"It's such a terrific effort for her to keep up like
this! Why, the very next day she went to the Red Cross Hospital just as
usual. She hasn't slacked a single thing. The strain must be tremendous.
She absolutely worshipped that poor boy! The girls hadn't an innings in
comparison with him. I admire the way she's taking it, but I'm afraid
some day it will be more than she can stand, and she'll just collapse.
If it had been Richard, I couldn't have borne to speak of him to anybody
just at first, yet she talks quite calmly of Lindon. It's too much for
human nature!"

Uncle Barton, grown suddenly ten years older, went about looking small
and stooping, with a reef of wrinkles about his kind eyes. He clung to
Betty, whose manner had softened under the blow. Of the three girls she
understood him the best, and, though she was still undemonstrative, her
silent consideration comforted him.

Lorraine, in the sanctuary of the studio by the harbour, railed at
Providence.

"Why should Lindon be taken?" she asked bitterly. "Lindon--the nicest of
all our cousins! Oh, Carina, why should a splendid hopeful young life
like this be sacrificed, and poor Landry be left behind? I don't
understand! It seems so futile--such a waste!"

Margaret stroked her hand for a moment before she answered:

"It may seem so on the face of it, but then we don't see the whole--only
one side of it. Perhaps the splendid useful life is wanted for work and
greater development in the next world, where it can spread its spiritual
wings unhampered by physical disabilities. And poor Landry may be needed
here, as a discipline to purge somebody's soul, or to bring kindness to
a heart that might otherwise have gone unenlarged. This world is a
school to train character, and, if some of us are sent on quickly into a
higher form, it is because there are other lessons to learn there. Don't
for a moment call Lindon's sacrifice 'waste'! Have you ever read these
lines?

'A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood,
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the Rood;
The million, who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard, pathway trod--
Some call it consecration,
And others call it GOD!'"

There was one person who, Lorraine suspected, was grieving for Lindon
more than she would allow anybody to imagine. Rosemary had always been
fond of this particular cousin, and, between the day-dreams of dukes and
generals wh