rrals. My knock attracted a little
chap of two-and-a-half or three years; his stout hands shoved the
screen back, and I found myself ushered into his company. There
evidently was no one else about, so I visited, and we talked on those
things which are of importance in the world of three-year-olds.

"Muvver's don to the wiver," he confided. "She tum back pwetty soon."

"And Father?" I asked. "Where is he?"

Into the dark eyes came a deeper look; they suddenly shone with the
spirituality of a life only three years removed from the infinite. By
what instruction, I afterwards wondered, by what almost divine charm
had she been able to instil into his young mind the honour and the
glory and the pride of it? For there was pride, and something more
than pride; adoration, perhaps, in his words as he straightened up and
said in perfect English, "My father was a soldier. He was killed at
Courcelette."

I looked in his little, sunburned face; in his dark, proud eyes; and
presently a strange mist enveloped the room. How many little faces,
how many pairs of eyes! It was just fading away when a step sounded on
the walk, and I arose as she reached the door.

"The Man of the House has made me at home," I managed to say. "I am
shipwrecked on the hill, for a little gasoline."

"There is plenty out in the field, where the tractor is," she replied.
"You will find it without difficulty. Or if you care to wait here,
Charlie may be along presently."

Her voice had sweet, modulated tones, with just that touch of pathos
which only the Angel of Suffering knows how to add. And her face was
fair, and gentle, and a little sad, and very sweet.

"He has told me," I said. There seemed no reason why I should not say
it. She had entered into the sisterhood--that universal sisterhood of
suffering which the world has known in these long, lonely years. . . .
And it was between us, for we were all in the family. There was no
occasion to scrape acquaintance by slow, conventional thrust and parry.

"Yes," she said, sitting down, and motioning me to a chair. "I was
bitter at first. I was dreadfully bitter at first. But gradually I
got a different view of it. Gradually I came to feel and know that all
we can feel and know here is on the surface; on the outside, as you
might say, and we can't know the purpose until we are inside. It is as
though life were a riddle, and the key is hidden, and the door behind
which the key is hidden is