"You don't have to be too good. You are too pretty. Do you know that
Cynthia Warfield's granddaughter is a great beauty, Mistress Anne?"

"I know that I don't like to have you say such things to me."

"Why not?"

"I am not sure that you mean them."

"But I do mean them," eagerly.

"Perhaps," stiffly, "but we won't talk about it. I must go up to Peggy."

Peter Bower was with Peggy. He was a round and red-faced Peter with the
kindest heart in the world. And Peggy was the apple of his eye.

"Do you think she is better, Miss Anne?"

"Indeed I do. And now you go and get some sleep, Mr. Bower. I'll stay
with her until four, and then I'll wake Beulah."

He left her with the daily paper and a new magazine, and with the light
shaded, Anne sat down to read. Peggy was sleeping soundly with both arms
around the plush pussy which Geoffrey had given her. It was a most
lifelike pussy, gray-striped with green glass eyes and with a little red
mouth that opened and mewed when you pulled a string. Hung by a ribbon
around the pussy cat's neck was a little brass bell. As the child stirred
in her sleep the little bell tinkled. There was no sound except the
sighing of the wind. All the house was still.

The paper was full of news of the great war. Anne read it carefully, and
the articles on the same subject in the magazine. She felt that she must
know as much as possible, so that she might speak to her children
intelligently of the great conflict. Of Belgium and England, of France
and Germany. She must be fair, with all those clear eyes focussed upon
her. She must, indeed, attempt a sort of neutrality. But how could she be
neutral, with her soul burning candles on the altar of the allies?

As she read on and on in the silence of the night, there came to her the
thought of the dead on the field of battle. What of those shining souls?
What happened after men went out into the Great Beyond? Hun and Norman,
Saxon and Slav, among the shadows were they all at Peace?

Again the child stirred and the little bell tinkled. It seemed to Anne
that the bell and the staring eyes were symbolic. The gay world played
its foolish music and looked with unseeing eyes upon murder and madness.
If little Peggy had lain there dead, the little bell would still have
tinkled, the wide green eyes would still have stared.

But Peggy, thank God, was alive. Her face, like old ivory against the
whiteness of her pillow, showed the ravages of illness, but the d