on't count much one way or another; but about big things you must
never fuss or you will not be worthy of big things. Marta, you cannot
stop a railroad train with your hands. This is not the first war on
earth and we are not the first women who ever thought that war was
wrong. Each of us has his work to do and you will have yours. It does no
good to tire yourself out and fly to pieces, even if you do know so much
and have been around the world."

She smiled as a woman of sixty, who has a secret heart-break that she
had never given her husband a son, may smile at a daughter who is both
son and daughter to her, and her plump hand, all curves like her plump
face and her plump body, spread open in appeal.

Marta, who, in the breeding of her generation, felt sentiment as more or
less of a lure from logic, dropped beside the bed in a sudden burst of
sentiment and gathered the plump hand in hers and kissed it.

"Mother, you are wonderful!" she said. "Mother, you are great!"

"Tush, Marta!" said Mrs, Galland. "You shouldn't say that. Your
grandfather was great--a very great man. He never quite got his deserts;
no good man does in politics."

"You are better than great," said Marta. "You soothe; you help; you
have--what shall I call it?--the wisdom of mothers! Minna has it, too."
She ran a tattoo of kisses along the velvety skin of Mrs. Galland's arm.

Mrs. Galland was blushing, and out of the depths of her eyes bubbled a
little fountain of stars.

"Marta, you have kissed me often before," she said, "but you have been a
little patronizing from your hilltop of youth and knowledge. Sometimes
you have looked to me lonely up there on your hilltop and I know that I
have been lonely sometimes in my valley of the years where knees are not
good at climbing hills."

"It was not my intention," Marta said rather miserably.

"No, it is a businesslike age," answered Mrs. Galland.

"I--you mean I was too detached? I was not human?"

"You are now. You make me very happy," her mother replied. "But you must
sleep," she insisted.

After a time, her ear becoming as accustomed to the firing as a city
dweller's to the distant roar of city traffic Mrs. Galland slept. But
Marta could not follow her advice. If, transiently at least, she had
found something of the peace of the confessional, the vigor of youth was
in her arteries; and youth cannot help remaining awake under some
conditions. She tiptoed across the hall into her own room and s