yes of the little boy who had been taught his first
lessons of duty and loyalty at her knee--of Jem in the terrible
trenches--of Nan and Di and Rilla, waiting--waiting--waiting, while the
golden years of youth passed by--and she wondered if she could bear any
more. She thought not; surely she had given enough.

Yet that night she told Shirley that he might go.

They did not tell Susan right away. She did not know it until, a few
days later, Shirley presented himself in her kitchen in his aviation
uniform. Susan didn't make half the fuss she had made when Jem and
Walter had gone. She said stonily, "So they're going to take you, too."

"Take me? No. I'm going, Susan--got to."

Susan sat down by the table, folded her knotted old hands, that had
grown warped and twisted working for the Ingleside children to still
their shaking, and said:

"Yes, you must go. I did not see once why such things must be, but I
can see now."

"You're a brick, Susan," said Shirley. He was relieved that she took it
so coolly--he had been a little afraid, with a boy's horror of "a
scene." He went out whistling gaily; but half an hour later, when pale
Anne Blythe came in, Susan was still sitting there.

"Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, making an admission she would once have
died rather than make, "I feel very old. Jem and Walter were yours but
Shirley is mine. And I cannot bear to think of him flying--his machine
crashing down--the life crushed out of his body--the dear little body I
nursed and cuddled when he was a wee baby."

"Susan--don't," cried Anne.

"Oh, Mrs. Dr. dear, I beg your pardon. I ought not to have said
anything like that out loud. I sometimes forget that I resolved to be a
heroine. This--this has shaken me a little. But I will not forget
myself again. Only if things do not go as smoothly in the kitchen for a
few days I hope you will make due allowance for me. At least," said
poor Susan, forcing a grim smile in a desperate effort to recover lost
standing, "at least flying is a clean job. He will not get so dirty and
messed up as he would in the trenches, and that is well, for he has
always been a tidy child."

So Shirley went--not radiantly, as to a high adventure, like Jem, not
in a white flame of sacrifice, like Walter, but in a cool,
business-like mood, as of one doing something, rather dirty and
disagreeable, that had just got to be done. He kissed Susan for the
first time since he was five years old, and said, "Good-bye