ibly
grandmothers, industriously knitting," there was a wide difference
between them as I observed them further. One had a face which bore
traces of many disappointments, and had now settled down into a state
of sadness that was hopeless and final. She had been a fine-looking
woman once, too, and from her high forehead and well-shaped mouth I
should take her to be a woman of considerable mental power, but there
had been too much sorrow; she had belonged to a house of too much
trouble, and it had dried up the fountains of her heart. I could only
describe her by one word, "winter-killed"! She was like a tree which
had burst into bud at the coaxing of the soft spring zephyrs again and
again, only to be caught each time by the frost, and at last, when
spring really came, it could win no answering thrill, for the heart of
the tree was "winter-killed." The frost had come too often!

The other woman was older, more wrinkled, more weather-beaten, but
there was a childlike eagerness about her that greatly attracted me.
She used her hands when she spoke, and smiled often. This childish
enthusiasm contrasted strangely with her old face, and seemed like the
spirit of youth fluttering still around the grave of one whom it
loved!

I soon found myself talking to them; the old lady was glad to talk to
me, for she was not making much headway with her companion, on whom
all her arguments were beating in vain.

"I tell her she has no call to be feeling so bad about the war!" she
began, getting right into the heart of the subject; "we didn't start
it! Let the Kings and Kaisers and Czars who make the trouble do the
fretting. Thank God, none of them are any blood-relation of mine,
anyway. I won't fret over any one's sins, only my own, and maybe I
don't fret half enough over them, either!"

"What do you know about sins?" the other woman said; "you couldn't sin
if you tried----"

"That's all you know about it," said the old lady with what was
intended for a dark and mysterious look; "but I never could see what
good it does to worry, anyway, and bother other people by feeling
sorry. Now, here she is worrying night and day because her boy is in
the army and will have to go to France pretty soon. She has two others
at home, too young to go. Harry is still safe in England--he may never
have to go: the war may be over--the Kaiser may fall and break his
neck--there's lots of ways peace may come. Even if Harry does go, he
may not get killed. H