me glimpses of things I never
realized before--of how fine and brave people can be even in the midst
of horrible suffering. I am sure I could never be as splendid as Miss
Oliver was.

"Just a week ago today she had a letter from Mr. Grant's mother in
Charlottetown. And it told her that a cable had just come saying that
Major Robert Grant had been killed in action a few days before.

"Oh, poor Gertrude! At first she was crushed. Then after just a day she
pulled herself together and went back to her school. She did not cry--I
never saw her shed a tear--but oh, her face and her eyes!

"'I must go on with my work,' she said. 'That is my duty just now.'

"I could never have risen to such a height.

"She never spoke bitterly except once, when Susan said something about
spring being here at last, and Gertrude said,

"'Can the spring really come this year?'

"Then she laughed--such a dreadful little laugh, just as one might
laugh in the face of death, I think, and said,

"'Observe my egotism. Because I, Gertrude Oliver, have lost a friend,
it is incredible that the spring can come as usual. The spring does not
fail because of the million agonies of others--but for mine--oh, can
the universe go on?'

"'Don't feel bitter with yourself, dear,' mother said gently. 'It is a
very natural thing to feel as if things couldn't go on just the same
when some great blow has changed the world for us. We all feel like
that.'

"Then that horrid old Cousin Sophia of Susan's piped up. She was
sitting there, knitting and croaking like an old 'raven of bode and
woe' as Walter used to call her.

"'You ain't as bad off as some, Miss Oliver,' she said, 'and you
shouldn't take it so hard. There's some as has lost their husbands;
that's a hard blow; and there's some as has lost their sons. You
haven't lost either husband or son.'

"'No,' said Gertrude, more bitterly still. 'It's true I haven't lost a
husband--I have only lost the man who would have been my husband. I
have lost no son--only the sons and daughters who might have been born
to me--who will never be born to me now.'

"'It isn't ladylike to talk like that,' said Cousin Sophia in a shocked
tone; and then Gertrude laughed right out, so wildly that Cousin Sophia
was really frightened. And when poor tortured Gertrude, unable to
endure it any longer, hurried out of the room, Cousin Sophia asked
mother if the blow hadn't affected Miss Oliver's mind.

"'I suffered the loss of two