n, not knowing how very
well, but pushed by all my being to be with my own in their mourning."

Quickly affection for the other lad asserted itself. Brock and Hugh were
different, but Hugh was a dear boy, too--undeveloped, that was all. He
had never taken life seriously, little Hugh, and now that this war-cloud
hung over the world, he simply refused to look at it; he turned away his
face. That was all, a temperament which loved harmony and shrank from
ugliness; these things were young Hugh's limitations, and no ignoble
quality.

In a long dream, yet much faster than the words have told it, in
comprehensive flashes of memory, her elbows on her knees and her face,
in her slender hands, looking out over the garden with its arched way of
roses, with its high hedge, looking past the loveliness that was home to
the city pulsing in summer heat, to the shining zigzag of river beyond
the city, the woman reviewed her boys' lives. Boys were not now merely
one phase of humanity; they had suddenly become the nation. They stood
in the foreground of a world crisis; back of them America was ranged,
orderly, living and moving to feed, clothe, and keep happy these
millions of lads holding in their hands the fate of the earth. Her boys
were but two, yet necessary. She owed them to the country, as other
mothers of men.

There was a whistle under the archway, a flying step, and young Hugh
shot from beneath the rosiness of Dorothy Perkins vines and took the
stone steps in four bounds. All the dogs fell into a community chorus of
barks and whines and patterings about, and Hugh's hands were on this one
and that as he bent over the woman.

"A _good_ kiss, Mummy; that's cold baked potato," he complained, and she
laughed and hugged him.

"Not cold; I was just thinking. Your knee, Hughie? You came up like a
bird."

Hugh made a face. "Bad break, that," he grinned, and limped across the
terrace and back. "Mummy, it doesn't hurt much now, and I do forget,"
he explained, and his color deepened. With that: "Tom Arthur is waiting
for me in town. We're going to pick up Whitney, the tennis champion, at
the Crossroads Club. May I take Dad's roadster?"

"Yes, Hughie. And, Hugh, meet the train, the seven-five. Dad's coming
to-night, you know."

The boy took her hand, looked at her uneasily. "Mummy, dear, don't be
thinking sinful thoughts about me. And don't let Dad. Hold your fire,
Mummy."

She lifted her face, and her eyes were the eyes of faith