Winona's strong language, and she betrayed something like a
guilty pride in revealing that her child was now a hopeless tobacco
addict.

A month later Winona further harassed the judge.

"'I think only about life and death,'" read Mrs. Penniman, "'and I'm
thinking now that the real plan of things is something greater than
either of them. It is not rounded out by our dying in the right faith.
Somehow it must go on and on, always in struggle and defeat. I used to
think, of course, that our religious faith was the only true one, but
now I must tell you I don't know what I am.'"

"My Lord!" groaned the horrified judge. "The girl's an atheist! That's
what people are when they don't know what they are. First swearing, then
smoking cigarettes, now forsaking her religion. Mark my words, she's
coming home an abandoned woman!"

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Penniman, crisply. "She's having a great experience.
Listen! 'You should see them die here, in all faiths--Jews, Catholics,
Protestants, and very, very many who have never enjoyed the consolation
of any religious teachings whatsoever. But they all die alike, and you
may think me dreadful for saying it, but I know their reward will be
equal. I don't know if I will come out of it myself, but I don't think
about that, because it seems unimportant. The scheme--you remember Dave
Cowan always talking about the scheme--the scheme is so big, that dying
doesn't matter one bit if you die trying for something. I couldn't argue
about this, but I know it and these wonderful boys must know it when
they go smiling straight into death. They know it without any one ever
having told them. Sometimes I get to thinking of my own little set
beliefs about a hereafter--those I used to hold--and they seem funny to
me!'"

"There!" The judge waved triumphantly. "Now she's makin' fun of the
church! That's what comes of gittin' in with that fast Army set."

Mrs. Penniman ignored this.

"'Patricia Whipple feels the same way I do about these matters; more
intensely if that were possible. I had a long talk with her yesterday.
She has been doing a wonderful work in our section. She is one of us
that can stand anything, any sort of horrible operation, and never
faint, as some of the nurses have done. She is apparently at such times
a thing of steel, a machine, but she feels intensely when it is over and
she lets down.

"'You wouldn't know her. Thin and drawn, but can work twenty hours at a
stretch and be ready