Mrs. Winters sat open-eyed, and as soon as she could, left the room.  She went at once to the Shelter and asked to see the children.

Up the bare stairs, freshly scrubbed, she was taken, and into the day-nursery where many children sat on the floor, some idly playing with half-broken toys, one or two wailing softly, not as if they were looking for immediate returns, but just as a small protest against things in general.  The little four-year-old girl, neatly dressed and smiling, came at once when the matron called her, and quickly said, “Will you take me to my mother?  Am I going home now?”

“She asks every one that,” the matron said aside.

“I have a little brother now,” said the child proudly; “just down from heaven—­we knew he was coming.”

In one of the white cribs the little brother lay, in an embroidered quilt.  The matron uncovered his face, and, opening one navy-blue eye, he smiled.

“He’s a bonnie boy,” the matron said; “he has slept ever since he came.  But I cannot tell—­somebody—­I simply can’t.”

Mrs. Winters went home thinking so hard that she was afraid her husband would see the thoughts shining out, tell-tale, in her face.

She told him where she had been and was just leading up to the appeal which she had prepared, for the children, when a young man called to see the Doctor.

The young fellow had called for advice:  his wife would not give her consent to his enlisting, and his heart was wrung with anxiety over what he should do.

The Doctor did not hesitate a minute.  “Go right on,” he said; “this is no time to let any one, however near and dear, turn us from our duty.  We have ceased to exist as individuals—­now we are a Nation and we must sacrifice the individual for the State.  Your wife will come around to it and be glad that you were strong enough to do your duty.  No person has any right to turn another from his duty, for we must all answer to Almighty God in this crisis, not to each other.”

The next day, while the Doctor was away making a recruiting speech in another town, the delivery van of the leading furniture store stood at his back door and one high chair stood in it, one white crib was being put up-stairs in his wife’s bedroom, and many foreign articles were in evidence in the room.  The Swedish maid was all excitement and moved around on tip-toe, talking in a whisper.

“There ban coming a baby hare, and a li’l’ girl.  Gee! what will the Doctor man say!  He ban quick enough to bring them other houses, no want none for self—­oh, gee!”

Then she made sure that the key was not in the study door, for Olga was a student of human nature and wanted to get her information first-hand.

* * * * *

When the Doctor came in late that night, Mrs. Winters met him at the door as usual.  So absorbed was he in telling her of the success of his meetings that he did not notice the excitement in her face.