bout a son at war. Why
should I give to what they're fighting for on the other side of the ocean?
Don't ask me to give up my boy to what they're fighting for in a country
I've never seen--my little boy I raised--my all I've got--my life! No! No!"

"It's the women like you, mother--with guts--with grit--that send their
sons to war."

"I 'ain't got grit!"

"You're going to have your hands so full, little mother, taking care of the
Army and Navy, keeping their feet dry and their chests warm, that before
you know it you'll be down at the pier some fine day watching us fellows
come home from victory."

"No--no--no!"

"You're going to coddle the whole fighting front, making 'em sweaters and
aviation sets out of a whole ton of wool I'm going to lay in the house for
you. Time's going to fly for my little mother."

"I'll kill myself first!"

"You wouldn't have me a quitter, little mother. You wouldn't have the other
fellows in my crowd at college go out and do what I haven't got the guts to
do. You want me to hold up my head with the best of 'em."

"I don't want nothing but my boy! I--"

"Us college men got to be the first to show that the fighting backbone of
the country is where it belongs. If us fellows with education don't set the
example, what can we expect from the other fellows? Don't ask me to be a
quitter, mother. I couldn't! I wouldn't! My country needs us, mother--you
and me--"

"Edwin! Edwin!"

"Attention, little mother--stand!"

She lay back her head, laughing, crying, sobbing, choking.

"O God--take him and bring him back--to me!"

On a day when sky and water were so identically blue that they met in
perfect horizon, the S. S. _Rowena_, sleek-flanked, mounted fore and aft
with a pair of black guns that lifted snouts slightly to the impeccable
blue, slipped quietly, and without even a newspaper sailing-announcement
into a frivolous midstream that kicked up little lace edged wavelets,
undulating flounces of them. A blur of faces rose above deck-rails, faces
that, looking back, receded finally. The last flag and the last kerchief
became vapor. Against the pier-edge, frantically, even perilously forward,
her small flag thrust desperately beyond the rail, Mrs. Ross, who had
lost a saving sense of time and place, leaned after that ship receding in
majesty, long after it had curved from view.

The crowd, not a dry-eyed one, women in spite of themselves with lips
whitening, men grim with pride and an i