Part 59 (1/2)

He stood staring at her, then flew upstairs to his mother. ”Cook's cryin'.”

”Teddy--”

”She is. Because her son is in Fwance.”

After that when he went down to get things for m.u.f.fin and Polly Ann, he said how s'prised he was and how nice it was now that he knew, and wasn't she pr-roud? And he fancied that Hodgson was kinder and softer.

She told him the name of her son. It was Charley, and she and Teddy talked a great deal about Charley, and Teddy sent him some chocolate, and Hodgson told Margaret. ”He's a lovely boy, Mrs. Morgan. May you never raise him to fight.”

”I should want him to be as brave as his father, Hodgson.”

”Yes. My boy's brave, but it was hard to let him go.” Then, struck by the look on Margaret's face, she said, ”Forgive me, ma'am; if mine is taken from me, I'd like to feel as you do. You ain't makin' other people unhappy over it.”

”I think it is because my husband still lives for me, Hodgson.”

Hodgson cried into her ap.r.o.n. ”It ain't all of us that has your faith.

But if I loses him, I'll do my best.”

And so the painted lady on the stairs saw all the sinister things that Hilda had brought into the big house swept out of it. She saw Hodgson the cook trying to be brave, and bringing up Margaret's tea in the afternoons for the sake of the moment when she might speak of her boy to one who would understand; she saw Emily, coming home dead tired after a hard day's work, but with her face illumined. She saw Margaret smiling, with tears in her heart, she saw Jean putting aside childish things to become one of the women that the world needed.

Brave women all of them, women with a vision, women raised to heroic heights by the need of the hour!

The men, too, were heroic. Indeed, the General, trying to control his appet.i.te, was almost pathetically heroic. He had given up sugar, although he hated his coffee without it, and he had a little boy's appet.i.te for pies and cakes.

”When the war is over,” he told Teddy, ”we will order a cake that's as high as a house, and we will eat it together.”

Teddy giggled. ”With frostin'?”

”Yes. I remember when Derry was a lad that we used to tell him the story of the people who baked a cake so big that they had to climb ladders to reach the top. Well, that's the kind of cake we'll have.”

Yet while he made a joke of it, he confessed to Jean. ”It is harder than fighting battles. I'd rather face a gun than deny myself the things that I like to eat and drink.”

Bronson was contributing to the Red Cross and buying Liberty Bonds, and that was brave of Bronson. For Bronson was close, and the hardest thing that he had to do was to part with his money, or to take less interest than his rather canny investments had made possible.

And Teddy, the man of his family, came one morning to his mother.

”I've just got to do it,” he said in a rather shaky voice.

”Do what, dear?”

”Send my books to the soldiers.”

She let him do it, although she knew how it tore his heart. You see, there were the Jungle Books, which he knew the soldiers would like, and ”Treasure Island,” and ”The Swiss Family Robinson,” and ”Huckleberry Finn.” He brought his fairy books, too, and laid them on the altar of patriotism, and ”Toby Tyler,” which had been his father's, and ”Under the Lilacs,” which he adored because of little brown-faced Ben and his dog, Sancho.

He was rapturously content when his mother decided that the fairy books and Toby and brown-faced Ben might still be his companions. ”You see the soldiers are men, dear, and they probably read these when they were little boys.”

”But won't I wead them when I grow up, Mother?”

”You may want to read older books.”

But Teddy was secretly resolved that age should not wither nor custom stale the charms of the beloved volumes. And that he should love them to the end. His mother thought that he might grow tired of them some day and told him so.