ce
of many memories. Most of the summers of her little girlhood had been
spent there, with now and then a Christmas holiday.

The house did not boast a heating plant, but there were roaring open
fires in all the rooms, except in the Connollys' sitting room, which
was warmed by a great black stove.

The Connollys were the caretakers. They occupied the left wing of the
house, and worked the farm. They were both good Catholics, and Mrs.
Connolly looked after the little church at the crossroads corner, where
the good priests came from the College every week to say Mass. She was
a faithful, hard-working, pious soul, with her mind just now very much
on her two sons who had enlisted at the first call for men, and were
now in France.

She talked much about them to Jean, who came into the kitchen to watch
her get supper. The deep, dark, low-ceiled room was lighted by an oil
lamp. The rocking chair in which Jean sat had a turkey-red cushion,
and there was another turkey-red cushion in the rocking chair on the
other side of the cookstove. They ate their meals on the table under
the lamp. It was only when guests were in the house that the dining
room was opened.

The Doctor and Jim Connolly were at the barn, where were kept two fat
mules, a fat little horse, a fat little cow, and a pair of fat pigs.
There were also a fat house dog, and a brace of plump pussies, for the
Connollys were a plump and comfortable couple who wanted everything
about them comfortable, and who had had little to worry them until the
coming of the war.

Yet even the war could not shake Mrs. Connolly's faith in the rightness
of things.

"I was glad to have our country get into it, and to have my sons go.
If they had stayed at home, I shouldn't have felt satisfied."

"Didn't it nearly break your heart?"

Mrs. Connolly, beating eggs for an omelette, shook her head. "Women's
hearts don't break over brave men, Miss Jean. It is the sons who are
weak and wayward who break their mothers' hearts--not the ones that go
to war."

She poured the omelette into a pan. "When I have a bad time missing
them, I remember how the Mother of God gave her blessed Son to the
world. And He set the example, to give ourselves to save others. No,
I don't want my boys back until the war is over."

Jean said nothing. She rocked back and forth and thought about what
Mary Connolly had said. One of the fat pussies jumped on her lap and
purred. It was all very peac