“Oh.  Oh, dad.  I’m sorry.”  He glanced up at his daughter and saw tears welling in her eyes.  How utterly miserable both of them were.

“It’s the war,” he said harshly and proudly.  This made a difference to his pride, but not to his daughter’s anxiety.  She was not interested in the war, or in any other cause of the abyss she was facing.  She strove to think clearly what to do.  But no, she must do her thinking alone.  With a sudden quiet she rose from the table, went around to her father’s chair and kissed him very gently.

“All right, dear—­I see it all now—­and I promise I’ll try my best,” she said.

“You’re a brave little woman,” he replied.

But after she had gone, he reflected.  Why had he called her a brave little woman?  Why had it all been so intense, the talk upon so heroic a plane?  It would be hard on Edith, of course; but others were doing it, weren’t they?  Think of the women in Europe these days!  After all, she’d be very comfortable here, and perhaps by Christmas times would change.

He shook off these petty troubles and went to his office for the day.

* * * * *

As she busied herself unpacking the trunks, Edith strove to readjust her plans.  By noon her head was throbbing, but she took little notice of that.  She had a talk with Hannah, the devoted Irish girl who had been with her ever since George was born.  It was difficult, it was brutal.  It was almost as though in Edith’s family there had been two mothers, and one was sending the other away.

“There, there, poor child,” Edith comforted her, “I’ll find you another nice family soon where you can stay till I take you back.  Don’t you see it will not be for long?” And Hannah brightened a little.

“But how in the wide wurrld,” she asked, “will you ever do for the children, me gone?”

“Oh, I’ll manage,” said Edith cheerfully.  And that afternoon she began at once to rearrange her whole intricate schedule, with Hannah and school both omitted, to fit her children into the house.  But instead of this, as the days wore on, nerve-racking days of worry and toil, sternly and quite unconsciously she fitted the house to her children.  And nobody made her aware of the fact.  All summer long in the mountains, everyone by tacit consent had made way for her, had deferred to her grief in the little things that make up the everyday life in a home.  And to this precedent once established Edith now clung unawares.

Her new day gave her small time to think.  It began at five in the morning, when Roger was awakened by the gleeful cries of the two wee boys who slept with their mother in the next room, the room which had been Deborah’s.  And Edith was busy from that time on.  First came the washing and dressing and breakfast, which was a merry, boisterous meal.  Then the baby was taken out to his carriage on the porch at the back of the house.  And after