The Connollys were the caretakers.  They occupied the left wing of the house, and worked the farm.  They were both good Catholics, and Mrs. Connolly looked after the little church at the crossroads corner, where the good priests came from the College every week to say Mass.  She was a faithful, hard-working, pious soul, with her mind just now very much on her two sons who had enlisted at the first call for men, and were now in France.

She talked much about them to Jean, who came into the kitchen to watch her get supper.  The deep, dark, low-ceiled room was lighted by an oil lamp.  The rocking chair in which Jean sat had a turkey-red cushion, and there was another turkey-red cushion in the rocking chair on the other side of the cookstove.  They ate their meals on the table under the lamp.  It was only when guests were in the house that the dining room was opened.

The Doctor and Jim Connolly were at the barn, where were kept two fat mules, a fat little horse, a fat little cow, and a pair of fat pigs.  There were also a fat house dog, and a brace of plump pussies, for the Connollys were a plump and comfortable couple who wanted everything about them comfortable, and who had had little to worry them until the coming of the war.

Yet even the war could not shake Mrs. Connolly’s faith in the rightness of things.

“I was glad to have our country get into it, and to have my sons go.  If they had stayed at home, I shouldn’t have felt satisfied.”

“Didn’t it nearly break your heart?”

Mrs. Connolly, beating eggs for an omelette, shook her head.  “Women’s hearts don’t break over brave men, Miss Jean.  It is the sons who are weak and wayward who break their mothers’ hearts—­not the ones that go to war.”

She poured the omelette into a pan.  “When I have a bad time missing them, I remember how the Mother of God gave her blessed Son to the world.  And He set the example, to give ourselves to save others.  No, I don’t want my boys back until the war is over.”

Jean said nothing.  She rocked back and forth and thought about what Mary Connolly had said.  One of the fat pussies jumped on her lap and purred.  It was all very peaceful, all as it had been since some other cook made omelettes for the little aristocrat of an Irish grandmother who would not under any circumstances have sat in the kitchen on terms of familiarity with a dependent.  The world had progressed much in democracy since those days.  Those who had fought in this part of the country for liberty and equality had not really known it.  They had seen the Vision, but it was to be given to their descendants to realize it.

Jean rocked and rocked.  “I hate war,” she said, suddenly.  “I didn’t until Daddy said he was going, and then it seemed to come—­so near—­all the time I am trying to push the thought of it away.  I wouldn’t tell him, of course.  But I don’t want him to go.”