She was at the door of her mother’s room, which was like an antique shop.  Old plates lay on top of old tables, with vases on the floor under the tables.  Surrounded by her treasures, Mrs. Galland awaited the attack; not as a soldier awaits it, but as that venerable Roman senator of the story faced the barbarous Gauls—­neither disputing the power of their spears nor yielding the self-respect of his own mind and soul.  She had lain down in her wrapper for the night, and the light from a single candle—­she still favored candles—­revealed her features calm and philosophical among the pillows.  Yet the magic of war, reaching deep into hidden emotions, had her also under its spell.  Her voice was at once more tender and vital.

“Marta, I see that you are all on wires!”

“Yes; jangling wires, every one, jangling every second out of tune,” Marta acquiesced.

“Marta, my father”—­her father had been a premier of the Browns—­“always said that you may enjoy the luxury of fussing over little things, for they don’t count much one way or another; but about big things you must never fuss or you will not be worthy of big things.  Marta, you cannot stop a railroad train with your hands.  This is not the first war on earth and we are not the first women who ever thought that war was wrong.  Each of us has his work to do and you will have yours.  It does no good to tire yourself out and fly to pieces, even if you do know so much and have been around the world.”

She smiled as a woman of sixty, who has a secret heart-break that she had never given her husband a son, may smile at a daughter who is both son and daughter to her, and her plump hand, all curves like her plump face and her plump body, spread open in appeal.

Marta, who, in the breeding of her generation, felt sentiment as more or less of a lure from logic, dropped beside the bed in a sudden burst of sentiment and gathered the plump hand in hers and kissed it.

“Mother, you are wonderful!” she said.  “Mother, you are great!”

“Tush, Marta!” said Mrs, Galland.  “You shouldn’t say that.  Your grandfather was great—­a very great man.  He never quite got his deserts; no good man does in politics.”

“You are better than great,” said Marta.  “You soothe; you help; you have—­what shall I call it?—­the wisdom of mothers!  Minna has it, too.”  She ran a tattoo of kisses along the velvety skin of Mrs. Galland’s arm.

Mrs. Galland was blushing, and out of the depths of her eyes bubbled a little fountain of stars.

“Marta, you have kissed me often before,” she said, “but you have been a little patronizing from your hilltop of youth and knowledge.  Sometimes you have looked to me lonely up there on your hilltop and I know that I have been lonely sometimes in my valley of the years where knees are not good at climbing hills.”

“It was not my intention,” Marta said rather miserably.

“No, it is a businesslike age,” answered Mrs. Galland.