d
begun.

The nurse took the withered hands held out to her in her young, warm ones.
In an instant she saw all that the little mother had been through--the
renunciation months before when she had given her boy up to his country;
the long, weary weeks of learning to do without him; the schooling it had
taken to grow patient, waiting for the letters that came sparingly or not
at all; and at last the news that he was at the front, under fire, when
the papers published all the news there was to be told. Sheila saw it
all, even to her blind, frantic groping for the God she had only half
known and into whose hands she had never wholly given the keeping of her
loved ones. And after that the cable and the waiting for what was left of
her boy to come home to her. As she looked down at her, Sheila had the
strange feeling that this frail little mother was dividing the care of her
boy between God and herself, and she smiled unconsciously at this new
partnership.

Gently she laid her hand on the lean, brown one resting on the coverlet;
the boy opened his eyes. "It's going to be fine to have a soldier for a
patient; I expect you know how to obey orders. You are our first, and
we're going to make your getting well just the happiest time in all your
life, the little mother and I."

The boy made no response. He looked at his mother as if he understood, and
then with a groan of utter misery he turned away his head and closed his
eyes again. "Ah-h-h!" thought Sheila, and a little later she drew the
mother into the corridor beyond earshot.

"There's something ailing him besides wounds. What is it?"

"Clarisse." The promptness of the answer brought considerable relief to
the nurse. It was easy to deal with the things one knew; it was the hidden
things, tucked away in the corners of the subconscious mind or the
super-sensitive soul, that never saw the light of open confession, that
were the baffling obstacles to nursing. Sheila never dreaded what she
knew.

"Well, what's the matter with Clarisse?" she asked, cheerfully.

The little mother hesitated. Evidently it was hard to put it into words.
"They're engaged, she and Phil, and Phil doesn't want to see her, shrinks
from the very thought of it. That's what's keeping him from getting
better, I think. She's very young and oh, so pretty. They were both young
when Phil went away--but Phil--" She stopped and passed a fluttering hand
across her forehead; her lips quivered the barest bit. "P