feel afraid. It is
rather dreadful to think that he was once young and strong like Derry,
and that he will never be young and strong again.

"Oh, I want the war to end--I want Derry, and sunshine and well people.
It seems a hundred years since I did anything just for the fun of doing
it. It seems a million years since Daddy and I drove downtown together
and drank chocolate sodas--

"But then nobody is drinking chocolate sodas--at least no one is doing
it light-heartedly. You can't be light-hearted when the person you
love best in the world is going to war. You can be brave, and you can
make your lips laugh, but you can't make your heart laugh--you
can't--you can't--.

"I talk a great deal to the women who come to Emily's Toy Shop. And I
am finding out that some of those that seem fluffy-minded are really
very much in earnest. There is one little blonde, who always wears
white silk and chiffon, she looks as if she had just stepped from the
stage. And at first I simply scorned her. I felt that she would be
the kind to leave ravellings in her wipes, and things like that. But
she doesn't leave a ravelling. She works slowly, but she does her work
well--. But now and then her hands tremble and the tears fall; and the
other day I went and sat down beside her and I found out that her
husband is flying in France, and that her two brothers are at the
front--. And one of them is among the missing; he may be a prisoner
and he may be dead--. And she is trying to do her bit and be brave.
And now I don't care if she does wear her earlocks outside of her veil
and load her hands with diamonds--she's a dear---and a darling. But
she's scared just as I am--and as Mary Connolly is, and as all the
women are, though they don't show it--. I wonder if Joan of Arc was
afraid--in her heart as the rest of us are? Perhaps she wasn't,
because she was in the thick of it herself, and we aren't. Perhaps if
we were where we could see it and have the excitement of it all, we
should lose our fear.

"But when women tell me that the women have the worst of it--that they
must sit at home and weep and wait, I don't believe it. We suffer--of
course, and there's the thought of it all like a bad dream, and when we
love our loved ones--it is heartbreak. But the men suffer, daily, in
all the little things. The thirst and the vermin, and the cold and
wet--and the noise--and the frightfulness. And they grow tired and
hungry and homesick,--