on.  I never heard that answer varied when a man could speak at all.  Always it was the same.  Two words were enough.

“All right!”

CHAPTER V

As I went about the country now, working hard to recruit men, to induce people to subscribe to the war loan, doing all the things in which I saw a chance to make myself useful, there was now an ever present thought.  When would John go out?  He must go soon.  I knew that, so did his mother.  We had learned that he would not be sent without a chance to bid us good-by.  There we were better off than many a father and mother in the early days of the war.  Many’s the mother who learned first that her lad had gone to France when they told her he was dead.  And many’s the lassie who learned in the same way that her lover would never come home to be her husband.

But by now Britain was settled down to war.  It was as if war were the natural state of things, and everything was adjusted to war and those who must fight it.  And many things were ordered better and more mercifully than they had been at first.

It was in April that word came to us.  We might see John again, his mother and I, if we hurried to Bedford.  And so we did.  For once I heeded no other call.  It was a sad journey, but I was proud and glad as well as sorry.  John must do his share.  There was no reason why my son should take fewer risks than another man’s.  That was something all Britain was learning in those days.  We were one people.  We must fight as one; one for all—­all for one.

John was sober when he met us.  Sober, aye!  But what a light there was in his eyes!  He was eager to be at the Huns.  Tales of their doings were coming back to us now, faster and faster.  They were tales to shock me.  But they were tales, too, to whet the courage and sharpen the steel of every man who could fight and meant to go.

It was John’s turn to go.  So it was he felt.  And so it was his mother and I bid him farewell, there at Bedford.  We did not know whether we would ever see him again, the bonnie laddie!  We had to bid him good-by, lest it be our last chance.  For in Britain we knew, by then, what were the chances they took, those boys of ours who went out.