Hodgson, whose face was redder than ever, as she broiled mushrooms for lunch, grunted, “I’d rather do it than have other people messin’ around.”

Teddy surveyed her anxiously.  “You don’t mind having me here, do you,
Hodgson?”

His cheeks were rosy, his bronze hair bright, his sturdy legs planted a trifle apart, Polly’s dish in one hand, the big spoon in the other.  “No, I don’t mind,” she admitted, but it was some time before she acknowledged even to herself how glad she was when that bright figure appeared.

Feeding the fishes presented few problems, and gradually thrift stamps filled the little book, and there was a war stamp, and more thrift stamps and more war stamps, and Muffin and Polly Ann waxed fat and friendly, and were a very lion and lamb for lying down together.

Then there came a day when Teddy, feeding the fishes in the aquarium, heard somebody say that Hodgson’s son was in the war.

He went at once to the kitchen.  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked the cook, standing in front of her where she sat cutting chives and peppers and celery on a little board for salad.

“Tell you what?”

“That your boy was in Fwance.”

Hodgson’s red face grew redder, and to Teddy’s consternation, a tear ran down her cheek.

He stood staring at her, then flew upstairs to his mother.  “Cook’s cryin’.”

“Teddy—­”

“She is.  Because her son is in Fwance.”

After that when he went down to get things for Muffin and Polly Ann, he said how s’prised he was and how nice it was now that he knew, and wasn’t she pr-roud?  And he fancied that Hodgson was kinder and softer.  She told him the name of her son.  It was Charley, and she and Teddy talked a great deal about Charley, and Teddy sent him some chocolate, and Hodgson told Margaret.  “He’s a lovely boy, Mrs. Morgan.  May you never raise him to fight.”

“I should want him to be as brave as his father, Hodgson.”

“Yes.  My boy’s brave, but it was hard to let him go.”  Then, struck by the look on Margaret’s face, she said, “Forgive me, ma’am; if mine is taken from me, I’d like to feel as you do.  You ain’t makin’ other people unhappy over it.”

“I think it is because my husband still lives for me, Hodgson.”

Hodgson cried into her apron.  “It ain’t all of us that has your faith.  But if I loses him, I’ll do my best.”

And so the painted lady on the stairs saw all the sinister things that Hilda had brought into the big house swept out of it.  She saw Hodgson the cook trying to be brave, and bringing up Margaret’s tea in the afternoons for the sake of the moment when she might speak of her boy to one who would understand; she saw Emily, coming home dead tired after a hard day’s work, but with her face illumined.  She saw Margaret smiling, with tears in her heart, she saw Jean putting aside childish things to become one of the women that the world needed.