I soon found myself talking to them; the old lady was glad to talk to me, for she was not making much headway with her companion, on whom all her arguments were beating in vain.

“I tell her she has no call to be feeling so bad about the war!” she began, getting right into the heart of the subject; “we didn’t start it!  Let the Kings and Kaisers and Czars who make the trouble do the fretting.  Thank God, none of them are any blood-relation of mine, anyway.  I won’t fret over any one’s sins, only my own, and maybe I don’t fret half enough over them, either!”

“What do you know about sins?” the other woman said; “you couldn’t sin if you tried——­”

“That’s all you know about it,” said the old lady with what was intended for a dark and mysterious look; “but I never could see what good it does to worry, anyway, and bother other people by feeling sorry.  Now, here she is worrying night and day because her boy is in the army and will have to go to France pretty soon.  She has two others at home, too young to go.  Harry is still safe in England—­he may never have to go:  the war may be over—­the Kaiser may fall and break his neck—­there’s lots of ways peace may come.  Even if Harry does go, he may not get killed.  He may only get his toe off, or his little finger, and come home, or he may escape everything.  Some do.  Even if he is killed—­every one has to die, and no one can die a better way; and Harry is ready—­good and ready!  So why does she fret?  I know she’s had trouble—­lots of it—­Lord, haven’t we all?  My three boys went—­two have been killed; but I am not complaining—­I am still hoping the last boy may come through safe.  Anyway, we couldn’t help it.  It is not our fault; we have to keep on doing what we can....

“I remember a hen I used to have when we lived on the farm, and she had more sense than lots of people—­she was a little no-breed hen, and so small that nobody ever paid much attention to her.  But she had a big heart, and was the greatest mother of any hen I had, and stayed with her chickens until they were as big as she was and refused to be gathered under wings any longer.  She never could see that they were grown up.  One time she adopted a whole family that belonged to a stuck-up Plymouth Rock that deserted them when they weren’t much more than feathered.  Biddy stepped right in and raised them, with thirteen of her own.  Hers were well grown—­Biddy always got down to business early in the spring, she was so forehanded.  She raised the Plymouth Rocks fine, too!  She was a born stepmother.  Well, she got shut out one night, and froze her feet, and lost some good claws, too; but I knew she’d manage some way, and of course I did not let her set, because she could not scratch with these stumpy feet of hers.  But she found a job all right!  She stole chickens from the other hens.  I often wondered what she promised them, but she got them someway, and only took those that were big enough to scratch, for Biddy knew her limitations.  She was leading around twenty-two chickens of different sizes that summer.