daily life and portion in Britain.  All who were not slackers were doing their part—­ every one.  Man and woman and child were in it, making sacrifices.  Those happy days of peace lay far behind us, and we had lost our touch with them and our memory of them was growing dim.  We were all in it.  We had all to suffer alike, we were all in the same boat, we mothers and fathers and sweethearts of Britain.  And so it was easier for us not to think too much and too often of our own griefs and cares and anxieties.

John’s letters began to come again in a steady stream.  He was as careful as ever about writing.  There was scarcely a day that did not bring its letter to one of the three of us.  And what bonnie, brave letters they were!  They were as cheerful and as bright as his first letters had been.  If John had bad hours and bad days out there he would not let us know it.  He told us what news there was, and he was always cheerful and bright when he wrote.  He let no hint of discouragement creep into anything he wrote to us.  He thought of others first, always and all the time; of his men, and of us at home.  He was quite cured and well, he told us, and going back had done him good instead of harm.  He wrote to us that he felt as if he had come home.  He felt, you ken, that it was there, in France and in the trenches, that men should feel at home in those days, and not safe in Britain by their ain firesides.

It was not easy for me to be cheerful and comfortable about him, though.  I had my work to do.  I tried to do it as well as I could, for I knew that that would please him.  My band still went up and down the country, getting recruits, and I was speaking, too, and urging men myself to go out and join the lads who were fighting and dying for them in France.  They told me I was doing good work; that I was a great force in the war.  And I did, indeed, get many a word and many a handshake from men who told me I had induced them to enlist.

“I’m glad I heard you, Harry,” man after man said to me.  “You showed me what I should be doing and I’ve been easier in my mind ever since I put on the khaki!”

I knew they’d never regret it, no matter what came to them.  No man will, that’s done his duty.  It’s the slackers who couldn’t or wouldn’t see their duty men should feel sorry for!  It’s not the lads who gave everything and made the final sacrifice.

It was hard for me to go on with my work of making folks laugh.  It had been growing harder steadily ever since I had come home from America and that long voyage of mine to Australia and had seen what war was and what it was doing to Britain.  But I carried on, and did the best I could.